How do you value software?

[James H. Beach]

Eric Zurcher did not mention the value of the software itself in his
explanation of the modest fees for the DELTA software.  I wonder how much
investment the Australian CSIRO and the DELTA developers have put into the
package?  $A250,000?

Do systematists have an appreciation of the development and maintenance
costs of scientific analysis and database software?  And how much value do
they perceive for taxonomic software in general - enough to pay for it?
Enough to pay what it costs to mainain it?

What criteria would you use to decide how much to pay for a taxonomic
software package and its support?  Would you give up, say, five new
cabinets for a highly functional nomenclatural package?  For a
classification tree browser?  For a specimen data management package?

How much value does software have for your research and institutional
missions?


Jim Beach




On Mon, 26 Feb 1996, Eric Zurcher wrote:

> At 03:51 PM 2/23/96 -0500, Gary Noonan wrote:
> >         Some colleagues have commented that they and their institution
> >simply can't afford the $400 for first user at an institution, $100 for
> >additional users at an institution, $20 for manual, $10 for learning guide,
> >$20 handling fee for manual or disks. Colleagues have suggested that the
> >pricing structure is keeping people from using the program and is especially
> >expensive for smaller institutions. Do Taxacom readers have any pricing
> >information for competitive products?
>
> We have done our best to keep the cost of the DELTA system as low as
> possible, as we are well aware of the limited budgets within which most
> taxonomists must work. We believe the price of the DELTA system is not
> particularly high when you consider that we provide a substantial amount of
> free support to users, reported "bugs" are usually fixed promptly, and
> upgrades to newer releases of the programs are free (when was the last time
> Micro$oft could make any of those claims?).
>
> Cheers,
> Eric Zurcher
> CSIRO Division of Entomology
> Canberra, Australia
> E-mail: ericz at ento.csiro.au
>


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