Re: [orca-list] Some bugs with perhaps possible fixing in master branch

[Alex Midence <alex midence gmail com>]

Hmm.  Now, I'm wondering how large FS really is.  I think they're
privately traded because I wasn't able to find a ticker symbol for
them.  I wanted to see if I could find out how much their shares sold
for and how many shares it had outstanding.  Multiply them and you get
a company's market capitalization which is a figure used to measure
the size of a company.  Sorry, I digress.  No more off topic msgs from
me.  That was my Financial Services background coming out.

Alex M

On 6/4/12, Alex Midence <alex midence gmail com> wrote:
> Fascinating.  Thank you for sharing that.  Learn something new every day.
>
> Alex M
>
>
> On 6/4/12, Mike Gorse <mgorse alum wpi edu> wrote:
> > On Mon, 4 Jun 2012, Alex Midence wrote:
> >
> > > Valid point.  My thinking is that a commercial software vendor with
> > > all its processes and such would also include a nice thorough market
> > > research component prior to introduction of any feature since it
> > > stands to reason that they would want to focus their efforts on
> > > producing something that their buyers want and on something that their
> > > competitors either don't have or improving upon what they do have.
> >
> > Not necessarily. Having worked for a company in the industry in the past
> > (though not a screen reader company or a company as large as FS), I can
> > tell you that we certainly weren't doing any kind of formal market
> > research, conducting focus groups, etc. It might have been a good idea in
> > theory, but we were a small company and didn't have a large budget
> > despite
> > charging a substantial amount for the software, since our sales were
> > counted in the thousands (not in the millions, as you'd have with a
> > company like Microsoft). Often we would add features based on requests
> > from major users or from dealers who sold and supported our software. If
> > enough people asked for a feature through technical support and/or at
> > trade shows where we had a booth, then it might get brought up and added
> > in. So I think that there was informal "market research" going on but
> > nothing like what I'd presume a large company might do.
> >
> > -Mike G-