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From: peter@taronga.com (Peter da Silva)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd
Subject: Re: Marketing BSD(was UNIX Lite?)
Message-ID: <Y8WG3OJ@taronga.com>
Date: 29 Jun 92 12:45:17 GMT
Article-I.D.: taronga.Y8WG3OJ
References: <C8VG6U7@taronga.com> <1992Jun29.021715.10631@ntuix.ntu.ac.sg>
Organization: Taronga Park BBS
Lines: 48
In article <1992Jun29.021715.10631@ntuix.ntu.ac.sg> eoahmad@ntuix.ntu.ac.sg (Othman Ahmad) writes:
>In article <C8VG6U7@taronga.com> peter@taronga.com (Peter da Silva) writes:
>: In article <1992Jun27.165905.27527@wobble.uucp> dlu@wobble.uucp (Doug Urner) writes:
>: >I'm curious. How do the license terms from BSDI prevent you from
>: >"show[ing] everything to a CS student" or from doing a port to another
>: >machine (assuming you are willing to pay BSDI the $200 for a right to
>: >copy)?
>: Because I want to sell UNIX Lite (or see someone selling UNIX Lite) for $50
>: a copy. ($50 being the effective price for OS/2: IBM has made the entrance
>: fee so low there's no alternative).
>Why not sell 386BSD Unix for $25.00 because it lacks vital features at the
>moment.
Because it's lacking enough features it won't sell at any price to the
people I want to target.
>By the time you finish those developments IBM and MSDOS would have done
>something even better.
They haven't come up with anything as good as UNIX in the first place, so
how will they come up with something better? UNIX isn't just a feature
set: it's a system design philosophy that lets amazing tools just fall out
almost effortlessly.
Have you ever developed software for one of those "checklist of features"
systems? It's a nightmare getting all the knobs tuned right so you can
interoperate. The result is that programs don't interoperate.
>I can't help intervening again because I got a strange feeling the
>participants of the saving BSD discussions seem to miss the customers needs.
I'm not interested in saving BSD. I'm interested in not having to reinvent
the wheel every time some corporate marketeer gets a bug up his arse about
some nifty new system. UNIX is the only available API that can even potentially
operate over the range of systems from $40 to $40M.
>Why don't you people read about
>the success stories of Bill Kildal with CP/M and Bill Gates with MSDOS.
Why don't you? It's Gary Kildall. Gary knew where he was going... Bill just
lucked out.
--
`-_-'
Have you hugged your wolf today? 'U`
Peter da Silva, Taronga Park BBS, Houston, TX +1 713 568 0480/1032