bet@ecsvax.UUCP (06/13/84)
Considering the volume of traffic in net.bugs.all, the concept of a "binary
licence" represents a horrible partitioning, in my humble opinion, resulting
in an unattractive (for the price) operating system. C'est la guerre.
I asked the AT&T salesman about source licences, and he had no idea whether
I could get one at all, far less what it would cost. This thing isn't being
marketed as a hacker's toy; AT&T seems to be striving for the office automation
market.
Off the wall thought: a $15000 3B2/300 with full UNIX is nicer than
a $6500 Radio Shack model 16B with full XENIX -- but not nearly twice
as nice, and definitely not as much as twice as fast.
Bennett Todd
...{decvax,ihnp4,akgua}!mcnc!ecsvax!betguy@rlgvax.UUCP (Guy Harris) (06/22/84)
> Considering the volume of traffic in net.bugs.all, the concept of a "binary > licence" represents a horrible partitioning, in my humble opinion, resulting > in an unattractive (for the price) operating system. C'est la guerre. This isn't a concept new with the 3B2. Much of the "UNIX explosion" was set off by the binary sublicense plan introduced by AT&T back in '79-'80 with V7! The V7 source license cost about $28K; a single-user binary license cost $700 at most. The difference between $28K and $700 is very attractive to me. The per-user marginal cost of the binary license was, if I remember correctly, $250, so a 16-user system would cost around $4K, which is still considerably less than $28K. If you're selling hardware for about $28K, that software cost is not negligible. Have you ever read a year's worth of DEC's Software Dispatches for one of their OSes, or IBM's APAR/PTF reports (if they send them out), or any other vendor's bug report lists? UNIX isn't unique in this regard. Yes, it has bugs. Most large software products do. Most buyers of 3B2s - or, at least, buyers in the marketplace AT&T is aiming at - wouldn't be able to fix them by stuffing in the fix from net.bugs.whatever. > I asked the AT&T salesman about source licences, and he had no idea whether > I could get one at all, far less what it would cost. This thing isn't being > marketed as a hacker's toy; AT&T seems to be striving for the office > automation market. AT&T was selling System V source licenses (PDP-11/VAX-11) for $43K. And yes, that's probably the market an AT&T salesperson or marketer would say they're aiming the box at. That's not surprising; there are a lot more potential purchasers of small business or office automation micros than there are potential hackers out there. Guy Harris {seismo,ihnp4,allegra}!rlgvax!guy