Date:         Thu, 11 Mar 1999 00:05:14 -0800
Reply-To:     IAS <iasinfo@mediaone.net>
Sender:       "SAS(r) Discussion" <SAS-L@UGA.CC.UGA.EDU>
From:         IAS <iasinfo@MEDIAONE.NET>
Subject:      Re: Licensing Costs Again; WAS: Yet more thoughts on SAS for Linux
In-Reply-To:  <87256730.00790074.00@lnsmtp01.inel.gov>
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On Wed, 10 Mar 1999 15:02:04 -0700, Mark S Dehaan wrote:
 
> Furthermore, I believe it often goes
>"outside" our product base to items I never will use! That is
>where I object most strongly!
 
This point needs to be amplified. Improvements to the existing product
base often become new products for which SI charges an arm and a leg.
Consider a product such as Insight which is a graphical extension of
the procedures in Stat. Rather than replace the antique character based
diagnostic plots in Proc Reg and Proc Factor, SI sells the improvements
as a new product for another pound of flesh. The same thing can be said
for Enterprise Miner (beaucoup pounds of flesh in this case). One last
example that really gets my goat - conjoint analysis is done using Stat
and the Marketing Research application. However, to create an
orthogonal array which is integral in designing a conjoint study, you
need to purchase QC. This strikes me as pure revenue enhancement. I
have a client who does a lot of conjoint studies using SAS who actually
purchased competing software to do orthogonal arrays because the entire
competing package was cheaper than QC and had a one time license fee to
boot.
 
It seems like every time that SI enhances a product that I use, the
enhancement comes as a new module for which I need to pay extra.