I was reading an article on News.com about the declining costs of development tools when I came across this quote from Adobe's Jeff Whatcott:
“In another example, Adobe Systems on Wednesday is expected to revamp the pricing for its Flex Flash development tools.
The first version of its Flex tool set was about $15,000, but the price was throttling its adoption, said Jeff Whatcott, senior director of product marketing at Adobe's enterprise and developer business unit.
“The goal is to get to a million developers building rich Internet applications,” said Whatcott. “To do that, you need a good product line. But you also need a licensing model that supports viral, development-to-development marketing. That doesn't happen with a $15,000 product.”
Having had a chance to try it out in the early v1.5 days, I think Flex is absolutely awesome but I've always felt that MM priced themselves out of the market. This was definitely not a product for the typical small to medium size dotcom or brick-and-mortar business. This was a product specifically focused on the enterprise market and unless you consulted at that level, there was no need to even bother trying to sell this to your clients. Additionally, a plan for hosting providers was never clearly defined which essentially placed the nail in the coffin for the average web developer to use Flex.
Hopefully, Jeff can motivate Adobe to put it within a price range that makes selling solutions to smaller companies a true viable option. Otherwise, guys such as myself will stick to learning and using AJAX for RIA implementations.
Good work Jeff and I look forward to seeing the results!
