I never thought about this before, but it makes perfect sense, it is impossible for the only product in the industry to maintain a perpetual licensing model, EZProxy is the only one stop shop of its kind, and that is exactly the reason an alternative is needed. Not because EZProxy is lacking or expensive (it is a great product for the price) but as many others have said: it is the only one, service vendors require EZProxy, we need to change that purely for the sake of improvement, if the OCLC has incentive to improve it will, but right now it has the market cornered, leaving no need for inovation.

This was basically what everyone has said (I think!) and there are valid points for staying with EZProxy or switching, but the one that is most pressing: monopoly, EZProxy is a unique animal, and who knows? $500/year today $1000/year tomorrow, maybe even client access licenses? That is the real reason an alternative is needed now.

I hope this makes sense
//Riley

Sent from my iPhone

> On Feb 3, 2014, at 4:21 PM, "Peter Murray" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> I think it also useful to think about this from the service provider’s perspective.  There have been a few calls for enhancements/fixes in this thread, but with no source of ongoing revenue (for self-hosted installations, at least) I don’t know how we can realistically expect the service provider to devote resources to those enhancements/fixes.  The $500 paid for the perpetual right to run the software is good if you never expect the software to change, particularly for something that has the market saturation that EZproxy does (since there is a decreasing number of new subscribers to pay the bills for added development).  The same could be said for paying the way of the technical writers to write documentation for the new features added to the system.
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