FoxBASE+

[Fred Rump]

In article <334 at telly.UUCP>, evan at telly.UUCP (Evan Leibovitch) writes:
< In article <857 at viscous>, rosso at sco.COM (Ross Oliver) writes:
< < SCO is definitely committed to continue development on the multi-user versions
< < of SCO FoxBASE+.  The SCO XENIX 386 version of SCO FoxBASE+ Release 1.0.4
< < started shipping last week.  We also have ports available for NCR Tower,
< < IBM RT, and ARIX/Unisys 5000.  We will port SCO FoxBASE+ to Sun 3 and  AT&T
< < 3B by year end.
< 
< Someone from Fox Software told me by phone that SCO was in charge of
< determining priorities of all FoxBase Unix ports. If this is true, then
<                            Don't worry - Be happy.
Evan writes that SCO should be happy with a small slice of a bigger pie.
He hints that there are more straight 286/386 systems out there running Unix V
than 3B, RT's etc. - that SCO is restricting FOX sales by limiting the product
to Xenix.

While I would push SCO to the limit to keep Fox up-to-date with its DOS
cousin, I can not see why they would or should bother with some of the other
vendor's Unixes. We do live in a capitalist society. The idea here is to make
money. Somebody had to invest resources to make Fox work under Xenix. If the
market were to indicate that Microport users would purchase Fox enmasse,
'somebody' would certainly offer the product.

There is a slight problem here though. The 386 port costs $995.

How many do you think could be sold at that price in that market?

When Xenix goes away next year, when all SCO products will run on any 286/386
product with a current Unix, then Fox too will be available to this large pie
we're talking about. But the rewards will go those that took the chance to
even offer it in the first place.

I say more power to them for they have made the market we can live from.
But let's all push SCO to not lose sight of what our DOS users already have
and we still hope for: end-user tools. It made DOS and is now expected by all.

While VP/ix is nice, it is still slow compared to what 32 bit code can do on a
real computer. And I'd rather have it all in native mode.
Fred Rump
CDI

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