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From: srodawa@vela.acs.oakland.edu (Dr. Srodawa)
Newsgroups: comp.os.mach
Subject: Re: Mach for i386
Message-ID: <3280@vela.acs.oakland.edu>
Date: 7 Oct 90 03:49:49 GMT
References: <1990Oct3.162958.28562@cs.cmu.edu> <8785@helios.TAMU.EDU> <3270@vela.acs.oakland.edu> <8874@helios.TAMU.EDU>
Reply-To: srodawa@vela.acs.oakland.edu (Dr. Srodawa)
Organization: Oakland University, Rochester MI
Lines: 46

In article <8874@helios.TAMU.EDU> cnh5730@calvin.tamu.edu (Chuck Herrick) writes:
>     Oh really? But when you buy UNIX from SCO what you're paying for
>     is a product privately developed and produced supposedly with no
>     funding from U.S. tax dollars... Mach has been funded virtually
>     entirely by the U.S. Government, which means that OUR TAX DOLLARS
>     HAVE ALREADY BEEN SPENT to fund some professors and graduate
>     students to develop it. DO Y0U EXPECT US TO PAY FOR IT TWICE?
>     I want an answer to the following question: just how much is
>     MtXinu paying to the U.S. Government for Mach so the U.S. 
>     Govenment can recoup its investment in Mach and CMU in the form
>     of U.S. tax dollars? 
>     And while we're asking, how does a private enterprise like MtXinu
>     get its hands on a publicly-funded project like Mach? And who is
>     MtXinu anyway? Are they a private shell formed to make a
>     profit from work already paid for by U.S. taxpayers?

I don't see it your way at all.  The Mach "product" really consists of
two parts..the part written at CMU and underwritten by tax dollars and
tha parts written by AT&T and Berkeley and Sun.  When this is sold to
universities, the cost is very low, because AT&T and Berkeley charge
universities very little for source code licenses.  CMU must verify
these licenses and then provides access via servers..they don't even
ship a product.

When you buy a product from a place like MtXinu, you ARE NOT PAYING
TWICE for a product.  The price charged by such a firm covers the
cost of the licenses and royalties and the cost of value added by
the distributing company..testing, improvement, integration,
customer service, etc.  So long as CMU doesn't charge them for
the work developed at Carnegie-Mellon under federal grants, you
are not paying twice.

This same thing happens when you buy a TCP/IP package from a vendor.
They may have started with the Berkeley TCP/IP package, which is available
absolutely free to anyone.  They then installed it within their
environment, which usually means putting in the socket hooks.  You pay for
a product which started as a freebie with the value added additions written
by the vendor.  You could have it for free if you wanted to put in all
the hooks yourself.  Ron.


-- 
| Ronald J. Srodawa               | Internet: srodawa@unix.secs.oakland.edu |
| School of Engineering and CS    | UUCP:     srodawa@egrunix.UUCP          |
| Oakland University              | Voice:    (313) 370-2247                |
| Rochester, Michigan  48309-4401 |                                         |