I sent the following message to the list some time ago, but it was rejected
because I was using the old address.  I hope no-one gets two copies of it.

I couldn't agree more with the comments on tier pricing.  As a consultant
familiar with a lot of HP3000 shops, it has always seemed outrageous to me
that upgrading hardware is likely to cost far more for the software than
for the hardware.  It is so easy to fall into the trap of not fully
counting this cost before upgrading.  I'm also surprised that HP doesn't
put more pressure on software vendors to change, because it must have a
very dampening effect on sales.  I came across one situation where
Powerhouse was used by one person, and the cost for upgrading the hardware
became prohibitive, because of this one program.  I think it was cheaper to
buy a small machine just to run Powerhouse than keep in on the main machine!

I have just started to market a program for the HP3000 and I was determined
not to tie my prices to machine size but to "number of users".  There is no
standard method that I'm aware of that counts the number of copies of a
program executing.  This may be one reason that vendors don't charge that way.

I did find a fairly simple way of getting that effect, and maybe others
would find it useful (they might also be able to tell me if there are flaws
in my method!).  I have a message file in the account where my software
resides (no file equations permitted), which is held open by the program.
A call to FFILEINFO tells me immediately how many other copies of the
program are being run.

John D. Alleyn-Day
John D. Alleyn-Day
Alleyn-Day International
408-286-6421
408-286-6474 (Fax)
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http://www.Alleyn-Day.com