linas@hparc0.HP.COM (Linas Petras) (11/04/90)
With all the different companies now bringing out SYSVR4, is their any reason that if company X says that they will give a discount from release 3.x to release 4.x, that if I have a release 3.x from a company other than the one that is offering the upgrade, that I should not get the upgrade from company X ??? Is their a legal reason that company X cannot sell me the upgrade ?????. The reason for the question is that DELL computers are offering an upgrade from 3.2 to 4.x for $399, for the 1-2 user version.
dar@max.intel.com (dar) (11/07/90)
SVR4 has a new licensing structure, with new royalties due to AT&T. For most binary sublicensors, the cost of providing UNIX plus TCP plus NFS plus X, dev tools, etc, has been cut in half by AT&T. That's the good news. The bad news is that the max discount for *very* high volume sublicensors tops out at 60% instead of the old 80%. That makes the price cut a wash for very high volume sublicensors. Another point of bad news is that AT&T doesn't give any credit for pre-4.0 royalty payments towards 4.0 licensing. My personal opinion is that this is a reasonable position given the dramatic increase in content and capability that 5.4 represents. For much of the system, 5.4 is a total, much needed re-write and AT&T deserves to get compensated for the effort. So..., the 5.4 UNIX vendors who are giving discounts to former 3.2 buyers are taking care of their customers out of their own pockets. Intel's distributors will ship the 5.4 developers' system to any former 3.2 user (even non-Intel 3.2) for $399 for the 1-2 user version sans full documentation. I think the intent for most of the 5.4 vendors who are giving discounts is to make it easier to support the customer base by consolidating on the new porting base as soon as possible. Dimitri Rotow PS - Since I travel a lot these days my comm latency is creeping up to almost three weeks. Sorry for any delays in email response.