It’s useless. Don’t you remember you and I (and others) having this
argument with them over a year ago?
Jutta Steinhoff <> j-steinhoff@web.de> > wrote:
Camz, Armin wanted to say that it’s not possible with official license
agreements. So there must have been a special agreement with QSSL for
the Amiga QSXL !!!
I don’t think so. Have you actually spoken to your sales reps about this?
If you read the license agreements you will actually discover that it
mentions that QNX can not be sold, only licensed. That also means that
it really does not matter if QSS sells your customer the runtime license
or if you do, QSS still provides the warranty on the OS components, not
you. (I seem to recall this being one of your concerns).
The runtime licesnses are not electronic.
They are a certificate or sticker. They are all official licenses
When QSSL makes a special exception for one company it doesn’t mean that
this exception is valid for all other companies, too …
Actually, no, I don’t think this was a special exception. You and Armin
are sounding more and more like you don’t want a solution and only want
to complain about things. I really don’t think QSS is going to refuse to
let you sell a runtime license to someone without selling hardware to them
as well. Please re-read the EULA, it does not say you have to sell
hardware,
it says you can sell just software for someone to run on a legally
licensed
runtime. There is no reason why you can’t provide that runtime as well as
the license for it. I really don’t understand why you can’t do this,
since
being able to do this also supports the sale of your software to
customers,
it seems rediculous that you’d refuse to engage in an activity what would
support and possibly increase your business?
A 3rd Party has to sell his software separately w/o any QNX runtime
license.
No, the license says you can sell your software without a runtime license
provided you don’t distribute any components of the runtime environment
with your software.
When a 3rd Party has bought Momentics he is only allowed to resell
runtimes when they are pre-installed on hardware together with his 3rd
Party software.
Again, I did not see this in the EULA. I did see that you can sell your
software and a runtime environment for a certain target hardware setup,
but there was no requirement to also sell the target hardware. If you
create a runtime environment that is capable of working on multiple target
hardware configurations (much like the dev environment supports), then
that becomes your “target hardware”. If you actually break-down what
the self-hosted install does you will see that the entire boot script
sequence is essentially a custom embedded target. There is no requirement
for a runtime environmnt to execute /etc/config/sysint, and then later
execute /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit and /etc/rc.d/rc.local. In fact, when you
build your own embedded target you typically DON’T run those. (just
so you don’t take this wrong, the point I am making here is that even
the Momentics dev seat install is an example of an embedded target
configuration).
Our customers e.g. who are working in all kind of industrial automation
up to embedded systems are using fieldbus systems with different APIs or
different programming tools with MS based workbenches and QNX Target
systems. They are assembling their hardware themselves according their
requirements. Most of them use standard x86 hardware.
Nothing wrong with that, there is no reason why you can’t create your own
runtime installation CD that installs only the OS components required for
your software and sell it to the customer for the cost of the runtime
plus your own margin.
- In the QNX4 days when the runtimes were delivered on floppy disks it
was possible to resell also runtime licenses when you have sold already
a full QNX development system to the customer … but we had often to
justify to the QNX-Sales why a few customers wanted all out of one hand
and didn’t want to buy their software from various sources!!!
Okay, I am missing something here… You are saying that your customers
want to be able to buy from one source, and yet you have been bitching
that QSS won’t sell them runtimes directly. WTF? Sounds like your
customers want to buy their runtimes from you as well as your software.
QSS has no issue with selling you runtimes, so what the heck is your
actual problem?
With the license certificates instead of software on media it’s
impossible to resell Momentics even when you are doing a full project.
Huh? Why not? You used to hand them a floppy, now you hand them a
piece of paper. What’s the difference? You are still handing them
something.
You can’t sign the contract on behalf of your customer.
There is no contract to sign. They are bound by the QNX EULA, but
you never actually sign that thing. If you really want to just add
a script in your install scripts for the runtime that spits out the
EULA and asks them to agree or refuse it. If they refuse it, you
abort the install, if they agree you proceed. It’s not rocket
science. The fact that there IS NOT an electronic component is a
benefit to you, since it means you don’t have to produce each of your
custom runtime CDs with a unique license key, you don’t put any
keys in it, you just sell them a CD and the runtime license certificate.
It’s pretty simple.
The fundamental reality though is that unlike windows, people don’t
just
go out and buy QNX without some very specific software that they want
to
run on it.
True, because of QNX alone makes no sense >
But the customer will have 2 sources for buying:
- QSSx for buying Momentics and signing the contract
- 3rd Parties for buying needed specific QNX based software
Why would they buy Momentics? That’s a development environment, not
a runtime environment.
You are missing the very simple fact that QSS does not sell to
end-users. They sell to developers (and 3rd parties are
developers). So the model is that end-users buy their runtimes
from the 3rd parties as well as buying their application from
the 3rd party. It’s not that complicated.
We have customers who have already decided for QNX for good reason and
then they are looking for QNX support for their hardware configuration.
It’s nothing special, at least in industrial automation.
No, it’s not… but support for their hardware config is not the same
as support for the OS. QSS doesn’t provide support for hardware configs
at all. So why are you even mentioning it?
Can you imagine what happens when a customer wants to buy DACHSview for
QNX and we have to send him for buying QNX Runtimes to the QNX sales
channel?
Ah, see there’s the problem. You DON’T have to send him to QNX sales,
you can sell him the runtime yourself. I have no idea why you seem to
think you can’t do this?
realtime Targets. It’s currently not possible for a pot. customers to
buy ONLY Runtimes for a x86 Target PC.
You’re being silly again. We already established that a potential
customer wouldn’t buy just a runtime, even you agreed that it makes
no sense for them to do so. Which means there are only two reasons
to buy a QNX runtime: 1) to develop apps on, in which case you buy
Momentics and it comes with a runtime, or 2) to run a 3rd party app,
in which case you are expected to buy a runtime from the 3rd party
as well if you don’t already have one. The only reason you would
already have one is if you had already bought a dev seat or some
other 3rd party software previously.
There are no tools for creating Runtime distributions!
Sure there are. Runtime envirionments are no different than target
environments. There are entire chapters and tutorials on how to
do it.
again, 3rd Parties are only allowed to resell pre-installed runtimes
from a bought Momentics system. In that case, you can give
an_additional_CD to your customer with your software incl. the QNX
runtime!
Go re-read the license agreement, or better yet, talk to a sales rep
about it. I think your issue comes from mis-interpreting the legalese
that the license is written in more than anything else.
The legal license model from QSSL doesn’t allow to build a QNX runtime
and resell it on CD together with a license sticker.
Sure it does. It just stipulates that they will only sell the license
stickers to someone that owns a dev seat, that’s all. That would be
you in this case. Basically, owning a dev seat more or less makes you
a distributor/VAR for QNX runtime licenses.
OTOH, who would be responsible for that burned and sold runtime?
QSSL don’t know what you have burned and can’t give warranty!
Again, GO READ THE BLOODY LICENSE. You don’t actually sell QNX or
the runtime, you sell the license. QSS still provides warranty for
the licensed components, not you.
QNX is very modular, so what’s the problem to offer Runtime Bundles on
CD, too???
The problem is that there is no standard runtime environment. Your
appliation requires a specific configuration (yes, I know that that
configuration on x86 hardware can be quite broad), but “x86 w/BIOS”
is still the specifics of your configuration, it doesn’t matter that
your configuration just happens to include standard PCs.
No problem to buy the hardware, drivers and SoftPLC.
But at the end, buying a QNX Runtime is the knock-out!
…only because you refuse to sell it to them and are insisting that
they purchase it from QSS directly (when QSS expects them to buy it
through you).
Tell a customer who wants a SCADA or SoftPLC for MS that he has to buy a
complete MS development system in order to be allowed to install a MS
Runtime…
Ah, but MS’s sales model includes selling to end-users. QSS’s does not.
MS only supports x86 w/BIOS hardware configurations, and even then, as
I am sure you have encountered, not all hardware configurations are
supported directly from MS. It’s different with QNX, since QNX can run
on the same hardware as MS but it can also run on a lot more hardware
than MS, and most of that other hardware has no such standards as what
exist in the x86 PC world. That makes it virtually impossible for QSS
to have a single runtime that will work for all their possible customers.
The reality is that in order to keep runtimes at reasonable prices, they
can’t actually provide any kind of support for installation of those
runtimes. How many customers would be willing to pay $1200 in support
for a $120 runtime license? If we arbitratily say that one hour of
tech support from QSS is worth $120, I think you can see that it can
easily cost QSS more than 1 hour’s worth of support if a customer has
any issues installing on their target hardware.
Please understand that QSSL is ignoring a growing market segment and is
loosing market shares in industrial automation. May be the embedded
market is enough for them?
You are mistakenly separating industrial automation and embedded. The
reality is that industrial automation is a subset of the embedded market.
PLC controllers, CANbus, Profibus, Fieldbus, and modbus are hardly what
would be considered “consumer” level products. Every IA system IS
an embedded system.
What you want sounds like you would like to be able to sell helium, but
you don’t want to be responsible for selling the containers to put it
in.
nonsense!
Exactly how your complaint/argument comes across!
When the Container is Momentics and the Runtime would be Helium it’s not
meeting the situation…
The container is the OS, the propane is your app. You can’t sell your
app if they don’t have the container already. You can sell them your
app and a container though, which solves the problem.
There is no real market for a commercial stand-alone QNX runtime.
You are completely wrong!!!
There was a market for QNX 4 Runtimes, and there is also a market for
QNX 6 runtimes!
No, there is a market for the 3rd party apps, they just happen to require
the OS. You have already agreed that there is no reason for a customer
to buy QNX if they aren’t buying your app (or someone else’s) too.
The solution to your problem exists, you just need to make the effort
yourselves. Your refusal to do so is NOT QSS’s problem.
Cheers,
Camz.
–
Martin Zimmerman > camz@passageway.com
Camz Software Enterprises > www.passageway.com/camz/qnx/
QNX Programming & Consulting > www.qnxzone.com