Crystal Licensing!!!

[krill]

Hi chaps

Just wanted to bitch to somebody regarding "business objects" new licensing stuff...

At present I sell a VB based appplication that uses the crystal reports api that incurrs a license cost of approx
$300+ per machine..this fee goes to "Business Objects" and we have been reasonably happy to pay this fee. With version 10 they have dumped the api license stuff...now you have to purchase a advance version of crystal reports..this allows you then to roll out your application to as many machines within your organisation without a api license fee. BUT if I sell this app to say a site outside my organisation, they have to purchase an advance license. In Australia this cost is approx $3000 per site, therefore where we use to sell the application for $1000 to a client that may only install our app on one machine they will now need to send $3500...and most clients will not buy $3,500 for our app.

I spoke to Business Objects in Australia and they didn't really care ...and I complained that they were forcing us to drop crystal reports as our reporting tool..I may now need to look at products such as ActiveReports etc...

I was wondering if this is the same situation from other vendors/developers etc...

Thanks for listening to my complaints etc..

 

[Mike Lewis]

Krill,

I'm sure you have researched this issue in detail and that you know more about it than I do. However, I am little surpirsed by what you wrote.

I don't use the Crystal API, but I do develop with the RDC. My understanding is that, as I have purchased the Developer Edition, I can distribute my apps with the RDC runtime, with no royalty or licensing issues at all.

As an exception, my application cannot use certain parts of the RDC -- specifically, those involved with creating new reports from scratch. But, that apart, I have never been aware of a problem with this.

If I'm right about this, surely switching to the RDC would be a less drastic option for you than switching to a different reporting tool -- especially as the RDC is the only integration method that BO have said they will support for the foreseeable future. In fact, I believe support fo the API has already been dropped from recent versions of CR.

Mike


Mike Lewis
Edinburgh, Scotland

My Visual Foxpro web site:

http://www.ml-consult.demon.co.uk

My Crystal Reports web site:

http://www.ml-crystal.com