Title says it all. I’d be happy with greater velocity and certainty around roadmap items.
Any supporters ?
you can already pay more for a Pro+ license
some do
its a lot more than $150 bump
and there are other options like literally paying for a new feature or specific bug fix
Depending on the feature I’d pay extra for it - especially if it came in a timely manner.
I would say that’s impossible. It’s like to offer a surgery to put 2 extra legs on Greg in hope he walks faster to deliver the Web 2.0. While even the API2 is still maturing and Xojo is full of bugs being worked out.
Most bugs I can create some workaround or live with, but there are a few that are complete show stoppers and cause me to cancel an idea or go in a different direction altogether. Some of these bugs seem like they wouldn’t be too hard to fix either (they didn’t exist in previous versions). If there was a way I could speed up the process or at least get some better information on the progress of these issues, I would totally go for it. I already spend a great deal on Xojo Pro to get more voting power and find beta bugs before they make it to release.
Interesting proposal but thats a precedence Id hate to have set. As much as Xojo costs now (especially for a Pro license) and the fact there is no renewal/loyalty discount should be enough of an incentive for Xojo to try to accelerate the roadmap in order to keep customers happy and renewing their license yearly. Charging more to get it faster is what Internet providers do and it sucks. As @Karen Atkocius and others have said repeatedly, Xojo hasnt added any really useful framework/language features for quite some time other than what is required to keep up with platform changes but yet is still as buggy as ever. I know there are some anticipated updates coming down the pike but as @Norman Palardy has said, dont pay for promises, pay for what you get now.
Interesting that we all tend to focus on the ‘how’ whereas the ‘what’ comes first - ie the principle of being open to paying more to get more in a predictable, (relatively) timely manner.
you can pay for a specific bug fix
its just not $150 
Curious philosophy. What does paying more buy us? More developers to get it faster? Longer working hours to get it faster? At some point you have to stop throwing more resources at the problem and start looking at whether the existing resources are right for the task. There should never be a quid pro quo with quality. it should be expected.
All Im simply saying is that quality and predictability should not come with a higher price tag because no one pays for shoddy work to begin with. Custom features? Sure. I can see paying for that. Upgrading the product? Absolutely. But paying for better quality? No. When you pay for a product you expect to get what is advertised and if there is an issue you expect it to get addressed in a timely manner without having to pay to get it fixed quicker. If you buy a new TV and its defective you dont pay more to get it fixed. You return it and get a non-defective one.
Imagine taking your vehicle in for an oil change and the mechanic informing you that in order to get a non-defective oil filter, or one that filters all of the oil and not just 80% of it, you need to pay a 15% premium.
Xojo already depends on its users to help debug the product and provide useful feedback on problems that should have never made it in to the final product. Thats ok. Most are willing to do so. But I would think that keeping the software stable and competitive would already be at the top of the list. Maybe Im wrong but it makes sense to me.
No one should EVER to pay for a bug fix, or from some point on inserting bugs will be part of the package to be sold to increase the income.
You pay for extras. Something like a plugin to solve something only you have interest, and it must be bug free, for sure.
Once again, focussing on the how. Why try to solve it ? This thread is simply my way of (and maybe others) expression of interest of paying more to get the roadmap quicker and in a more predictable way.
We can conjecture all we want. It is up to Xojo Inc to sort out the how. Having threads like this for a company is gold and testsment to Xojo’s customer base.
Once again we have a requirement and a way to fund it. The mechanism to implement that is up to the company.
[quote=462527:@Stephen Pardoe]Once again, focussing on the how. Why try to solve it ? This thread is simply my way of (and maybe others) expression of interest of paying more to get the roadmap quicker and in a more predictable way.
We can conjecture all we want. It is up to Xojo Inc to sort out the how. Having threads like this for a company is gold and testsment to Xojo’s customer base.
Once again we have a requirement and a way to fund it. The mechanism to implement that is up to the company.[/quote]
OK. Fair enough. I just want to make sure that if Xojo accepts your what that it doesnt become a baseline for fixing bugs. Like @Norman Palardy said, if you want to pay for a specific fix, more power to you but I dont want a bump in all licensing costs just to get what we should have gotten to begin with.
If the only bugs that get addressed in a timely manner are the ones that someone paid extra to fix and the rest are pushed to the back of the queue…where does that leave the rest of us who are facing showstoppers because we arent willing to pay more than what the software costs initially to fix the bugs that affect us? Like I said, its just a bad precedent to set.
It just feels like Xojo is a state of constant beta release.
Stephen… sorry, but that isn’t nor should it be how this type of relationship works. Xojo is a company, they sell a product, they have resources to create, maintain and update that product.
We are customers, we decide if we wish to purchase this product, and do so if and only if we decide that this product is going to help us achieve a set of goals and is a cost effective and viable way to do so.
But we are customers, we are not venture capitalist, it is not our place to raise funds to support this company, beyond paying the set price for the offered product.
To me the issue is the direction the product seems to be taking is counter to the reasons I began using it nearly 13 years ago, and while many of the customers of Xojo have attempted to communicate to them where we think they strayed, and made suggestions to improve the latest offering, This is not “HOW”, but more of “WHAT” and “WHY”…
Xojo needs to find a direction, determine if their priority is to forget long established knowledgable customers and instead pursue clients with a level of programming expertise of a much lower level, or attempt to retain ALL their current customers and at the same time attempt to attract more. HOW they do this is for them to decide, if more capital is required, then it is up to them to decide HOW to raise it. If that means increasing license fees, that is their decision, but they need to balance that between improving the product more quickly or risk losing those same customers that they wish to retain, and not attract those who might find smaller, cheaper alternatives.
Understand all comments. This is good intel for Xojo. Other firms would pay handsomely to have this level of insight.
Re: bug comments - titke of thread was purposefully specific. Roadmap items.
IMHO; this one area where I do think that more man power can help. It appears to me that the current team wear many hats; having at least one person dedicated to a specific task and that task only, could actually improve the delivery time of bug fixes and new features. I’ll leave changing the language to the side as for me personally this only adds hindrance, not help.
I also think that Xojo could utilize the community much more, there’s some great code out there written by us (Xojo users). Xojo could offer us a reward for the things that they need, to incorporate it into their product.
Just my opinion.
[quote=462527:@Stephen Pardoe]We can conjecture all we want. It is up to Xojo Inc to sort out the how. Having threads like this for a company is gold and testsment to Xojo’s customer base.
Once again we have a requirement and a way to fund it. The mechanism to implement that is up to the company.[/quote]
I whole heatedly support your enthusiasm Stephen, but product pricing, as the old saying goes - is based on “what the market can bear”.
Obviously Geoff is an accomplished business person and must know what he needs verses what resources he needs to succeed. I’m sure there are many factors being weighed continuously to keep a ship like Xojo afloat, let alone how to make it move faster.
As a former business owner myself, fiddling with the license costs could unintentionally rock that boat. I’m speaking of myself here only, of course.
On the other hand, if a bump in cash flow would help scrape the barnacles off the boat a little more thoroughly - I wouldn’t be adverse to say, paying $ 400 or 500 for a really nice baseball jacket with the Xojo logo and such.
Some premium Xojo swag (shoulder bags, backpacks, hats, t-shirts, laptop stickers, etc.) could potentially go a long way to funding all sorts of things, plus help to promote the product in general. That’s just a guess of course, but I’d be up for it.
Just my 3? (Canadian exchange, eh).
Exactly. My personal contention is that I can bear more cost - whatever form it takes - to accelerate the roadmap.
Several of us have said that here and on other blogs etc
My last post , which was removed because it was apparently off topic, pointed you to my blog with a post saying pretty much exactly this
I wont try to repost that link for fear THIS post gets deemed to also be off topic because it points you there