Last year there was indication of a community version of Appeon Powerbuilder. This would be inline with most of the other development platforms where there are low cost or no cost developer versions.  These types of licenses are important in several areas including students, hobbyist, and  independent consultants ( A growing segment).  Here I create prototypes for potential clients. If a project is closed all the professional licenses are purchased by the clients. 

I am only am bringing this up because I believe the defacto industry standard has pushed development tools to the community / developer versions. Even Microsoft has been on board with this idea.  Powerbuilder at the moment is a hard sell to clients due to SAP's neglect to market it capabilities. I see in Appeon's roadmap that Powerbuilder can compete at the technical level however I am not convinced the  CIO, IT Directors are willing to get out of their comfort zone. 

Conclusion : I think the Community addition would increase sales in the professional versions. You could probably write off the community version as a marketing costs.

Thoughts??

Tom Starkweather