You haven't actually explained why you think a negotiable price for PVS Studio is a bad thing. Your hyperbolic scenario of the ice cream is just that, hyperbolic.
Is there seriously sufficient competitive advantage to stopping casual consideration of the value proposition? Because the competitors can more than likely pry a quote out of a sales representative.
If your software is so hard to use that you can't post a basic demo somewhere, I probably don't want to use it anyway.
I have greater faith in my ability to deal with a random executable somewhat safely than I do my patience for a salesweasel who might know what source code is.
So, yes, we have differing opinions. I don't see why I should have to hand over any non-essential data and deal with a human to try a purely software product.
For them, it's almost surely meant lost sales.
In my org, I'm the one who would be making the decision to trial products like this. For me, it's meant that they haven't gotten a serious look-in. We don't have particular code quality issues so I'm not shopping around between static analysis tools, but I am always open to improving our processes. The bar that they need to reach in order for me to spend time seriously evaluating their product is much higher. If the software was eg 10k/yr it's a very different matter to it being 100k.
I'm curious about the product and the benefits that it brings over our existing static analysis setup (SonarQube + Resharper + Microsoft Code Analysis), and if I had any idea what I'd be getting into I'd probably have set up an instance somewhere, but that's time that I'm not prepared to spend without at least some idea of whether it could even result in us making a buy.
Neither my time, nor that of anyone else in my org is free. I'm not going to evaluate a product, make a decision and then ask how much to see if the vendor has reasonable prices. Even used car lots list prices on their cars so you can judge a "worst case" cost and filter out the absolutely ridiculous ones.
Edit: This applies in this specific context, where the market is not exactly deluged with code analyzers.
But none of those are the case, we have no serious problems with our existing process, nor any real incentive to actually try out alternative static analysis setups. What drives us to find something better is curiosity. Every month or two, I'll see something related to our process (not specifically code quality), look into it along with another alternative or two, and try to figure out quickly if it's worth dedicating time to look at it in depth. I'm making that initial decision based on 10 minutes of skimming the vendor's website. I don't want to sink a week of peoples' time into actually properly setting something up to find out that our org will be charged higher fees than we expect (in much the same way that I don't want to drag a bunch of people into a meeting room for a couple of hours for a product demo until we've independently verified that the product can actually work for us; or set something up and have it bite us a couple of years down the road when it's become entrenched in our processes).
Realistically, I have a fair idea of how much the software will likely cost. From what I've seen (assuming I'm correct), the price (low 5 figures) wouldn't be a dealbreaker (though it would definitely have to bring some advantages when compared to what we've got now in order to sell it to management). But, after a number of our negative b2b experiences w/ opaque pricing (eg price scheme changes at the end of the contract term, or being billed higher than others because we were [at that time] reliant on the product) we know that there's a cost involved in this. It's something that is worth some dollar amount for us to avoid.
I want a binding quote that I know is going to scale linearly with our organisation; a dollar figure that's not going to change sharply in 3,4,5 years; no significant meddling by salespeople -- all in addition to a solid product. Published and available-to-anyone prices help ensure that.
I just want to note that I'm not against OOO in any way, or even saying anything bad about their software, but opaque pricing on products just doesn't make sense for us (much in the same way as products-as-subscription don't make sense for us, even though we normally keep up to date with upgrades/support).
You're right.
It's a bad thing because I want to spend exactly as close to zero seconds looking at a product or service that's going to immediately be ruled out because the price is too high for my budget. If I can see the price I can avoid all the communications and discussions and move on.
Also, when price is constantly negotiable I stand the risk of becoming dependent on a product only to find the company raising on me (and not across the board) based on their belief that I can be squeezed because I am dependent. Look no further than Oracle for this type of behavior.
(I liked my hyperbolic scenario because it was short and involved both kids and ice cream. Who dares to challenge kids and ice cream? ;-)
Anyway, to give you an anecdote.. My current work is in a niche industry where "simple" software is often very expensive and prices are never displayed ( $10,000 per seat). What I've found is that often times, the company itself would let me know that their software is not a great fit for our company because I contacted them and explained the use case. Other times, not displaying the price allows them to give a price cut to smaller startups and "tax" larger companies for whom the price is negligible.
If your current employer would list the $10,000 per seat price (or even a range -- $8,000 - %12,000 per seat depending on reasons) then someone was willing to consider an order of magnitude less could immediately skip your employer's product. Instead, it's their desire to have potential customers open a dialog so you can explaining value proposition and get them more invested. We can get to know each other as people and touch bases again next year ...
That crap is exactly the problem, not the solution. I don't want to take the time to be polite if I know your price is an order of magnitude out.