burton@fortune.UUCP (04/19/84)
#R:sri-arpa:-61200:fortune:28000028:000:229 fortune!burton Apr 18 13:40:00 1984 Xerox Corporation has/had a similar arrangement for bulk licencing with unlimited copying privileges with Ashton-Tate for dBASE II. I think the cost to Xerox was less than 40% of retail, with Xerox absorbing all copying costs.
dgary@ecsvax.UUCP (04/19/84)
Seems to me a large part of the piracy/multiple-CPU licensing discussion keeps referring back to "unfai" or "too high" price. There is no inherent "price" for anything other than what is determined by supply and demand. Do you make more than a teacher or garbage collector? Do you have a "harder" job? Under certain circumstances, e.g. selling water at high prices during a drought or selling things at far above market value to take advantage of a buyer's ignorance, I think it is possible to have a price that is "too high." Most of the time, though, the price is what buyers are willing to pay and what seller are willing to sell for (I'd like to hear some alternative suggestions). If software were really priced "too high" then (1) why aren't you out getting rich writing and selling it and (2) why does anybody buy it? Software is hardly a necessity (we've done ok without it for a good many centuries). If you find the price too high or the contractural arrangements intolerable, then don't buy it! And, incidentally, I don't put too much stock in the argument (concerning multiple CPU licensing) that once you've bought software for one CPU you should be able to run it on all you own in that building because you have "already bought it once." What has been bought is in reality not the software but the license to use it. To a large extent what the software sellers charge and how many machines they license you to use is not so much a question of morality as one of marketing. If they're charging too much or putting too onerous a set of restrictions in the contracts, few will be fooling enough to buy the things and the high price and onerous restrictions will go away. On the other hand, if the vendor is making money, then the product must be worth the price. If you've come up with alternative systems of economics, let us hear them.