Question about value of a source licence

[John Peters]

In article <229 at dataspan.UUCP>, kratz at dataspan.UUCP (Geoff Kratz) writes:
<^> Our site is considering getting a source licence, but we need some good reasons
<^> to justify the cost.
<^> 
<^> What I need to know (from sites that have source licencing) is this: was
<^> the price of the source licence worth it?  I need to know if getting a
<^> source licence will actually pay for itself (ie: we got one and made
<^> $X millions :-) which paid for the licence in N months!) and any other
<^> advantages that having source will bring us, both short-term and long-term.
<^> Money for software-type stuff (things they cannot wrap their hands around) is
<^> tight here, but if I can find enough good reasons, our Management may say
<^> yes.
<^> 
<^> Please don't suggest dropping some of the new hardware, as we need all the
<^> console and file-server power we can get (Management has come to the
<^> realization that we can get more work done with multiple windows
<^> than with plain terminals).
<^> 
<^> Since ours may not be the only site in this situation, it would
<^> probably beneficial to followup here rather than mailing answers to me.
<^> Any mail I get I will summarize.  Thanks in advance.

	The only person that can tell you wether source would benefit you
or not is you.  Here at Unisys - Salt Lake City we are supporting the
UNIX O.S. so it is more than required.  Even when I was just a student (all
of two weeks ago) I learned more from the UNIX source about programming than
from my instructors.  If I needed to know how a problem needed to be solved,
I could usually find it in the sources somewhere.  This can be especially
good for problems that seem to be system dependant (I was working on MC680X0,
Intel, and VAX systems).  As for suggesting dropping new hardware, I 
(being the hacker we all try not to be) would never suggest that.

						--  Johnnie --