XOM API for Processing XML with Java

[Elliotte Harold <elharo AT metalab.unc.edu>]

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