i hear you! i am in Europe too. This is really sad that this happened. And maybe that's the reason why there was no responses from them all this time about the coming pricing.

yes, the fact that they added event gateways, cfthreads, etc to Standard edition is really GREAT, but i am afraid it to not be something that can be ALMOST used and not REALLY used because of the "Limited" nature. As example i will give the cfthreads. Based on the features matrix "CFTHREAD is limited to two additional spawned threads in Standard Edition". This is better than nothing of course, but let's be serious it's almost useless. What about the price... for those who work as consultants or on freelance basis it was not very easy to find a project to work on because of all the other technologies around. And in many cases there is a need to explain the client why he should choose ColdFusion over everything else. And now it will be even harder. Because usually they just stuck on the price and stop hearing anything else. I think that if the Standard would be free or say 5-10 times cheaper and Enterprise 2-3 times cheaper, in just 2 years we would see an essential increase of companies using ColdFusion and as result an even bigger increase in developers number. And i do believe as result it may mean an increase in income for Adobe as well.

Hi Ed. I certainly understand your point about CFThread. Focusing on limitations, apart from CFThread, what else do you find to be limited in Standard? I'm asking because I chat with Adobe on a regular basis and would love to provide some feedback to them. As for the consulting argument, its one that I don't agree with. I too do freelance work and I've never had a problem finding CF work. I actually turn down projects for lack of time. It may really depend on how you approach finding clients. If you're the type of developer that wants to look on HotJobs or Dice and find a 3 month $30-50 per hour gig, then you're right in that you won't find as much work as you would for .Net, PHP and possibly Rails. The approach I've taken is to be proactive in my search for projects. I don't wait for them to come to me nor do I both with sites like Dice or HotJobs. By doing that, I control how the project is developed and I can dictate the technology. There's no magic to it. And for most sites, you do not need to justify the cost of CF because they'll be on a shared hosting environment. $20-30 per month for shared CF hosting will not cause any client to balk. If you do encounter a situation that requires a CF license, then yes, you have to be able to sell the client on the technology. Its no different than selling the client on yourself. If the prospect believes in you, the cost of of CF becomes inconsequential.

Hello Rey. What about the other "limitations", for the moment the only detail i've got on limitations is the one about cfthreads, so can't tell anything more. That's the reason i said "i am afraid" and not "i am sure". I did not mean in any way that i have or had BIG problems finding cf projects. And to be true, lately there is even an increase in projects and jobs offered, but i try to look at it not only from my point of view, because i know there are a lot of guys who do have such problems. The fact is that right now the number of coldfusion developers is very small (especially in Europe). So from one side there is less competition, but from other side there as well are less companies interested in doing their sites/applications in coldfusion. Plus, reading similar posts allover the internet, there was more than enough people stating that is not easy to find coldfusion projects. In the far past, in order to get some, i sometimes was forced to do work almost for free on not big tasks (talking about sites where you bid to get a project) in the hope that the client will need something more in the future (you know, the appetite come in the time you eat) and there is when all lost will be returned. And it usually worked. But there also are cases when the client is not decided on the technology he want to use and you have to compete with php guys, asp guys, etc. And the price there is a big reason cf proposal to be rejected. Because most of the companies (at least i know about) even if at the moment start with something simple that can be placed on a shared hosting, think big. And they are sure that at some point (usually not far moment) they will need first dedicated server and then maybe even personal server(s). So they would not invest in something that will have to be rewritten in the future or will cost them more than they can think as "OK" at the current (not future) moment. I know companies that startde with something small and very fast came to the moment to go from "shared" to "dedicated" and seeing in the near future the "multi-server", "load balancing", etc. Plus, with the current price increase, i am sure many will say "what is the chance that i will not have to pay twice as much with the next version?" So i think "to be able to sell the client on the technology" IT IS a very important part of the "game". I would suggest even a poll to be done with the question what people think about the pricing and/or what they would see the pricing being good. I would do it myself, but i realize that my blog is not so popular to get an important number of answers that would really show the situation on the market, so this is really something i would love to see on the blog of one of the big guys like Ben Forta, Ray Camden, etc. Something similar has been done a couple of months ago (unfortunately i don't have the link) and as i remember the BIGGEST part of the answers was that we need a cheaper ColdFusion.

In the Enterprise world which ColdFusion is now very much a part of, $7,500.00 for a J2EE Application Server with the capabilities of ColdFusion is peanuts. Take a look at pricing for Websphere Weblogic and associated products. In fact that low a price tag often leads those large Enterprise users to shy-off using CF.

"I know i am not the only one wishing ColdFusion to become more hmmm "customer comfortable" in price meaning. " You aren't.

CFThread is limited to two additional threads per request in the Standard Edition. Two more = 3 per request which is way better than 1! :) Very few apps require tons of threads running in a single request. I'm admittedly copying most of the rest of this from a previous post I did on Ray Camden's site discussing the same topic... :) So... the question of the day... what do we mean by limiting in Standard..? Okay, here's the deal... with ColdFusion 8, we decided that we wanted ANY ColdFusion application to run on ANY ColdFusion server. Now... so wait a second... you're saying I can do anything? Yes, we decided that everyone should have access to gateways and all of the new features. So then what's the deal with this "limited" and this EFR thing? Well... the EFR (Enterprise Feature Router) manages all requests from the Standard implementation to the Enterprise features (we essentially made a tunnel). This provides full compatibility, but does so by using just one thread to manage all of the calls. So, if you want to use CFEXCHANGE and CFPDF at the same time... one will have to wait for the other... the second request queues until the first is complete. As for gateways, the number of threads for incoming messages is limited to 1 and outgoing messages get routed through the EFR. It's that simple, no big trick. So, use the gateways and all the new features, enjoy them, show off how cool ColdFusion is!!! Here's the catch (if you can call it that)... should your application become wildly successful... (which I hope it does... that's good for all of us)... like you finally get your entire corporation to love SMS or you turn all of your paper processes into using PDF Forms... then you will want to upgrade to Enterprise to get those awesome new applications to scale. A few requests here and there will work in Standard perfectly, but if the server is chugging these requests all the time... then its time to upgrade. :) I think its the coolest thing that ColdFusion applications will be able to run on ANY ColdFusion server. Hopefully you all will agree. We took care of the ColdFusion community because we're part of it! Give us the benefit of the doubt. We love you guys. ;) Cheers, :) Jason

ehh. interesting )