Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wasatch!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!pantor!richard
From: richard@pantor.UUCP (Richard Sargent)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++
Subject: Re: C++ pricing for AT&T Release 2.0, and 386 binaries
Message-ID: <16.UUL1.3#5109@pantor.UUCP>
Date: 12 Jul 89 17:32:42 GMT
References: <1379@hcr.UUCP>
Organization: Pansophic Systems Inc, Graphics Product Company
Lines: 22

Well, I've listened to the discussions about the AT&T pricing policy, and
I've come to a simple conclusion: AT&T does NOT want to sell compilers to
everyone and their cousin!

How do I figure this? Well, take economics (please :-) If you jack up the
price of your product 10 fold, you can expect a significant reduction in
the sales of that product. Of course, this will depend on how strong the
demand really is. If it is very strong, then AT&T can make a lot of money
this way (happy stockholders!).

Now, I don't believe that everyone wants to own their own compiler source
(especially not when they have to pay big $ for that privilige[sp?]). So,
I conclude that AT&T is trying to economically restrict sales to compiler
companies rather than any and all software development companies. I'm
guessing now, but I expect AT&T will sell a lot fewer than 10% of the
number of copies they sold when the price was 1/10. I guess they don't
feel the support costs are worth the revenue.

Comments: please, flames: pass.

Richard Sargent                   Internet: richard@pantor.UUCP
Systems Analyst                   UUCP:     uunet!pantor!richard