I was reading an <a href="http://news.com.com/Free+is+the+new+cheap+for+software+tools+-+page+2/2100-7344_3-6032986-2.html?tag=st.num" target="_blank">article on News.com</a> about the declining costs of development tools when I came across this quote from Adobe&apos;s Jeff Whatcott:


"In another example, Adobe Systems on Wednesday is expected to revamp the pricing for its Flex Flash development tools.

The first version of its Flex tool set was about $15,000, but the price was throttling its adoption, said Jeff Whatcott, senior director of product marketing at Adobe&apos;s enterprise and developer business unit.

"The goal is to get to a million developers building rich Internet applications," said Whatcott. "To do that, you need a good product line. But you also need a licensing model that supports viral, development-to-development marketing. That doesn&apos;t happen with a $15,000 product."

Having had a chance to try it out in the early v1.5 days, I think <a href="http://www.macromedia.com/software/flex/" target="_blank">Flex</a> is absolutely awesome but I&apos;ve always felt that MM priced themselves out of the market. This was definitely not a product for the typical small to medium size dotcom or brick-and-mortar business. This was a product specifically focused on the enterprise market and unless you consulted at that level, there was no need to even bother trying to sell this to your clients. Additionally, a plan for hosting providers was never clearly defined which essentially placed the nail in the coffin for the average web developer to use <a href="http://www.macromedia.com/software/flex/" target="_blank">Flex</a>.

Hopefully, Jeff can motivate Adobe to put it within a price range that makes selling solutions to smaller companies a true viable option. Otherwise, guys such as myself will stick to learning and using AJAX for RIA implementations.

Good work Jeff and I look forward to seeing the results!