Various
° Dongles are hardware.
You need drivers for various operating systems. Can cause trouble.
I wouldn't like a dongle on my laptop. It only has 2 USB ports. I use one for the mouse and one for the EIB connection. No more space for a dongle. I will not buy a USB HUB just because of ETS.
° Bauherren Lizenz
ETS 3 allows selecting a database when starting. So, the "one-project" limitation can easily be bypassed by playing around with the database files. EIBA should not prevent from this, e.g. for back-up reasons. So, some other way to find out that a project is "the one and only project" is needed. Something with a key compiled for the project, or something stored in the registry. Needs to be programmed. Make it € 210.
Import shall of course remain possible, because the home owner may want to "import" the project from his installer. This is a reasonable use case. Shall another import be possible? Maybe with some version management and authorisation. Make it € 220.
Home owner have of course not had training in certified schools. They'll call for support, because they of course licensed the software.
NOTE Still a lot of support arises from installation mistakes (badly configured physical addresses, etc.).
Manpower for support. Make it € 230.
Language versions. Most installers master one of the seven languages of ETS, because they are technically trained. For end-users, there is more need for a version in ones own language. If you consider ETS is sold from Egypt to Kota Kinabalu ... Then the programmers need to foresee unicode (also in the database) and the manufacturers may need to translate ("Oh, shame, that one ABB has still no Portuguese translation...").
Make it € 250.
An installer may of course want to prevent his customer to access certain data, such as physical addresses, line coupler parameters, etc. Requires some locking mechanism with authorisation. Make it € 260.
The requested "Home Owner license" is - CONFIRMED - an interesting topic, and for the last time, we have taken note of it. However, thinking that this is only a matter of recompiling things and labelling them with another price is not correct. The price is as usual the result of the investment made and the expected return. The bigger question is to investigate all the use case, the scenario's and answer what the expected software behaviour shall be.
Mr. Steven De Bruyne
System Department - KNX Association
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