Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site mouton.UUCP 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: <80@mouton.UUCP> Date: Wed, 13-Jun-84 09:26:28 EDT Article-I.D.: mouton.80 Posted: Wed Jun 13 09:26:28 1984 Date-Received: Thu, 14-Jun-84 00:11:02 EDT References: <77@mouton.UUCP>, <7378@rochester.UUCP> Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill Lines: 60 Note: These are my opiniions, I don't know what AT&T is trying to do! Where are all these real-world people? Apollo has some 2000 units in the field. Sun has a couple of hundred, I would guess. How many of these are give-aways? How many went to hackers of one sort or another? How many are actually used by these application-oriented people? Would you put up with Unix for $20K with only binaries, even though you DO know something about it? First of all, I think the cost of the 3B2 is around 2x that of the IBM PC/XT or $10k not $20k. Second, AT&T is not selling UN*X for the fun. They are in it for profit. While they will make all sorts of claims about how nice it is, they are only trying to get people to buy it instead of an IBM or DEC PC (at least for the 3B2) with the IBM or DEC operating system. The "real-world people" that I think AT&T sees itself going after are the people who bought IBM PC's, with a trivial operating system in binary only form. They are not out to put SUN out of business. OK, if you believe AT&T wants the OEM market only (that's not what you imply, or what I believe). Otherwise, Johny Smith, Inc. can port all those Unix commands, and undersell AT&T any day of the week. And AT&T also isn't prepared to ship lots of end-user-type application software. I don't think they want the OEM market only, but they are interested in it. They would rather collect a license fee (even a small one) for UN*X than have fee go to other vendors like microsoft. The person who ports the UN*X commands still has to pay a fee per machine they put them on so AT&T still makes something. AT&T is probably doing what IBM did and getting people to put together end-user software for them. IBM has lots of software for the PC which IBM didn't produce internally. I've worked for two companies that shipped Unix boxes, and this approach was discussed at both. It was strictly a martketing scheme to get a little sugar on top (or make the basic machine look cheaper, however you like). I've never denied that we're talking about a marketing scheme. It would have made it easier for your companies to cut the price if the license fee varied with the amount of software included. If System V resellers aren't selling 3B's, just cheap AT&T (system) software, how does AT&T make any money? AT&T certainly isn't going to guarantee that their Unix commands will run on everyone else's hardware. And if AT&T is charging a bundle for the commands anyway, why wouldn't the reseller port the commands herself, and take the profits instead of handing them on to AT&T? AT&T collects money per system sold. That's more profit than if the operating system were MSD*S. Further, the number of machines running UN*X is important, AT&T wants a large UN*X machine market share, even if not all the UN*X machines are AT&T's. No, I wouldn't expect AT&T to guarantee their commands nor even sell them directly to end users of other hardware (except DEC VAXEN and 11/70). The charging is per machine sold and I suspect will also include per collection of software. Hence AT&T gets a fee from the reseller unless the reseller rewrites the commands herself and there are better things to do than rewrite 'cat.' Rich