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Tim Kelly wrote:


Maybe there is a different model on the east side of the Atlantic, but here in North America the emphasis is on "recurring revenue," which is based on forcing clients into constant upgrade cycles.  In fact, if you can't pitch a constant upgrade cycle you will be assumed to be incompetent.  Just try to convince a manager they won't need to keep adding virus definitions with an operating system and you'll see what I mean.
ah, so you're working at such a company ... well, suggest your MBA's not to use open source, not to depend to much on user forums, to choose commercial programs with 5-10 year live cycles so that they can tell customers that changes in their products are also a result of third party changes); also let then quit and switch companies after a few years so that their successors can blame them for the wrong decisions, and most important: let them use tools with bugs as well as introduce bugs and shortcoming in their products so that these have a built in "recurring revenue" factor
anyhow, all these things depend on the relationship with customers ... in our projects i'm always under the impression that we need to solve the problem once and forever (apart from changes in usage specs), actually i'd get pretty depressed if i had to work on the same problem again and again just for the sake of 'recurring revenue' and i'm pretty sure that the lua authors are not in the process of reinventing lua again and again (for instance by introducing features that will become obsolete in 5 years or so); this is what academics is about ... changes driven by new insights and such, not by revenue etc etc (well, maybe if your company donates 500K$ to the team that they will write a fake roadmap for your MBA). 


Hans

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