This is just an idea, but just wanted to "bounce" this off my customers to see what you think about it.
What would you think of EZGUI becoming a FREE product ?
Not open source though. One could register to get EZGUI for FREE and use it for FREE.
There would still be a software license and it would still be a proprietary product (not open source, since I think that would ruin it).
Support would be via the online forums. I would do my best to answer questions, but of course with it as free I would have limits of how much I can do on the forums. It would have to assisted via the peer to peer forum. I am planning of trying to get some of the lost data (when I upgraded the forum software) back into the forum as a resource as well, but that will take some time.
"Extended" support though could be purchased (for a very reasonable fee) so one could get more extensive support. Any customers who purchased EZGUI already would continue to get priority for support as I have done in the past.
What good would this accomplish ?
Two things are needed for EZGUI to have a better future:
(1) It needs to support programming languages other than Powerbasic
(2) It needs to eventually become 64 bit as well
I can't do this with the limited current customer base. Powerbasic (as a company) while still viable, does not yield the regular new potential customers it did in the past. Also in Powerbasics last few better years (when Bob Zale) was still alive, I had to compete with other third party products (which most have moved on now though) which made it a greater challenge to keep the new customer base increasing.
Lastly, 32 bit still has a few good years left to it, but eventually 64 bit may make 32 bit totally obsolete. While 32 bit still is viable and has a market, now would be the best time to change my marketing model.
My goals:
(1) Port EZGUI (mostly make modifications) so it is more friendly to other programming languages such as FreeBasic, PureBasic and expecially C.
C is important and could be a great market for EZGUI. There are actually many C programmers out there who shy away from C++ and also from dot.net. C still can produce amazingly fast and tiny apps. But the programming mainstream has moved to dot.net mostly for GUI stuff so C is a second class citizen in the GUI world.
EZGUI could be a boon for C programmers, as well as for those who use other dialecs of Basic.
I am also not averse to licensing the actual source code to EZGUI for larger companies, so far I have only done this for one company at the moment, but it could be part of the extended support. Licensing the source code is not cheap though and is best suited for large companies where it makes sense. The current price for licensing the source code is in the $5000 range.
So what do you think of this possible new model for EZGUI ?
What would be a reasonable price for extended support say for a yearly price ?
For those who can't afford much, especially for the hobby programmer market, it is still a deal since EZGUI would be free up front and one could still get decent support via the forums for free.
