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From: hammond@petrus.UUCP (Rich A. Hammond)
Newsgroups: net.unix
Subject: Re: Limiting logons to licensed number: how?
Message-ID: <442@petrus.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 5-Aug-85 08:30:42 EDT
Article-I.D.: petrus.442
Posted: Mon Aug  5 08:30:42 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 6-Aug-85 10:32:26 EDT
References: <1029@ucbtopaz.CC.Berkeley.ARPA> <112@vcvax1.UUCP> <169@telesoft.UUCP>
Organization: Bell Communications Research, Inc
Lines: 41

> In article <112@vcvax1.UUCP> paul@vcvax1.UUCP (paul) writes:
> >I should point out that our licensing from AT&T is on a per-user
> >basis, so we are legally obligated to restrict the number of
> >users to the licensed number.
> 
>     KEITH F. PILOTTI -- TeleSoft says:
>     ...  How does it cost AT&T more to develop Unix depending
>     on the number of people that can login to my machine?  This also implies
>     that if I normally have 5 users, and for one week a year I have 10, I'm
>     forced to pay for 10 users always. 

You're right, it doesn't cost more to develop a multi-user version.
The idea is to charge roughly what the economic value to the purchaser is.
This means that if you really need those 10 people for that week then it
is worth your while to pay to allow them on.  Also, the licenses (I think)
go something like: single user, up to 8 users, up to 16 users, up to 32 users,
and more than 32 users.
> 
>     I can't help but think that the whole point behind this is to charge
>     "what the market will bear", ie. to squeeze every last dime out of the
>     consumer's pocket, regardless of justification. 

The justification is that you're using a tool which is assumed to be more
valuable the more users you have and your willingness to pay reflects this.

Also, if you wanted a flat price for UNIX, it wouldn't be low!  What the
per user structure does is allow a single user system to compete with MS-DOS.

The competition with MS-DOS is also the reason for the "unbundling" of UNIX
into a basic part plus additional packages.  If you look at the way IBM PC
sales work, the base operating system is essentially zip (8 programs?!) and
the user/owner buys additional packages (spreadsheet, dbms, ...) to do
what she wants.  AT&T can't afford to give away a whole set of programs
for the same price that IBM gives away a few, so they stripped out as much
as they could to make a small package for sale on small machines.

To some extent this is "what the market will bear"  but I want AT&T to
make a profit, after all who wants IBM/MCI to be the only major computer/
telecommunications supplier?

Rich Hammond (Bellcore,not part of AT&T) ihnp4|ucbvax !bellcore!hammond