Be good - and reasonable (Score 2, Interesting)

A) Make sure the toolset is really, really good. Developers I know only respect quality - it doesn't matter if a tool is free, if it's flawed in any way people won't like using it, even if mandated by management. This will cost you a lot future sales :) B) Charge a reasonable price, and make licenses as flexible as possible (i.e., floating licenses). C) Back to being good - quality support is a must! I was recently told by a support person "your code is wrong" and got a man-page quote as a reply for something that was clearly a bug in the tool. Needless to say, I will never recommend that product to anyone again - especially because it has a very high price!