larsa@nada.kth.se (Lars Andersson) (05/16/88)
A while ago, I submitted to the net a question about peoples experience with the licensing of PC-NFS. Here is a summary of the responses. I apologize for the very long time I took to summarize, partly due to a vain hope to see some more positive information. As it appears from the responses, PC-NFS is sold at a fixed price. This raises the question: Is PC-NFS really that unique? Is it possible to replace it by any other product? Such as one running under Microport AT UNIX (is seems to me that depending on the licensing agreements available, this might actually become economical in a reasonably large installation, with the added bonus of having sysV on each node instead of DOS!) ------------------------------------ From: rossc@intro.ucc.su.oz.au (Ross Cartlidge [Network]) > I would be interested to hear what form of licenses people have for using > PC-NFS on multiple (well, obviously ...) machines. > > The local SUN representatives do not appear to have made up their minds > about this question and the prospect of paying a fixed (and high) > amount per installation does not appear attractive. It also seems > unreasonable for software of this type. > > Any information would be appreciated. Please E-mail me and I'll summarize > the responses. > > Lars Andersson | Trademarks belong to their owners > larsa@nada.kth.se | We at the University of Sydney have to pay a per copy price. We tried to get a site licence but the best SUN would do is give us the 25+ price. The said this was because they had licenced the software fron Locus Computing. We are continuing to pressure them, please inform me if you get any better deal Ross Cartlidge ------------------------------------ From: Phil Fernandez <philf@med-isg.stanford.edu> I am working on this same issue with my Sun representative for Stanford University. So far, I can not get Sun to agree to any deal for a volume/site license for NFS, other than the (non-discounted) prices/options listed in their standard price book. I'll let you know if I make any progress on this issue; so far, Sun seems completely uninterested in negotiating about PC-NFS pricing. phil (philf@med-isg) ---------------------------------- From: jh@tut.fi (Juha Hein{nen) In Finland Sun refused to sell a site license. We bought arround 40 copies and paid the high price they were requesting. Regards, Juha Heinanen ------------------------------------- From: Bill Yundt <GD.WHY@forsythe.stanford.edu> REPLY TO 04/10/88 04:58 FROM MCVAX!ENEA!TTDS!DRAKEN!LARSA@UUNET.UU.NET "Lars Andersson": Licensing for PC-NFS Lars....agree with your premise re: amount per installation. Doubt your local SUN reps will have much to say about it however, as the SUN division which "owns" NFS is a profit center and has to be able to set its own pricing policies, as I understand it. I know they are willing to offer quantity discounts that increase with numbers. We haven't yet explored other possibilities seriously with them because we are only running about 150 machines for which we received a special discount on older versions with upgrade kits. If we were to consider campus-wide commitment, I would like a right of copy license at a price that made the per copy cost around $100 per PC or less and separately packaged hard-copy only documentation that our book store could sell at its usual outrageous mark-ups. Bill Yundt --------------------------------------------------------------- Lars Andersson | Trademarks belong to their owners larsa@nada.kth.se |
philipp@LARRY.MCRCIM.MCGILL.EDU ("Philip A. Prindeville") (05/17/88)
No one mentioned the Bell Technologies UNIX w/NFS for the 386. It is System V/386 based (very plain-vanilla) but has NFS built-in. Cost is $395. For not much more than the cost of the SUN PC-NFS, you get a real (or _near_ real) operating system. I don't have details (maybe someone can yank them from 386users?). I don't recommend using other protocols. We have a bunch of fileservers here at McGill (netware, tops, etc) and it's a headache. I would like to see NFS on everything, despite its well-known (and well-loved, no doubt) flaws... -Philip
ROMKEY@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU (John Romkey) (05/17/88)
I believe that Bell Tech UNIX includes RFS, not NFS. I was trying to buy a copy of it a month or so back and could never get anyone who was willing to sell anything. In fact, I could never get anyone but the receptionist. But all my info on it says it's RFS, which would make more sense as a bundled in part of the product, as its a standard part of System V.3. - john -------