Whats all the fuss about spring source charging big money?
I know, i know, most bloggers usually make very bad fact checkers, but this is just absurd. The bruhaha around SpringSource's decision to charge money for their binary (only binary) releases, finally got so big that I decided to call up a sales rep. Reports of astronomical sums, one blogger mentioned 22.000 US$, totally scared me and I wanted to know if that was true.
And sure enough: It's not.
The salesperson was nice enough to let me know, that for the whole spring software stack and 10 incidents plus some development software, I would have to shell out 630€ - about 900 US$ per year and per CPU. Affected are only production systems, not developer machines. For all she cared I would've been able to supply every developer in India with a fresh release, as long as he works for me and doesn't violate the EULA. Also, cores do not count as additional CPUs.
I don't know what kind of support Ryan was talking about when he was offered the 22k$ package, but I suppose he wanted Rod Johnson to hold his hand while coding, singing him a lullaby and basically giving him the teet - for that, 22k$ seem pretty reasonable to me 
Still, getting a community hooked on an open source product and then charging them for their dependence on said product - after all learning spring is a big investment - smells kinda funny to me. I will have to decide carefully if I really need Spring 3 and all those tools after all.
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September 30th, 2008 - 07:19
Pay for Spring? you have to be kidding me what a piece of obvious shit.
September 30th, 2008 - 07:28
Maybe it depends on size of the project. 900 US$ per year and per CPU for some projects is not much, but for some is a lot.
September 30th, 2008 - 08:00
That can be a new price, Rod Johnson said SS will take in consideration a more affordable price for small business.
But for a small business $900US per cpu per year still very high, I have 4 small systems in production with Spring and I would have to talk with my customers about the change in price and it will be little high I think so really I don’t know what to do or just move to a more cheaper solution.
September 30th, 2008 - 08:14
Sounds pretty reasonable to me.
One thing that is interesting, the new development will probably make Spring more palatable to the more traditional software related company. SpringSource is becoming more traditional.
September 30th, 2008 - 12:46
> I don’t know what kind of support Ryan was talking about when he was offered the 22k$ package, but I suppose he wanted Rod Johnson to hold his hand while coding, singing him a lullaby and basically giving him the teet – for that, 22k$ seem pretty reasonable to me
Not at all. I very clearly explained that I had a problem with JPA and multiple data sources and wanted one support incident. SpringSource has obviously changed their pricing since I spoke with them on the phone.
September 30th, 2008 - 13:03
I also responded to this blog entry on javalobby:
http://java.dzone.com/articles/the-cost-springsource-enterpri
September 30th, 2008 - 15:37
Sorry you feel that way about my post Ryan. I wasn’t calling you a liar. Obviously you were being charged for a different product – hence the confusion. I was asking for the bare minmum – they were trying to sell you the cruise ship. Hence the different quotes. It would be unfair to SpringSource to make decisions based on incomplete information.
Now I’ll be off to buy me some more of these rosy glasses you were talking about – they’re the talk of the town in javaland these days I hear
best regards,
Toni
September 30th, 2008 - 15:57
Another misunderstanding I just discovered: The 10 incidents the sales rep was talking about weren’t “developer incidents”, you know – where you’d get to ask technical support questions on the phone – rather than bug incidents, that would be addressed quickly if they turn out to be true.
I think the safest bet would be to just call up SpringSource (again) and hear what they have to say. After all these are troublesome days for them as well as for all Spring developers.
September 30th, 2008 - 16:10
Rod said on the TSS thread that they would be re-thinking their pricing for small businesses over the weekend and would implement the new pricing early this week. They must have had it in place by the time you contacted SpringSource.
http://www.theserverside.com/news/thread.tss?m=c.reply&thread_id=50727#270086