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xom-interest - Re: [XOM-interest] License Poll

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Subject: XOM API for Processing XML with Java

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  • From: Elliotte Harold <elharo AT metalab.unc.edu>
  • To: John Cowan <jcowan AT reutershealth.com>
  • Cc: xom-interest AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [XOM-interest] License Poll
  • Date: Wed, 09 Feb 2005 10:17:32 -0500

John Cowan wrote:


Only he can say whether he's willing to make deals like this. Some
people are, some aren't.

I'm certainly willing to sell non-free XOM licenses for the right price. So far my experience has been that most large companies would be happy to take it free if they don't have to give anything back to the community, but they are decidedly unwilling to pay for that privilege. They would rather rewrite XOM (or the parts they want) from scratch rather than licensing it. XOM's hardly unique here. The same is true of most components.

What a lot of component vendors and analysts don't seem to realize is that expenses are not flexible. Even if using a component would save $500 or $5000 vs. writing it from scratch, very few companies, if any, are set up to layoff a programmer for the couple of days it would cost to pay for a pre-written component. They can't take money out of the salary and benefits pot to put it in the third party component pot. The only thing they're set up to do is completely replace programmers with lower cost programmers overseas.

Larger, six-figure purchases can sometimes be more easily justified because they're worth putting into budget process. But there's just no budget in most shops for third party components, no matter how much time they'd save.

--
Elliotte Rusty Harold elharo AT metalab.unc.edu
XML in a Nutshell 3rd Edition Just Published!
http://www.cafeconleche.org/books/xian3/
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0596007647/cafeaulaitA/ref=nosim




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