Limiting logons to licensed number: how?

[Peter DaSilva]

> The justification is that you're using a tool which is assumed to be more
> valuable the more users you have and your willingness to pay reflects this.

Most people aren't willing to pay $1000 for a personal operating system. The
market distribution reflects that.

> Also, if you wanted a flat price for UNIX, it wouldn't be low!  What the

Why not?

> per user structure does is allow a single user system to compete with MS-DOS.

It doesn't. The single user system still costs more than MS-DOS, and the
development costs of UNIX HAVE to have been depreciated long ago...

> The competition with MS-DOS is also the reason for the "unbundling" of UNIX
> into a basic part plus additional packages.  If you look at the way IBM PC
> sales work, the base operating system is essentially zip (8 programs?!) and
> the user/owner buys additional packages (spreadsheet, dbms, ...) to do
> what she wants.  AT&T can't afford to give away a whole set of programs
> for the same price that IBM gives away a few, so they stripped out as much

Why not? If they did this you'ld see many many more people buying Xenix and
putting money into AT&T's coffers.

> as they could to make a small package for sale on small machines.

But it's not selling. It still costs $1000 to get UNIX for your PC. MS-DOS
comes with the machine.

> To some extent this is "what the market will bear"  but I want AT&T to
> make a profit, after all who wants IBM/MCI to be the only major computer/
> telecommunications supplier?

And if AT&T doesn't do something about their licensing they will be.

> Rich Hammond (Bellcore,not part of AT&T) ihnp4|ucbvax !bellcore!hammond

Peter da Silva, UNIX fan.