Unfortunately, I was not able to find any sign of the prices on the Cincom
smalltalk site. Does anyody know at least a ball park ranges or examples of
pricing for "Corporate end user license" and  "corporate server license" ?
Is it a 10 bucks a seat or 10.000?  is it a 100 bucks a server or 100.000?

I don't know about corporate end user pricing.  Just email James
Robertson or give them a call.  They are nice.

And the one person company (maybe a student) that want to make a simple
application for a friend, giving him like $1000 for the whole thing or
alike, probably choose Python or Ruby when he hears that the whole
profit will go to Cincom (+ an additional 6% of the friends certainly
uncertain revenue).

"The cheapest commercial license you can get now is a Small dev,
limited to one end user (i.e, you)

That costs $200 per year, and includes support and new releases as
long as you stay current

There's also a $700 license that allows deployment to 5 end users

So still please, if someone can provide examples on pricing for the types of
license I have asked for, I would be very gratefull. (you can also email me
with details).

I do not work for Cincom but I am a customer.

The one person company can use a Non-commercial license until it makes
sense for him to "go commercial". If you are making money is 6% really
that much? That is less than NYC sales tax. If you sell something for
$100.00 is giving Cincom six lousy bucks that much of a deal? Six
dollars for hands down the best enterprise development platform in the
planet?

I don't work for Cincom but I am a customer.

1) Posting Prices.  Cincom, as a corporate entity, doesn't do that for
any product.  The company has been in business since 1968, and has been
continuously profitable over that period.  There are aspects of
corporate culture that can be changed, and others that are hard to
change.  This policy falls into the latter bucket

2) "Fairness" of pricing.  Well - the bottom line is, if we did what
people wanted, and gave the product away - the version you got for free
would be the last version you ever saw.  The engineering group isn't
free, and the only way to pay them is to charge for the product.

3) Following from (2) come questions about the way we price.  Simply
put, the model people say they want - one time developer licenses,
followed by unlimited use - has been tried.  You'll note that ParcPlace
(and descendents) went broke using that model.  You'll also note that
Borland has been driven pretty close to bankruptcy on that model.  The
sad fact is, that model just doesn't work.  Using it leads to either

-- tiny engineering groups who's job is to simply maintain the product
-- death of the product and/or the company selling that way

4) Following from (3), I get asked "well, what about open sourcing and
charging for support"?  I'll point out that RedHat ran away from that
model, and that the largest OSS vendor using it - JBoss - has yet to
turn a profit (they are, in fact, deeply in the red).  As with (3),
this model doesn't work.

Stating here that their pricing presentation is broken won't fix this
for you....

Rephrased in an (overly) confronting way: are you serious?

I prefer not to talk to the sales until there is a reasonable chance that I
will actually buy. I might be preparing a bid, I might be preparing
proposition for the management, I might be developing an idea and trying to
find out if it makes sense or not, I could be doing several other things,
where knowing a ball park figures is essential, but talking with sales is
step too much, and often causes completely unnecessary preassure and
exposure from sales.

Second reason is that when prices are not transparent, one gets into the
situation very similar to buying leather jacket on Istambul Bazar. Any bit
of information you can have before you engage in conversation with the
eloquent gentleman can help to reduce your missery at least a bit.

Do I have application where I think VW might be suitable or even maybe
needed? Yes.

Do I prefer to talk to their sales completely unprepared and clueless? No.

Will I actually buy something? Depends on many things, price beeing
important one.

So if you have some information that you are willing to share, I will be
truely thankfull to hear it. And I will contact sales (or maybe allready
have, or never will) when I feel ready for that, and when I choose so.

Send me an email at jaro...@gmail.com

What surprised me is that the company does not find depending on the
up-front cost of the machine a sustainable business model and instead
arranges that about 60% of its revenue comes from services, specifically
maintaining and upgrading the machine over its life, plus training and
mentoring in using the machine (which can include learning Smalltalk and
ControlWORKS programming).

When I bought a new car last year I talked to one of the senior sales
staff at the dealer in San Francisco.  They said that the dealership
makes essentially zero dollars on the sale of the car since new car
prices are quite competitive.  I believe him in my case because we
bought a year's end model with a $4,000 discount.  Instead the
dealership makes its money through servicing, both in revenue from the
car owner and in subsidies from the car manufacturer.  Apparently the
dealership receives moneys from the manufacturer in an ammount dependent
on the dealership's customer satisfaction rating.  The net result is
that when my son twisted off the rear-view mirror of the car while I was
vacuuming it and he was getting bored, the dealership fixed the mirror
under guarantee since we'd naturally rate them highly for doing so.

When Cincom bought me a new 64-bit laptop a few years back it came
loaded with the most obnoxious feature I've ever seen.  When a search
(e.g. for files) in the WinXP finder failed I was presented by a series
of alternative searches more likely to succeed.  Except that these
searches were for things like vacations, new cars, etc.  i.e. my new
laptop is a medium for advertizing.  I saw a web page related to this
that was aimed at people marketing through the laptop.  Essentially
computers are now sold at or near cost and revenue accrues through
services (support) and response to advertizing (including portal
memberships like AOL).