Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcsun!ukc!dcl-cs!aber-cs!thor!pcg From: pcg@thor.cs.aber.ac.uk (Piercarlo Grandi) Newsgroups: comp.unix.i386 Subject: Re: 1-2 vs unlimited licenses (Unix for a 386) Message-ID: Date: 27 Aug 89 10:27:47 GMT References: <1989Aug16.020438.5662@esegue.uucp> <7186@megatest.UUCP> <16043@vail.ICO.ISC.COM> Sender: pcg@aber-cs.UUCP Organization: Coleg Prifysgol Cymru Lines: 79 In-reply-to: rcd@ico.ISC.COM's message of 25 Aug 89 20:47:18 GMT In article <16043@vail.ICO.ISC.COM> rcd@ico.ISC.COM (Dick Dunn) writes: > Otherwise, is there any *compelling* technical reason > to buy the X library binaries from ISC for $795 instead > of getting the sources with which everybody is already > quite pleased from any friend for free? If you don't think we've added value in what we provide--or, for that matter, if you don't think what we've added is worth the price--then go ahead! I have been using ISC Unix ports for many many years (from the pdp-11 days) and they have always been cleaner and neater than most (even if I never like INed :->). SO I have no question that ISC adds value to the the standard AT&T product (I wish I could afford 386/ix and have the HPDD and FFS, by the way, but I am content enough with the much cheaper ESIX thing). I don't think that anyone in ISC is going to quarrel that you've got a free choice there; I'm not even going to try a hard sell. I would suggest that you spend a little time to see what you'd get from us and whether it's of sufficient value to you. Ahhhh, but the argument was not on whether you add value to your products (unquestionable), and not even on whether the higher price is worth the higher value, it was on whether the 1-2 vs. unlimited price differential was really "justified" as it reflected the differential in part of your cost structure (the royalties to AT&T). My points were that ISC's price differential (which is way above the difference in royalties, by the way) might conceivably have been absorbed without too much pain by you (after all, you are selling a deluxe product, so why be miserly?), and that in any case your prices and your cost structure do not seem to be very much related. There is ground for the suspicion that your 1-2 users vs. unlimited price differential, as well the high level of your prices in general, bear little relationship to the AT&T royalties or actual value added; it is maybe more the result of marketing decisions, where you, just like AT&T, want to segment your market (between workstations and multiuser systems, and between developers and end users), or want to slow your sales with a high price policy. The pricing of X11 server vs. library is the prime example: the library is derived from fully free sources, costs almost three times the server, and moreover if your literature is truthful you have hacked the server a lot, while I cannot imagine that you have done much work to the libraries, which are *designed* to be very portable. It is also cause for thought that the X11 libraries cost more than the base Unix itself, on which you do indeed pay a royalty and to which you also have added some value. In the end your pricing seems to bear little relationship to the level of royalties (none, in this case), or even to your value added (unquestionably much greater for the server than the libraries). It correlates only with 'what the market will bear' ("development systems" are sold to developers, "runtimes" to the end users, so you try to milk the latter as much as possible), and maybe with the idea that you don't want to strain your support organization with too many sales of the library (while you expect the developers to support the runtimes they sell to end users along with their applications). Given the substantial discount you offer to developers, the latter explanation seems more reasonable, i.e. you are trying to discourage end users from buying the libraries. You have all the rights to price your wares as you please, but not to ask the public to believe your claims that those prices are "justified"... -- Piercarlo "Peter" Grandi | ARPA: pcg%cs.aber.ac.uk@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk Dept of CS, UCW Aberystwyth | UUCP: ...!mcvax!ukc!aber-cs!pcg Penglais, Aberystwyth SY23 3BZ, UK | INET: pcg@cs.aber.ac.uk