Chris Bartram writes:
 
>Why not a 1 or 2 user license version of the same box??? Maybe $3000? $4000?
 
Or a zero user license (on the grounds that any good developer should be
able to figure out how to turn a zero user license system into an N user
license system :-)
 
> The only remaining problem is support costs.
 
Well, there's the issue of software cost too.  There are very good reasons
why HP should "give away" a *complete* set of software with any "low cost
development system".  Besides making the user's life easier, it saves HP
money in support problems if developers are able to test their software's
interactions against all HP software, and having the software lets the
developer investigate problems that arise when their software interacts
in some way with other HP software their users have.  It also costs HP
virtually nothing to give software away (since this is a class of users
(developers) who would never buy most of this software and will not derive
any real benefit from it either).
 
On the support side, HP is going in the right direction at least with things
like the public availability of patches via the net.  They should continue
to do things like this that allow users who want to to "self support".  In
the long run I think this is a win for HP because their support load will
go down, but people who have support are unlikely to cancel it just because
this new information becomes available "for free".  People don't pay $30,000
per year just to ask stupid questions.  They pay that money as insurance to
guarantee that HP will be there to quickly solve critical problems and help
in disastrous situations.  People who need this kind of insurance will
continue to pay for it.  People who don't need it and can't afford it (the
small developer types) have already stopped paying for it for the most part.
 
On the other hand, there are a number of developers I know who would *like*
to pay HP for support, but HP insists on charging 18 months back support to
put a system on support that has been off support.  HELLO RESPONSE CENTER:
Why not try a promotion to try to get people back on support by at least
temporarily dropping the back support requirement??  Currently once people
drop support, it's almost impossible to get them back because of the huge
penalty imposed by the up to 18 months back support rule.
 
G.