Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcsun!ukc!strath-cs!jim From: jim@cs.strath.ac.uk (Jim Reid) Newsgroups: comp.sys.sequent Subject: Re: Dynix licensing Keywords: license, user-limits Message-ID: <296@baird.cs.strath.ac.uk> Date: 3 Oct 89 17:18:19 GMT References: <6006@wolfen.cc.uow.oz> <294@baird.cs.strath.ac.uk> <12288@boulder.Colorado.EDU> Sender: news@cs.strath.ac.uk Reply-To: jim@cs.strath.ac.uk Organization: Comp. Sci. Dept., Strathclyde Univ., Scotland. Lines: 28 In article <12288@boulder.Colorado.EDU> rsk@boulder.Colorado.EDU (Rich Kulawiec) writes: >In article <294@baird.cs.strath.ac.uk> jim@cs.strath.ac.uk writes: >>I find it distasteful that this policy means that university departments >>like ours have to pay enormous sums for a Sequent UNIX distribution >>that's binary only. It is all the more galling when AT&T will gladly let us >>have a source licence for the same machine for a few hundred dollars. > >One approach which will partially solve your problem would to buy an >AT&T source license and then send it (with whatever fee it is these days) >to Berkeley for a 4.3 BSD source tape. At the utility level, the BSD >and Dynix distributions are reasonably close. I know that this isn't >an all-encompassing solution to the problem, but it may help. The 'problem' is not the availability or non-availablity of Sequent source code. [We already have source code licences from AT&T and Berkeley anyway.] The problem is the anomalous way that licensing is handled. AT&T will give source licences to educational users for a few hundred dollars. The same educational users have to pay thousands of dollars in UNIX licence fees (the bulk of which will ultimately go to AT&T) when they buy a system like a Sequent. Why? It is a Good and Noble Thing that AT&T supply cheap educational licences for UNIX. It's a pity that UNIX vendors cannot do likewise, either because they don't want to or because their agreements with AT&T prevent it. Jim