Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!clyde.concordia.ca!uunet!mcsun!ukc!strath-cs!cs.glasgow.ac.uk!bru-cc!eesrajm From: eesrajm@cc.brunel.ac.uk (Andrew J Michael) Newsgroups: comp.os.minix Subject: Re: Your articles sold for cash. Summary: All you have to do is ask ... Message-ID: <1751@Terra.cc.brunel.ac.uk> Date: 3 Aug 90 07:36:48 GMT References: <26248@nigel.udel.EDU> Organization: Brunel University, Uxbridge, UK Lines: 87 In article <26248@nigel.udel.EDU>, eo@ansa.co.uk (Ed Oskiewicz) writes: > Dear *, > > I suppose we ought to figure out how much these guys are charging > and what for before getting too hot under the collar - presumably > they subscribe to the list so maybe they could tell us. After all a > (modest) media only charge for making upgrades and useful goodies > available to those who don't have the benefit of net access or > employers or colleges paying their communications bills is > reasonable (and a useful service). > (Stuff deleted) > > Ed Oskiewicz (eo@ansa.co.uk) Certainly. All you have to do is ask. Before we go any further could I just clear up one major misconception which seems to have crept in. The originator of the posting which started this discussion did himself and everyone a great disservice by quoting part of the advertisement out of context. This has led to the belief that The MINIX Centre is selling a Usenet derived MINIX for 80-odd pounds without anyone's permission. So --- 1. The price quoted in the advertisement for MINIX is for a genuine P-H copy bought from P-H and sold on in exactly the same way that a bookshop does. The only difference is that this particular "bookshop" knows the difference between a device driver and a sausage. 2. The MINIX Centre has express written permission from P-H to supply bug-fixes and improvements to their customers. This permission was only granted after a long hard fight. The MINIX Centre is the ONLY place where those without Usenet access can obtain these fixes in the UK. If you ask P-H they will immediately refer you to The MINIX Centre. 3. Usenet articles are distributed in one of two ways. Firstly as part of the annual support service to which customers can subscribe. This currently costs 35 pounds a year. Those who joined the service last year have so far received unlimited telephone support and the best part of 1500 sides of A4 paper in the form of a quarterly magazine which also contains Usenet listings. The Usenet listings are selected for their content (nobody really wants to read pages of uuencoded listings !) and are printed complete. No attempt is made to disguise the name of the author or to claim that The MINIX Centre has written them itself. 4. The second way in which articles are distributed is if someone rings up and requests a copy of a particular article. The MINIX Centre has most of the comp.os.minix postings archived. For this service the customer is charged a fee of 5 pounds per disk, regardless of the number of files on the disk. 5. The MINIX Centre has also recently put together a copy of 1.5.10 for both the PC and the ST. The distribution for the PC consists of 13 disks of source code assmebled from all the 1.5.x postings. This currently costs 35 pounds, purely because it takes half a morning to copy 13 disks. I hope that this answers a few questions and puts some minds at rest. I (in my totally biased opinion) think that The MINIX Centre offers a pretty good deal to its customers. In fact it is such a good deal that prices will almost certainly have to increase by 20 percent for next year. Bear in mind that the UK rate of inflation is now 10 percent, so only half of this increase is due (we admit it) to getting our sums wrong. I said previously that The MINIX Centre just about broke even last year. In fact if you take into account some of the hidden costs supported by its parent company it didn't even do that. The increase is to rectify that balance. In addition, if The MINIX Centre is to support its customers properly it needs to buy a 386, an Atari TT and an Amiga in the near future. I think that we can safely ignore the Mac in the UK - or at least I hope so. Finally just remember that The MINIX Centre believes in MINIX. We wouldn't have gone through the long slog that we have had so far if we didn't. The last thing we want to do is to be seen as a parasite on the MINIX community. Mainly because it isn't true. Andy Michael -- Andy Michael (eesrajm@cc.brunel.ac.uk) " Software cannot be written to 85 Hawthorne Crescent be completely free of errors." West Drayton Middlesex - Acorn Computers Ltd. UB7 9PA