Such a good review of some of the difficult issues of subscriptions. Thanks John. I wish some eccentric millionaire would drop in and repay the seed funding in one fell swoop just to feel good about themselves... unlikely I suppose. Here are some of our opinions at Boronia Vet Clinic in regards to some of the excellent points raised; [quote]1. It may be seen as expensive for large practices that run legacy systems. Expecially when these clinics factor in unknown support costs [/quote] As one of those large practices running legacy software I feel that we have been eating at the "free lunch" restaurant for sometime. Having said that we aren't interested in moving to the most expensive gourmet diner either. Our perspective has been that we have been defering an inevitable cost because [b]our[/b] legacy solution has a finite lifespan. Additionally, whilst it serves our current needs, there is plenty we would like to do differently. Lastly and most importantly, we have been waiting for the crash we can't fiddle our way out of. The nightmare of not having a ready solution to run with straight away was almost a reality for us 3 years ago. Having been in the situation of being a large clinic without computer support for 3 days, we know the real $ value of a supported software system. In summary, large clinics running legacy software whilst seemingly going backwards in terms of their bottom line by moving to OpenVPMS are infact, just catching up and realising a deferred cost of business. [quote]2. The model financially penalises early adopters while promising very low subscriptions to those who wait for the initial funding to be repaid.....I suppose it comes down to the expectations of the initial seed funders as to their time frame for repayment, and what they consider to be the potential market for the software, and how quickly it will be adopted. [/quote] We did think that potentially the visionary practices would in some way offset the cost for late joiners. They probably also would be the practices that will work the hardest in being active at modifying and contributing to early development. Natural justice says they should be rewarded first when the subscribtions start to dropped. The difficulty comes in meeting this natural justice and not prolonging the drop in subscription rates that developers and future users want to see. Also, by effectively delaying the drop in subs, we might have a negative effect on uptake rates, hence further delaying the decrease! Speaking personally here, my feeling is that a tiered reduction based on numbers of years memebership is worth thinking about. eg. Of a given decrease in subs across the board, the decrease would be distributed proportionately according to maybe 3 tiers of memebership duration eg. > 5 years, > 3 Years, > 1 year & < 1 year. What do others think about this issue? Matt Costa