Is System V going down the tube?

[John Bass]

A couple of things to adjust your numbers of the installed base and
who runs what by:

	I'm not sure where SCO got their numbers but it is likely the
	The AT&T number of licenses sold. Two things make the installed
	base for XENIX look larger than it really is. First Fortune 32:16's
	have a UNIX license thru Microsoft's XENIX ... the Fortune doesn't
	run XENIX as distributed by Microsoft. Fortune did it's own M68k
	port which is a mixture of V7 & 4.1. The Microsoft guys gave Fortune
	a good deal on the price ... and Fortunes volume pushed XENIX quickly
	down the AT&T curve. Secondly from what I can tell all tandy model
	16 hard disk expansions come with a xenix license. It is clear that
	some number of these are not really running UNIX ... but are
	really being used as hard drives for CPM using the Mod 16 as a
	mod 12 ... or were simply installed on a mod 12.

	Fortune and Tandy represent the large share of XENIX's ...
	I have forgotten the numbers. Any one else know the breakdown?

	Secondly, it takes 12-18 months to bring a new kernel release to
	high volume production release ... this is a non-trival effort
	tomake sure that when you make 50,000 copies that you don't have
	to make 50,000 updates the next month to fix a major bug.
	Microsoft XENIX OEMS have been shipping some version of 2.x ..
	which is V7 based. Microsoft is just now releasing versions of
	3.x which is system III/V ... it will take 6-12 months for many
	of the installed base to decide to upgrade. After that time
	the distribution of who runs what will by greatly biased toward
	System V.

	Nearly every major vendor is releasing a System V upgrade or new
	product in the next year ... it truly is on the verge of being the
	DEFACTO standard by the second half of '85.

By this time next year I expect that the installed base for V7 + 4.x will
be something much less than 10% -- the balance will be System 3/5

Any comments?

John