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From: wsb@boise.Eng.Sun.COM (Walt Brainerd)
Newsgroups: comp.text
Subject: Re: Price of DWB 3.1
Message-ID: <3691@exodus.Eng.Sun.COM>
Date: 29 Nov 90 17:26:46 GMT
References: <1990Nov5.022533.29625@nixtdc.uucp> <16706@letni.UUCP> <1990Nov28.193202.19684@cbnewsl.att.com>
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In article <1990Nov28.193202.19684@cbnewsl.att.com>, npn@cbnewsl.att.com (nils-peter.nelson) writes:
> 
> ...  I've been unable to
> get the attention of anyone at Sun and the others, but

IBM now bundles DWB 2.0 with their 6000 system.
Others will bundle some old version of troff with SVR4.
Suppose one of these companies decided they wanted to
bundle DWB 3.1 instead.  According to my reading of
the sublicensing agreement, they must pay AT&T a royalty
of max ($120, 1% x system price, 10% x DWB price), with
a maximum of $750 for each binary distributed.  Suppose
that next year this company ships 50,000 workstations
selling for $20,000 each (a little low for Sun and perhaps
IBM).  They then owe royalties of 1% x $2B = $20M.  I
suppose AT&T might work out a better deal than the
standard volume discounts, but maybe this explains why
you haven't been able to get their attention.

It's great that we all agree that ditroff, though creaky,
is still a nice thing to have around.  The problem is that
not many people are willing to pay a very large price
for it, especially with gnu troff and tex available.  Hence
it will be difficult to justify bundling it and it will
be more difficult for a small VAR to make any money
reselling binaries when the initial cost and royalties
are not Real Cheap.
--
Walt Brainerd        Sun Microsystems, Inc.
wsb@eng.sun.com      MS MTV 5-40
                     Mountain View, CA 94043
                     415/336-5991