Lotus wants to give software away for free
by Volker Weber
"IBM is delivering on its commitment to free businesses and consumers from having to pay licensing fees over and over just to access their own personal or company information," said Kevin Cavanaugh, VP of Lotus Software.
You may want to keep this quote for your next negotiations about Lotus license payments. Why would you want to pay licensing fees over and over just to access your mailboxes, your calendars, or any other company information.
Comments
Hmm, I guess the fact that nobody comments means that everybody is already in discussion with his IBM sales rep :)...
Or afraid too....
Nobody is commenting, because the quote is taken out of context.
@Andy: which context? IBM plays its Liberate game and targets productivity software. But I agree with Volker when it comes to even more low level services as email and calendaring. What about their costs? The quote also perfectly targets those scenarios. This is only marketing blah....
@Ingo
The context of Symphony/office productivity apps. There's certainly no context here for a discussion of license free mail & cal.
Fun to talk about but unlikely from IBM or MSFT in terms of their core messaging products.
"This is only marketing blah" ... said the guy from Microsoft. Good thing Microsoft doesn't use marketing blah but only substantiated facts.
Well, there may be other free messaging solutions out there, that " free businesses and consumers from having to pay licensing fees over and over". Maybe not what IBM is intending, but nevertheless intriguing.
I never said, that Microsoft does not do "marketing blah". But I comment here as a private person.
And apart from that I do not like Symphony :). It reminds me of a saying that I kept in mind as a software architect: dying in beauty.
Um, do you need to pay license fees "over and over" to work with Notes/Domino?
If I recall, you can just pay once, and you get to use the product. You just won't get support if you don't renew. And if you really want to stretch the commodity aspect go all-browser, zero Notes clients.
You don't get support without paying extra. What you don't get is upgrades. You can use the origianl version as long as you want. Same as with MS Office.
