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From: guy@rlgvax.UUCP (Guy Harris)
Newsgroups: net.micro
Subject: Re: AT&T and the 3B2 (in defense of partitioning)
Message-ID: <1986@rlgvax.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 3-Jun-84 23:05:18 EDT
Article-I.D.: rlgvax.1986
Posted: Sun Jun  3 23:05:18 1984
Date-Received: Tue, 5-Jun-84 20:17:43 EDT
References: <428@hogpc.UUCP> <193@dicomed.UUCP>
Organization: CCI Office Systems Group, Reston, VA
Lines: 38

> The point is that most people WANT a loaded [object goes here].

Is that truly the case for "object" == "UNIX system"?  A car with power
steering, power brakes, stereo, air conditioner, etc., etc. doesn't require
extra skills to use the options.  However, a shop buying a small UNIX box
(remember, the 3B2 isn't a big 40-100 user development machine, it's a
small box) may not *have* any C programmers, or indeed any programmers at
all; it may be a small business that wants to run its accounting and word
processing on a small computer and possibly provide financial analysis
programs for the owner.  If these people were told, "Well, if you want to
give up some disk space you could otherwise use for accounting files and
documents and spreadsheets, you can get a program that allows you to write
programs in the C language and run them on this machine," they'd probably
say thanks, but no thanks.

I agree it can be used as a marketing tool, but I don't know that that's
how it actually is used.  Given that the computers are being sold by AT&T,
the argument that "well, the manufacturer pays AT&T the same price for
the binary sublicense, regardless of whether the system offers a C compiler
or not" doesn't apply.  If AT&T unbundles UNIX in the same fashion, the
same would hold true for other systems.

If partitioning is used as an excuse to raise prices, I agree, it's annoying.
It's annoying that the machine-readable form of the UNIX documentation, other
than the User's, Administrator's, and Programmer's Manuals, is no longer
provided as part of the basic System V package; on the other hand, if
unbundling that documentation makes the purchasers that actually use it
pay for the actual cost of providing it, I can't really fault AT&T for it.

Let the market decide.  If, indeed, most purchasers of small UNIX boxes
including the 3B2 want the full system, and shun the 3B2 because the full
system costs extra, AT&T will come around or end up with warehouses full
of 3B2's.  If most purchasers of small UNIX boxes couldn't care less whether
such a box comes with all of System V, the 3B2 won't be hurt by the partitioning
and most customers will get what they want.

	Guy Harris
	{seismo,ihnp4,allegra}!rlgvax!guy