Is CF Builder going to be free of charge?

[lorenzo_jimenez]

Hi there,

I am wondering if CF Builder is going to be free of charge?

Regards,

Lorenzo

[Charlie Arehart]

There have been no discussions yet of the pricing for either CFBuilder or CF 9.

/charlie

[Daniel_Harvey · Accepted solution]

So what I gather from your response is that we can expect to have to pay for the builder.  I just hope that it would be a reasonable price, or that if you buy the coldfusion 9 enterprise so many liscenses would come with it as even Adobe states that one of the main features of 9 is the builder.  It wouldn't make much sense to upgrade if you are not going to be using the builder.  I am sure there are some changes that would be usefull for some.  But in general I don't believe coldfusion 9 is going to make a difference to most users

[lorenzo_jimenez]

Thanks both for the answers.

I hope CF Builder will be low cost, because there are many options out there free of charge.

I know, I know, the development and all the associated costs, but think it for a way to promote all great Adobe products!

Regards,

Lorenzo

[Charlie Arehart]

A message today in another thread points to this one, which I'd not read in a while. Since I was one of the first to reply to the question on pricing, as I review some of the other comments (which I just had not kept up on since my reply a few weeks ago), I felt I should step in with a clarification.

It seems some folks may think I work for or am representing Adobe, when I said "there have been no discussions" of price. I don't work for Adobe, and I meant simply that there have been no *public* discussions.

What concerns me is that I see now that Daniel said (in the next note), "So what I gather from your response is that we can expect to have to pay for the builder." Well, no, I didn't mean that at all. 🙂

More dismaying, though, is that I see gms46 said just a couple notes later, "Really, you guys built a product without talking about pricing.... interesting." No, I'm not one of the "you guys". 🙂

(Now, I've always lamented that these forums don't have any sort of threaded view, so we can't know exactly who s/he was replying to, but I see no other message that preced that would suggest he was replying to anything except my note.)

So again, I do not work for Adobe. I'm just another CF developer, and I was simply answering the question asked: there had not (and as far as I know still have not yet) been any public discussions of pricing for us.

[Daniel_Harvey]

I would like to say my first comment in the post was a very uninformed response.  I would like to thank you Charlie for clearing that up to everyone that didn't know.  I didn't mean to make it sound like you were working for adobe.

[gms46]

Thanks for the clarifcation Charlie   I saw  "Discussion" in discussion in general which includes both public / private and not as "Public Discussion" which i think should have been used.    Hence the snark about not having a pricing plan. Since i am 99% certain that internaly there has been a plentty of discussions internally regarding the pricing and the product ecosystem

Anyhow hopefully this discussion can be still influnced by the community, i really do feel strongly charging  for both  the CF Server and IDE would destroy a lot of the benfits a dedicated IDE  would bring to community and slow the rate of adaption.

[Charlie Arehart]

Thanks, Daniel.

And to gms46, I have to say I'm confused. If you were "99% certain that internally there has been a plenty of discussions internally regarding the pricing", as I think most would assume also, then I wonder why you think I "should have" thought to clarify in my first note that I was referring to "public" discussions. But let's just let it go. No offense intended.

BTW, if anyone has a screen name like that where they may like to show their real name instead, you can do that (while logged in, of course) from the your stuff menu item (shown when logged in) and choosing its "profile" option, then the "edit forums profile" link shown on the next page. There you can choose to specify and show (or hide) your name. (Curiously, I don't see any way to change your name or screenname on that page, and while the "edit adobe profile" page does let you change them, I changed mine and didn't see it reflected on this forum profile page, even after a forced refresh.)

If you prefer to remain anonymous, gms46, no problem. Just trying to help anyone else who may have missed this.

/charlie

[gms46]

Really you guys built a product without talking about pricing.... intresting .  I hope when the discussion comes its decided that its should be free of charge to those who have CF server licenses.  I hate to bring up the .NET debate but in that business model you don't pay for the server but you do pay for VS, which is an excellent IDE.  Thats fine because the productivity gain i get from that purchase is greater than the cost even on the short run. Also the FLEX SDK is free but FlexBuilder costs money.  This is fine as  business model.

What i am saying is if Adobe sells something were both the server and the IDE cost money, the barrier of entry would be to high for companies trying to adopt coldFusion hence the available number of developers would drop furthering the cycle on and on.

[Daniel_Harvey]

I don't know if I can neccesarily agree with you on to expensive to adopt coldfusion.  There are some free plugins for IDEs that can be used if they do charge for it.  Several companies who are using CF have their developers use Dreamweaver or Homesite.  I know those are options I have where I am at and have even had licenses for the purchased for my use.  Personally I am fond of the Netbeans IDE from past experience  but have not been able to find a CF plugin for it.  But there is already the plugin for eclipse that has been around for awhile.

Though I do agree that they should offer it free.  It would be a marketing tool for them if they packaged it with CF. and even had it built into the installer for when installing a dev server. or standalone on that same disk.

Also the idea that they took an already free product and just tailoring it to be an environment for CF should also be an incentive for them to keep it free.

[CFMLGuru]

Lorenzo,

I like the idea of having a free IDE, but what I really want is an IDE that will be updated on a regular basis and that we can have input towards future enhancments.  I think that a minimal cost for a CFBuilder is appropriate, but in order to truly make it affordable, I think that it should have a pricing model that takes owning the server into account. For example:

If you own CF9: (5 license pack for $500)

If you own DW CS 3/4: (upgrade for $149/ea.)

Otherwise: ($249)

Those are my thoughts.  What do you think?

Sincerely,

Braden Lake

[gms46]

Thas good approach but i still don't know.  If i place my self in the postion of an run of a mill IT Manager its still a hard sell to say yes, lets buy CF then lets go buy CFBuilder on top of that.  Having a worldclass IDE is in the best interest of the Adobe since it will drive adoption and more shops developing for CF means more CF server sales.  I think CFbuilder should treated as part of package, so if i buy a CF server all the devs can use CFBuilder.  If i rember correctly buying SQL server allows me the use of Sql Server Enterpise Manager and VS for createing SSIS packages. i don't have to go buy an additional tool or be stuck with using CMD and oSQL untill the budget is approved for enterprise manager. The community has hard enough time arguing CF vs XYZ especially .NET.  Either sell the IDE or sell the server but trying to do both will be mistake. IMO that is

[lorenzo_jimenez]

Hi Branden. My second languaje is english, so please excuse any grammar errors.

My opinion is that Adobe must have to give away for free an IDE that supports all Adobe tecnologies. Is the only way that a good portion of developers can and will sit down to work with them.  An debugger is also critical.

For me the key for adopting a tecnology, is the facilities that are given to programmers so they can feel confortable and productive. Sometimes there are many obstacules in the way that get people dejected, and went to try other tecnologies.

Adobe must have to take in consideration that there are many good free products out there. For instance Eclipse and Netbeans have helped the adoption of Java, and that is why the predominance of Java in the market place. What happens if Microsoft chooses to give away, at least, the standard version of their Visual Studio, no string attaches?

Finally, Adobe much also have to considerate the world economic situation and the first place to shrink the budget is the TI deparment.

Regards,

Lorenzo

[webmandman]

"The best things in life are free" - some blonde said that, right?