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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!allegra!mouton!hammond
From: hammond@mouton.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.arch,net.followup,net.micro
Subject: Re: AT&T vs. the toolkit approach
Message-ID: <77@mouton.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 12-Jun-84 06:54:56 EDT
Article-I.D.: mouton.77
Posted: Tue Jun 12 06:54:56 1984
Date-Received: Wed, 13-Jun-84 00:11:59 EDT
References: <283@stcvax.UUCP>, <861@tekchips.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill
Lines: 18

I think that AT&T is responding to the marketplace - not the hacker
marketplace, but the real world one they hope will buy their machines.

Essentially, MSD*S comes with very few programs and as therefore quite
cheap to license on a mass basis (I heard $8/CPU for lots of CPUs).
Everyone buying personal computers running MSD*S or equivalent then goes
out and pays extra for the programs they really want.  I think AT&T is
trying to structure their marketing the same way.

In some ways this seems to be a sign of a willingness of AT&T to help
it's System V resellers.  If only 3B's had System V then they could
give away the software if you bought the machine.  However, if other
companies port System V to other machines, then AT&T stands to gain more
by not making it too expensive to put on those other machines, hence the
MSD*S type strategy of buy what things you want.

Without a price list even this is conjecture, but no worse than anyone else's.
Rich Hammond    Bell Communications Research,    allegra!hammond