Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcsun!hp4nl!star.cs.vu.nl!ast
From: ast@cs.vu.nl (Andy Tanenbaum)
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: Re: The future of Minix
Message-ID: <5443@star.cs.vu.nl>
Date: 16 Feb 90 13:28:24 GMT
References: <1500@crash.cts.com>
Sender: news@cs.vu.nl
Organization: Fac. Wiskunde & Informatica, VU, Amsterdam
Lines: 30

In article <1500@crash.cts.com> cwr@pnet01.cts.com (Will Rose) writes:
>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
A couple of messages back someone noted that he had just bought a chemistry
book for $70.  I suspect that if that publisher had to throw in 17 diskettes
as well, they wouldn't come out that much lower than $120.  Furthermore, I bet
they wouldn't permit their author to distribute free upgrades to the disks
indefinitely on the net.  Version 2.0 and beyond will have the same license
as the current one: you may may 2 copies, so three people can share the $120.
I think compared to what Microsoft, Lotus, and most other companies charge,
this is not outrageous.

> I bought the slip-case
>with Minix 1.2, (I already had the textbook) 
Why did you buy the slipcase version when the yellow box with the disks
was available for much less?  The slipcase version is aimed at the professional
market.  When MINIX was first announced, a couple of hundred people a day came
running into the Computer Literacy Bookstore in Silicon Valley wanting to buy
the software.  The owner called P-H about twice a day bugging them for a 
version he could sell.  That's when P-H made the slipcase version.

There are no plans at all to change the current approach, except perhaps to
shift the documentation from the book to the manual that comes with the disks
to reduce the size of the book.  I will keep posting upgrades to the net so
anyone who wants can have them for free.  

Andy Tanenbaum (ast@cs.vu.nl)