2 Year of free software. hit (ok) or miss (no ok)?

netsistemas

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Erel, after 2 years, do you regret having released and offering your product for free?
Do you think your decision was correct or do you prefer not to comment?
 

AnandGupta

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Erel has right to say here, but allow me to put my 2 cents.

The decision was correct as more and more new programmers are trying B4X and liking it (as per many thread message I have read).
Being both B4J and B4A free; is allowing us to create great products of server-clients as many expert members have shown here.

B4X is spreading faster now.
 

netsistemas

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The question is whether it has compensated you financially.
It know than that there are things more important than money, but only those things have value, when you already have money.

(If the moderator thinks that this thread is not appropriate here, he can delete it. I will understand)
 

AnandGupta

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Erel said:
It is more or less impossible to become more popular without a free tool.
Click to expand...
This what I emphasized as now more new programmers are using B4X. Price was the ice breaker between AS and B4A.
 
D

dw_b4x

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I wish I had time to jump in and start is the B4X platform. I still have a couple of projects I have to get off my plate.
I must compliment Erel on all the work he had dedicated to this project. I have been in the industry since the 80s and am impressed with the project being able to use the same code base on all the platforms is the biggest benefit of this platform. It amazes me how many sdks exists for web,mobile. It seem like an never ending treadmill of learning new languages to 'get the job done'
A heartfelt 'THANKS' goes to Erel and his team (and his family) I know the hours and late nights involved in keeping things going.
 

ilan

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in my opinion, the people who are working with b4x or tried it will not change it to a different tool because b4x cost a few $. most people here earn back the license fee in a few weeks or months and make much much more. if the whole idea was to get new users then the free trial version is good enough for that.

if the fact that b4a is now for free will affect the evolution of it i would prefer to pay again for the license.
 

ilan

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i have not seen a significant increase in new users since b4a went free.
besides that why does erel need to get popular? 10k-15k users that upgrade their license every year is about 500k-750k $ per year if b4a will cost 50$.
this is about 50k $ per month. not bad from only 1 framework.
 

LucaMs

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I am quite certain that Erel knows how to do his own accounts
 

hatzisn

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I will say what the "pringles" advertisment used to say. After pop there is no stop. Once you realize what you can do with B4X framework and given the fact that you want to make money from it you will definetely buy B4i to reach an other 18% of mobile devices in the market. Together with Android devices (rating 80% - 2020's data) you reach a good 98% of the mobile devices. Access to more people is translated definitely to more money with ads or in-app purchases in your app. There is always something you win and something you lose but if the net outcome is positive you have succeeded. I bet that it is positive with the worth you get and when the developer realizes that as well as the fact that you can migrate your code easily he definitely desires to go for the 98% of the mobile devices and the 100% of the pc OSs.
 

Magma

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Well, Erel's decision - it is a personal "decision" that changes the rules of this "market"... The most important is: the users must understand the value of this product-service and not just give credits to Erel but donating him for every success they had... big or small.

Plus.. in this market you must select from two ways: Free & Open Source, Paid & "Closed" Source.... and as I can see all big companies go with first... Microsoft too...

From my view,

- I can understand Erel's decision... when you have a business and get payments for a service/product annually ... you have to support it for every simple-idiot(sorry for that) question (like my questions heh..).
- When you have an open/free product every member/user must engage in.. if they want support will ask the forum/community.
- When you asking for 50$ / year for a product-service... first year you will have 1000 members... 2nd 500 members... 3rd 250... why? because economical reasons some users will do their job with older versions... have in mind that some here (like me) still using VB6.
 

Magma

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@Erel Not 100% --- but i think you had a lot of complaints + because some people when paying 50$ they think that are buying and the people creating the product... :-(
 

ilan

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the real question, in the end, is what motivates Erel to keep updating and maintain b4x. i am sure that it is not one of his Hobbies.
your post only looks at it from the customer's view but we also need to look at it from the creator view.

i think that you cannot compare it to other products that are free like most IDE's out there. because b4x is different. if erel would have created eclipse 2 i would understand why it should be free but b4x is a coding language it does not have competitors. most people here use b4x because they don't know JAVA/objectiveC or they don't want to learn it and also because the process of using the native language is much more complicated than in b4x.

your formula:

Magma said:
When you asking for 50$ / year for a product-service... first year you will have 1000 members... 2nd 500 members... 3rd 250... why?
Click to expand...
has nothing to do with the reality and the best proof for it is that everything started with b4a (after basic4ppc) and most users of b4x.com came because of b4a. before b4a became free b4x.com had more than 100k members. so you can see the increase of new users even if b4a was not free.

so it is up to Erel. in my opinion, i have no problem paying 50$ / year. i make much more than that from b4x as long as Erel is motivated to keep b4a up to date i am willing to pay for it and support him.
 

Magma

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but what about this:

Magma said:
Plus.. in this market you must select from two ways: Free & Open Source, Paid & "Closed" Source.... and as I can see all big companies go with first... Microsoft too...
Click to expand...

Visual Studio is free

.....
Well I hope not having a Trojan Horse inside and he want to control us or crypto mining using our CPU/GPU (This is a joke)
 
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