OpenEdge Development Costs (that old chestnut)

Dave Walker

New Member
Hi Progress Talkers,

I'm currently running a small experiment which builds an invoice application with both OpenEdge, and the same application with the PHP Framework, Laravel.

I'm then going to report the total costs involved, and pros and cons of both development cycles.

One thing I'm finding hard to figure out with just Google is an actual development license cost for a single developer, for v11.*.

Does such a price list exist or do I have to get in touch with Progress themselves.
 

tamhas

ProgressTalk.com Sponsor
And, unadvertised, but there for the asking, individual consultants can get a 70% discount on PSDN SDK.
 

GregTomkins

Active Member
Well, a lot of people would disagree with you (basically anyone under 30, and I say that as someone way on the wrong side of 30 myself), but more to the point, they're robbing themselves by making it so difficult to find these things out. Nobody knows who Progress is, and nobody cares, and this sort of thing is why. It's really unfortunate when they have so many things going for them.
 

tamhas

ProgressTalk.com Sponsor
I believe that there are some discussions going on about possibly moving to a lower cost or free model, but, of course, no promises. Myself, it has always seemed to me to be a false comparison. Progress is just not a mass market product and no amount of free software is going to make that so. Subsets like Telerik, maybe, but those can have their own program. So, who is going to use this free development software? Well, people like me, of course, but anyone who is using this as the basis for doing consulting is going to pay for the year's software in one day, unless one is renting oneself out cheaper than one should. The one group who I can see really benefiting from a free developer license is the person working in a behind-the-times shop who wanted to update his or her skills at home prior to looking for a new job.
 

Cringer

ProgressTalk.com Moderator
Staff member
I'd use a free single user install a lot. For example my wife is self-employed and uses excel for her client and job management. I could knock together a killer app using Progress in a few hours for her that would do so much more than she currently does. I could also put together a section to help her with her tax returns and so on. It would save her a load of grief. As it is I'm having to poke around with MySQL and other evils! TBH it'll never get done because I don't have the time to learn the system.
 

tamhas

ProgressTalk.com Sponsor
Moreover, if you did do it without buying a run time license, you would be in violation of your developer's license, even if you had paid for the SDK.
 

TomBascom

Curmudgeon
I can see the attraction.

But... "single user" would be a bad limitation.

I would hope that the appeal of a free product (if such a thing ever happens) is to get it into developers hands. To do that without also giving them multi-user capabilities would be a big mistake.

A huge part of the value of the 4gl and db combination is the pleasure of being able to readily build solid multi-user applications.

Maybe free (or very inexpensive) deployment of single user apps? Combined with some sensible db size & multiuser startup limits on the db would work?
 

Chris Kelleher

Administrator
Staff member
It would be wonderful if you could order a PSDN subscription online. It seems like the commission on these must be so minimal that most sales reps don't want to take the time to deal with them.
 

Chris Hughes

ProgressTalk.com Sponsor
I'm surprised nobody has mentioned or considered the education sector give students the technology free of charge and a new army of developers is born.

Having seen MS SQL Express and Oracle Express in use for years now Progress does seem to be somewhat behind their perceived competitors.
 

tamhas

ProgressTalk.com Sponsor
Give it away to students and one is likely to get few who will even take it. It isn't cool. It isn't in demand. Short sighted, of course, with the perennial lack of experienced ABL programmers, but I would be surprised at many taking the offer.
 

Chris Hughes

ProgressTalk.com Sponsor
Exactly my point though, students sat in coffee shops doing stuff would make it cool.
If I were Progress I'd employee somebody to go to universities / colleges and demo the latest stuff.

One of the biggest problems I find here in the UK is that people that have heard of Progress remember it for older character based systems they come across years ago.

Now demo mobile development, Pacific etc chucking in Tomcat / Java and the rest of the well known names included in the open source side of the product and maybe little snowballs begin to roll......
 

tamhas

ProgressTalk.com Sponsor
They might happily play with Telerik, but no one will ask for the ABL piece. 4GLs are out of favor. To get them interested in ABL would require making ABL sexy and the only way I can see to do that would be to put a front end on a MBD of ABL, which doesn't seem likely to happen any time soon.
 
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