Nantpad: The Good and the Bad of it
Good: Nantpad version 1.0 is out.
Good: Nantpad gives you a friendly way to author and run NAnt build files.
Bad: They have GOT to be kidding with the pricing. $250 a seat for an editor to an open source tool? Come on, guys, NAnt is NOT that hard to edit. $25, no brainer. $50 gives me pause. $250 must be a joke. God bless you for trying. Now try again.
For now, I'll continue to use intellisense and VS.NET to edit build files as outlined in a previous post, using either this older schema or one from http://nant.sourceforge.net/schema/ whenever the 0.85 schema gets updated.
About Scott
Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.
About Newsletter
Darrell
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnsoftware/html/software08052004.asp
"Charge as much as you can get" (not an actual quote, just my summary)
(The entire article is worth reading.)
Figure things like ReSharper go for $99, CodeSmith for $75 or LLBLGen Pro for less than $250--they're clearly just out of touch or not extremely bright.
Let's help them out and post what we think would be reasonable for them to charge. I wouldn't pay more than $25 personally, I have good editing capabilities for xml and it's just not going to save me that much time.
Gotta make a million before msbuild comes out
It's rather audacious to try to sell something which is an add-on for an open source technology anyway. The vast majority of people who use NAnt are simply not willing to pay a dime for this tool. Many of the ones who *are* willing to pay are probably not all that price-sensitive.
In some sense, these guys have made a conscious choice to go with a "high-price-low-volume" approach. I generally prefer the higher volume strategies, but premium pricing is not as crazy as you might think.
The interesting point for me is that they are selling only through a reseller. I'm sure Component Source is getting 40 points, so the ISV is only going to net 150. They probably set the price high to accomodate these channel costs.
Bottom line: I'm not saying I like their choice, but I think it's conceivable that it could work out okay for them.
Thank you very much.
I read Erik Sink's article. The piece on price complaints was funny :) It's true. No matter what price you use including paying someone to use your product, there are always people who will complain.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnsoftware/html/software08052004.asp
Comments are closed.