karl@sugar.uu.net (Karl Lehenbauer) (11/18/88)
...spoke with a salesperson at Bell Technologies yesterday and was told that System V/4 is going to cost about $1300 and there isn't likely to be an upgrade for V/3 people. This person claimed that AT&T had super jacked-up the rates and similar price hikes will occur from all other vendors. This is really unfortunate, if true. It's bad for Unix. The price is going in the wrong direction, know what I mean? I don't suppose OSF is going to be much help, pity GNU's restrictions prevent any sort of value-added resale. Anyone want to work on a PD Unix clone? (2/3 :-) -- -- "We've been following your progress with considerable interest, not to say -- contempt." -- Zaphod Beeblebrox IV -- uunet!sugar!karl, Unix BBS (713) 438-5018
dave@pmafire.UUCP (Dave Remien) (11/18/88)
In article <3001@sugar.uu.net> karl@sugar.uu.net (Karl Lehenbauer) writes: >...spoke with a salesperson at Bell Technologies yesterday and was told >that System V/4 is going to cost about $1300 and there isn't likely to >be an upgrade for V/3 people........ [etc.] I talked with a sales guy (who's been truly helpful in the past) last week, and it's V/3.2 that's coming out in a couple of weeks, and will cost about the above figure to upgrade to, assuming you have the software development environment (S.D.E.; don't we all? :-)). This is apparently because AT&T considers V/3.2 to be a major upgrade (why the hell is it a 3.1 to 3.2 upgrade, then, rather than to 4.0?). Maybe they need the bucks to help pay for trying to overwhelm OSF (:-). >Anyone want to work on a PD Unix clone? (2/3 :-) It's becoming a real temptation. >-- >-- "We've been following your progress with considerable interest, not to say >-- contempt." -- Zaphod Beeblebrox IV >-- uunet!sugar!karl, Unix BBS (713) 438-5018 -- Dave Remien - WINCO Computer Engineering Group (only somewhat confused, now) 208-526-3523 Paths: ...!bigtex!pmafire!dave | ...!ucdavis!egg-id!pma386!dave
dar@belltec.UUCP (Dimitri Rotow) (11/24/88)
In article <3001@sugar.uu.net>, karl@sugar.uu.net (Karl Lehenbauer) writes: > ...spoke with a salesperson at Bell Technologies yesterday and was told > that System V/4 is going to cost about $1300 and there isn't likely to > be an upgrade for V/3 people. This person claimed that AT&T had super > jacked-up the rates and similar price hikes will occur from all other vendors. > What's been announced (and now shipping) is System V/386 Release 3.2, the wonderful new release from AT&T that has wonderful new features (Xenix compatibility, for example) and a wonderful new price. Under the original System V Release 2 licensing, the 1-2 user license for ALL of UNIX started at $50 and the unlimited number of users license was $150. In Release 3.0, the pricing changed so that the $50/$150 included everything but the Networking (RFS) stuff, which cost $30 extra. In Release 3.2, the Development utilities are now unbundled and cost an additional $80. When you add up the pricing, the total royalty owed to AT&T by large volume distributors has almost doubled. Because of the margins which need to be in between the large volume distributors, the wholesalers, the retailers or end point VARs and the final end user, the doubling in price by AT&T tends to have a disproportionate effect on end user list prices. In our case, we have repriced the UNIX line not only to reflect the change in UNIX cost from AT&T, but also to incorporate the extra items now included (we bundle in media kit, now, for example) as well as reseller pricing tiers to reflect the change in distribution policy from direct sales to sales through resellers. No pricing has been announced from AT&T on Release 4 (the merger between SUN and AT&T), nor have we announced any pricing either. Given the history of AT&T's price increases as there are more mouths to feed, I am not optomistic. We and numerous other companies strongly opposed the notion of either increasing UNIX license fees or charging extra for the development utilities or RFS. Dimitri Rotow