Sounds like Geoff should pitch Xojo to them as an acquisition
Seems they have the $ and expertise to run the business well
24 hours later, 4d has announced that they are jacking up prices substantially.
livecode is jacking up their prices by a bunch, and now 4d is, too. i wonder if there is price action that is breaking loose in the industry.
Ugh. FileMaker jacked up prices years ago as well.
Making me glad to be using nginx/php…
the price list is crazy !
10 user client server is 7K per year ?
Oh you want a text control ?
Thats an extra 2800
wow !!!
I think it’s because there’s plenty of free dev tools, so their market is shrinking and therefore they’re trying to make up for it by charging those that need it.
so many misconceptions to clear up, here.
and to be clear, the prices are (suddenly) much higher, BUT, as long as we’re discussing, let’s make sure the facts are straight:
- those are not per year costs, those are new install costs.
- the ten user price that you listed is for concurrent users of the application server. the application server is for desktop apps (or mobe/web clients that use 4D’s REST server, instead of just rolling your own - a stupid-simple task that took me a mere 400 lines of code over a weekend).
- if all of your clients are using web/web socket connections, your app has zero users against your license. instead, you pay for 2 users, and the unlimited web application server. example: i have 15 users in my plant running one of my apps on mobes (with MY REST server). there are zero licenses used. two of my customers are running the same app, in separate instances. they are using zero licenses, and i do not pay for the extra instances.
- the next column, “maintenance”, is what you would pay, per year, assuming that you want…maintenance.
- you pay if you choose to move to a new major version of the product (e.g. 19 to 20). at one point, we went fourteen years without upgrading versions, because i didn’t see any value in any of the intermediate versions.
- write pro is not “a text control”. it is a full word-processor. view pro is a full spreadsheet. years ago, they were a major selling point for 4D to big firms, because it was so easy to integrate the back end database server with word processing docs and spreadsheets. personally, i think the use-cases are outdated, now that we can use REST API’s to connect to google or microsoft services, and get two-way communication, live, from their applications.
- the price you quoted is for a new ten-concurrent user license to write pro or view pro. normally a team would not have everyone on it dabbling in the templates. again, i think the user case is outdated, so i would be surprised if anyone would be interested in new installs of these products, anyway.
it would be strange for a conglomerate holdco to purchase a firm they perceive is dying.
Very possibly true
I know a few 4D developers and such a price hike may kill a lot of projects and some may just quit and retire.
Also I wonder what the exit strategy is for Xojo when the CEO retires.
Xojo apparently has a succession plan
They have never said what those details are and I have my own guess which is purely speculative based on my tenure there