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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