> If we had an annuity, like an OS or mainstream productivity
> applications, that would consistently support our dev-tool efforts we
> would not have to be as nearly "self-supporting."
If SA turned into a *real* maintenace program and support cycles get longer than six months, backporting important fixes to older releases that often need to be still in use, we would be happy to buy it and give you an "annuity". For example we pay for the Oracle OPN, but at least for all its duration we see real advantages that we didn't see when we bough SA. They don't support actively the latest release only.
Today SA is just a bet, and can hurt "early upgraders" because in the end all you get is the newer release, and if you get SA too early the next release can be rolled out when SA is expired and needs renewing - and at that point "cherry-picking" upgrades may become more economical.
Also promoting other Embarcadero applications like Interbase would be smart - right now not allowing the Pro sku to connect to remote IB servers just help cutting IB sales telling developers that is better to go to SQL Server and ADO, or use alternative libraries and use MySQL or Postgres.
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