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From: cwr@pnet01.cts.com (Will Rose)
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: The future of Minix
Message-ID: <1500@crash.cts.com>
Date: 15 Feb 90 06:56:01 GMT
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Organization: People-Net [pnet01], El Cajon CA
Lines: 39

It's been quite instructional to watch the growth of Minix over the last
few years, especially to one interested in business and social systems, 
as well as computing.  It seems that PH has now realised that it is secure
in its niche, and can charge accordingly.  (No-one with the skill will
ever have the time to build another Minix; if they did, it would have great
difficulty getting established against the current version.)
 
Certainly $120 for a program with no development cost (subsumed into the
original textbook cost), no support cost (apart from printing ast's email
address), and no maintenance cost (partly free from the net, and partly
subsumed into the cost of ast's next edition) is good business.  My guess
is that 1.6 and later will allow no copying, and PH will try to move Minix
as far upscale as the market will bear.  The fun will be to see how far
they get, without falling flat on their faces or pulling in the competition.
 
In fact, the figures may be better than that.  I bought the slip-case
with Minix 1.2, (I already had the textbook) and the slipcase stuff was
fairly useless.  Most students probably buy the textbook already - it's
a very good one; they will all still need the book, and so adding other
material to disk sales shouldn't cannabalise text book sales at all.
 
However, at the end of the day student's using Minix will be paying 
$120-130 for the program, $40-$50 for the textbook, and $20-$30 for
a book on using Unix (eg. McGilton and Morgan).  A lot of money for
one course, or even two; I wonder what will happen next?
 
Astonishing good luck, Sirs, and remember us as, the Filthistan Trio
 
Will Rose
 
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