Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!apple!snorkelwacker!paperboy!meissner From: meissner@osf.org (Michael Meissner) Newsgroups: comp.unix.ultrix Subject: Re: License Management Facility (LMF) Message-ID: Date: 10 Apr 90 21:27:29 GMT References: <10142@shlump.nac.dec.com> <00934FDA.44D76CA0@KING.ENG.UMD.EDU>,<54695@bbn.COM> <00934FEF.79711AA0@KING.ENG.UMD.EDU> Sender: news@OSF.ORG Organization: Open Software Foundation Lines: 34 In-reply-to: sysmgr@KING.ENG.UMD.EDU's message of 10 Apr 90 17:32:32 GMT In article <00934FEF.79711AA0@KING.ENG.UMD.EDU> sysmgr@KING.ENG.UMD.EDU (Doug Mohney) writes: | In article <54695@bbn.COM>, fkittred@bbn.com (Fletcher Kittredge) writes: | >>Any other UNIX operating system (Sun OS, Berkie, AT&T, AIX) doesn't do this | >>LMF stuff. Do they? Nope. Only Digital. | > | I was referring to Digital. | | If you purchase a Sun box, you get SunOS with an unlimited number of users. | If you purchase a DEC box, you get ULTRIX with a two user license. If you | want more than two users/windows at a time, you have to pay to upgrade | to 4, 8, and so forth. | | In the VMS world, I've yet to install a software product on our cluster | which users LMF other than Digital's products. I believe the 'two user' problem is an artifact of the System V.2 license structure, which has such silliness in it. For those of you who never dealt with AT&T System V.2 licenses, there was a tiered scheme where a vendor selling a 1 user system had to send xx dollars to AT&T, and as the number of users increased, so did the dollars flowing back to AT&T. At one point when I worked for Data General, we had something like 32 different model numbers for UNIX (16 levels + USA/international). Since Ultrix is based on System V.2 [somewhat], and not on System V.3 which did away with different user systems except for 1/many users, I would imagine, DEC didn't want to raise prices in order to send the appropriate bucks to AT&T. -- Michael Meissner email: meissner@osf.org phone: 617-621-8861 Open Software Foundation, 11 Cambridge Center, Cambridge, MA Catproof is an oxymoron, Childproof is nearly so