*BSD News Article 3801


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From: lm@slovax.Eng.Sun.COM (Larry McVoy)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd
Subject: Re: Restrictions on 'free' UNIX / 386BSD (Re: selling 386BSD)
Date: 18 Aug 1992 06:01:22 GMT
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Inc.  Mt. View, Ca.
Lines: 27
Message-ID: <l914hiINN1o3@appserv.Eng.Sun.COM>
References: <22221@venera.isi.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: slovax

allard@isi.edu (Dennis Allard) writes:
: So, you might argue, that prevents shrink wrapping since noone would
: buy it.  I wonder about that.  The advantages to shrink wrapping,
: viz., on the shelf availability, quality bound documentation, tech.
: support for registered owners, update mailing list membership, etc.
: are often worth the price of shrinkwrap, even if a free copy (or
: stolen copy, in the case of noncopyleft material) is avaiable at no
: charge.

This is, by the way, exactly how Borland made their money off of Turbo
Pascal on CPM machines (yeah, way back when).  There was a pascal
compiler out there that cost $500 or so and then Borland came along
with the $50 Turbo Pascal package.  They did one very smart thing - the
manual is a paperback book, not an easily copied looseleaf binder.
People were typically willing to let you copy the disks but people got
really pissed if you were to borrow their docs and return them trashed
from copying them.  The general attitude was "look, it's reasonably
priced, go get a copy and leave me alone".

I personally would find $50-100 for access to compiled and tested major
releases of X, gcc, 386BSD, etc., quite reasonable.  I like having
source, but I have real work to do - I don't want to sit around
babysitting gcc through yet another compile.

I think there is a market for freeware that costs money.
---
Larry McVoy			(415) 336-7627			 lm@sun.com