System V.4

[Michael Almond]

Newsgroups: comp.unix.sysv386
Subject: Re: Who sells 4.0?  Does Intel??
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References: <34996 at cup.portal.com> <267 at srchtec.UUCP> <1990Oct19.222636.9227 at ico.isc.com>
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In article <1990Oct19.222636.9227 at ico.isc.com> rcd at ico.isc.com (Dick Dunn) writes:
>mra at srchtec.UUCP (Michael Almond) writes about a chat with UHC.  (BTW, has
>anyone suggested to the UHC folks that they might join in here on USENET?)

	I got a call from UHC about a posting I made a few weeks back.

>> Just like all the other suppliers they don't offer online documentation...
>
>All which other suppliers?  ISC and SCO both offer online documentation
>(after, among other things, being beaten up about it by netfolk:-)...

Hmm, I didn't know they were offering online manuals.  I'd heard people mention
on here that none of the vendors offer the online manuals.  I'm glad at least
a few have come to their senses.  ESIX seems to be strongly against it.

>> Also, they said the main part of the high price involves the fees from AT&T.
>
>Could some other folks who've been reading this group for a while help me
>out here.  I'm *sure* I remember that one of the great things about V.4 was
>supposed to be that the royalties were going to be so much lower than V.3
>that the end-user price would be dirt-cheap.  Did I just hallucinate that?

I haven't heard anything about V.4 being less expensive.  Maybe so.

>> Apparently AT&T is moving away from 3.2...
>
>This just doesn't follow, somehow.  It sounds like "We want to move from
>X to Y, so we'll encourage it by raising the price on Y."  Note - I *don't*
>mean this as a criticism of what Michael wrote.  I assume he's just
>reporting; I'm just trying to make sense of it.

Yeah, that's pretty much it.  I was justing repeating what they told me.

>> Does anyone know why they charge from X Window's.  It is free software
>> to anyone who wants it from MIT.  I could understand maybe $100 for media
>> and manuals, but $795?
>
>Several possibilities; lots of conjecture here:
>	- What you get from MIT needs a lot of work to turn it into product
>	  quality with good performance.  (I certainly spent enough time in
>	  the assembly-language mud for the one X server I worked on!)

I compiled the X stuff directly from MIT on DECstation 2100's without any
problem (DECwindows su*ks).  I've also heard people have the X11R4 running
on PCs under Esix using the MIT stuff.

>	- Their X package included X11/NeWS, OpenLook, XView toolkit.
>	  Don't these all require some Sun licensing fees?  I don't think
>	  they're too expensive (since Sun is trying to encourage use of
>	  OpenLook and XView) but I thought there was some cost.

No, that is what is great about XView.  XView is free software and Sun is
porting it to PCs and will distribute it freely.

>	- Is this a developer's X package?  Since the rest of the system
>	  is developer-oriented, it seems likely.  This might include some
>	  of UHC's development tools.  It would also mean they're expecting
>	  small quantities at this point, which requires larger margins
>	  than the eventual end-user product.

Never heard of a Developer's X package. If you get X running on a machine, there
isn't anything additional needed to develope software.  All you need is the
library files to link with and the X clients (xterm, xclock, ...) use these.

- Michael


---
Michael R. Almond                                  mra at srchtec.uucp (registered)
search technology, inc.				        emory!stiatl!srchtec!mra
Atlanta, Georgia                                         (404) 441-1457 (office)
.'.'.'.'.'.'.'.'.'.'.'.'.'. Georgia Tech Alumnus .'.'.'.'.'.'.'.'.'.'.'.'.'.'.'.