From another message, but decided to keep it in my own thread...



Now this is really weird. He bought a product, which seems to still contain bugs, or in other words, is defective, yet you want to charge him money to fix it ?? Is that legal ?

This is definitely something you should fix in the licensing/upgrading policy...

Michel

No no no,
bugs are fixed and fixed version are provided in form of updates and service packs. See customer patches page on the site
http://www.nusphere.com/cgi-bin/nsp.cgi/custsrvc/utils/customer_patches.htm

All customers may download and install fixed versions for free.

I am glad that you are clearing things up.

I had no other previous experience with your products, and seeing the smileys actually shocked me more than telling me that this was a joke from your side. I regarded this the way that you didn't take it seriously.

Also I was lead to believe that the problems that the user experienced were not solved unless he paid for a new release. Even though this matter wasn't discussed properly I really felt that Msiepies deserved a more respectful reply.

I see that you are also delivering service-packs and hot-fixes. Didn't know that until you showed me the link though. I am fairly new to your site and crawling it hasn't been my priority over the past 24 hours. But, good to see that you are in fact delivering fixes. That wasn't the impression I had from the previous posts in the thread.

The coke can example was open ended, but I can see that you got it right. Yes, it was related to software in NuSpheres case, but it could have been related to any trade-item, really. The point was that commitment to the customers in terms of promisess made and promises kept. Customers suffering from reduced functionality compared to what they were promised should obviously be handled "with care". One should be able to buy a license for a product and expect the features promised, without having to pay $25000 for it. That's what triggered me. The statement lead me to believe that you weren't willing to help out fixing broken promises, unless the customers paid more money, and then used the car example to justify the claim. The smiley - for me - just added to disrespect for the customers (and evaluators - probably also known as prospects).

I am sorry if the response I gave was out of proportions. I see that you are indee offering service packs and hotfixes, good. But I also guess that you are still charging by minor releases.

Regards,
Ronny Hanssen

Hi Ronny,

Glad to see you changed your mind.


Yep, we charge each new release. Actually, we often change minor version and does not change the major one... It has absolutely no relation to number of features added/changed as it might be expected.
If you compare 3.2 with 3.3 (or 3.1 with 3.2) you will find them very different.

Hello everyone,

without taking into respect every detail in this thread (and I admit I haven't read it in carefully enough to do that), let me say the following:

We're (commerically) developing web applications based on PHP since the release of PHP3 back in 1997. We've been trying a lot of different software and editors and were glad to have found PHPEd last year after evaluating several competitive products carefully.

PHPEd provides a comfortable, extensible and thought-out development environment. Its debugger support and seamless CVS and database integration make it an invaluable tool for demanding projects and our quality requirements.

Think about it carefully - the features you get and your developers' productivity boots clearly offset the license costs. Maybe it seems to be too expensive for private/home use, but for commercial purposes, it's not. Please compare the price tag to other packages you probably own - MS Office, Visual Studio, Dreamweaver/Studio MX, Homesite. You'll see that its not that expensive at all.

As to features, upgrades, licensing policy: We've got five licenses for our developers and haven't had any problems yet concerning product upgrades, bugfixes or support.

I have never before got the support and responsiveness Nusphere provides from any other software company, not even from those we're paying for "support contracts".

Even more: before purchasing the IDE, we evaluated it and had more than a dozen feature requests, bugs or problems. Apart from one or two minor features, ALL (!) of them have been resolved, explained or implemented within one or two weeks and made it into the 3.3 release.

No piece of software is error-free, but we're continuously receiving patches, hotfixes or other kinds of help to resolve any problems we're reporting.

I don't know what set off this discussion, but give PHPEd a sporting chance and evaluate it carefully. You'll find it worth the price. Dmitri is doing a great job developing the product and caring for its community.

mp

I'm pretty sure all regulars on this forum have the same experience. What non-regulars won't see is the amount of e-mail traffic that goes on behind the curtains, once Dmitri gets in direct contact with customers. I've exchanged at least 50 mails with him. All of them proved to be extremely usefull, and were directed at solving issues I discovered both while evaluating as once I was a customer.

To tell it straight: I evaluated 3.1 'for fun', I was not convinced that I would ever even want to get a payed version of PHPEd, because the old freeware version of the editor would do whatever I use it for. But seeing how Dmitri gets involved made me change my mind. People that put that much effort into improving their product deserve all our support. And as long as Nusphere does not make a net profit of $4 billion on a $20 billion turnover, we should not complain their products are overpriced, or should we, Mr. Gates?!

I too do not know ANY company that provides the kind of service that Dmitri and Nusphere does. I run a small software develloping studio myself, and I'd wish I would be able to give that much service to my customers!

And believe me, I'm trying to!