Future direction of A/UX?

[John Gilmore]

phil at Apple.COM (Phil Ronzone) wrote:
> John Gilmore recently posted a response to a question from Ken Mandelberg
> on the "Future direction of A/UX". Reading Mr. Gilmore's reply (in my humble
> and subjective personal opinion), it looks like the reply is based more on
> the author's problems in selling his product and perhaps lack of as much help
> as he would like get from Apple.

These problems and lacks have given me insight into the future
direction of A/UX.  In my humble and subjective personal opinion.

> Mr. Gilmore brings up 5 points I'd like to respond to:
> 
>     1. That's because Apple is unlikely to provide any [UNIX only features]

Quoted out of context.  The context was "future versions of A/UX".
Phil's entire response is about *current* versions of A/UX, which are,
I admit, (get those hot pincers away, Phil!  :) Unix systems.

>                                                   Release 1.1 includes
>        POSIX, better Mac binary supporte, HFX, increased SCSI support,
>        better drivers, AppleTalk, and more.

Of that list, only POSIX is a Unix-only feature.  The rest are specific
to the MacOS and to their hardware.

>     2. And it accounts for why Apple is not marketing A/UX -- 
>        they don't WANT to sell copies
> 
>     *  Well, that's news to me, the A/UX engineering, product management and
>        marketing groups. We've sold far more A/UX systems in our first year
>        than SUN sold in their first year.

Sun didn't sell any A/UX systems in their first year.  :)  But seriously folks,
Sun sold 1,100 Sun-1's total -- and some of those were sold the second year.
I notice that he didn't challenge my figure of 1,500 to 3,000 A/UX systems.

>     4. The reason to sell A/UX at all is that GSA won't let US Government
>        departments buy any computers that can't be upgraded to run Unix.
>     *  Or MS/DOS. Certainly a (repeat a) reason that we did A/UX was to sell
>        to the government markets.

Give me another reason that Apple did A/UX, besides government buying rules.

How many machines are bid to the government as MacOS machines
("upgradeable to Unix"), and how many as real Unix machines?  Lemme guess --
you can't talk about that.

>     5. If they can get the few A/UX users locked in to the proprietary MacOS
>        toolbox, they won't be able to switch to more cost-effective hardware.
> 
>     *  Awwww, come on. We just don't think like that. We didn't bust our
>        buns over SVVS, POSIX, X, NFS, YP, domains, TCP/IP and other effective
>        standards to let claims like that be thrown at us.

Let's knock over a few strawmen, shall we?  Everybody who sells Unix
has, or promises, SVVS, POSIX, X, NFS, TCP, etc.  This has nothing to
do with whether the Apple software strategy is to lock people in to the
MacOS toolbox.

I am not accusing Phil or the A/UX group of trying to lock people in,
by the way.  This strategy comes from high levels at Apple.  If they
don't want to lock people in, why don't they license the MacOS Toolbox
to other hardware vendors?  I'm sure a number of companies would like
to run Mac applications on non-Apple hardware.  Instead, Apple bought
the one company (Cadmus) that was reverse engineering it, and sues
everyone else who even looks similar.

>                                                           After all, what
>        did you expect us to use for our windowing/UI software? New Wave??? :-)

The only windowing software Apple currently sells for A/UX is X
Windows, and New Wave will certainly run on it (over the net).  There
is a "term" program that comes with A/UX, but I don't think a terminal
emulator with more than one window counts as "windowing software".  The
MacOS Toolbox support is not "windowing software" either, since you can
only run one "window" at a time.  Even the MacOS can run multiple
applications in multiple windows, but not the A/UX Toolbox!

> > We have gotten zilch help from the formal
> > channels at Apple.  They don't WANT other display technologies or user
> > interfaces to compete with the Toolbox.  Especially not ones from Sun!
> Are you saying the corporate line is solidly against you?? You personally?
> I don't understand this point at all.

Apple's corporate line is solidly against Grasshopper, since
Grasshopper sells NeWS, the Sun window system, PostScript on the
screen, etc, on Apple hardware.  I am one of three partners in Grasshopper.

> I have personally worked with several small startup software companies that
> based their reason-to-exist on A/UX. Like any startup, it can be a "bet your
> mortagage" situtation. When things look tough, perhaps it is easiest to
> blame the Apple, BUT, is it fair????

No, it isn't fair to blame Apple.  I'm not blaming Apple.  The problem
was that we expected there to be a market for A/UX software.  1500
machines is not much of a market; even though we sold to a reasonable
percentage of this market, we can't make money at it.  Apple is not to
blame for this, we should have figured out the market size before we
started.  The point of my message was to warn other people who haven't
figured out "the A/UX market" yet (both developers and users).

Grasshopper has *no* dissatisfied customers that I know of.  Everyone
who bought our product, likes it.  Nobody ever attempted to return it,
and many have bought upgrades and additional copies.  We just never
found enough people who could run it, because it depends on A/UX.

> Tell us WHAT you didn't like or that makes your selling efforts so
> difficult. Don't tell us your mystical intepretation of Apple policy.
> Comments like "I need X in color" or "POSIX 13" to sell so-and-so are very
> helpful.

I don't need technical features.  I need there to be more than 1500 machines.
Sun ships 10,000 to 20,000 Unix machines a month; there's a market for Sun
software.  Where's the A/UX software market?

Where are the Apple ads for A/UX?  Where are the promotions?  The computer
stores with A/UX in the window (or even on the showroom floor!)?

Another area is that Apple will provide mailing lists for developers to
sell to MacOS users, but not to A/UX users.  The only way we have found
to locate A/UX users is by watching who posts to the net!  Apple won't
tell us about the customers, and won't tell the customers about us.
They won't even tell us what computer stores are authorized to sell A/UX.
Finding 1,500 needles in a worldwide haystack is more than we can do by
ourselves.

> TELL US WHAT YOU NEED. WE LISTEN. O.K., we don't have infinite manpower and
> could do it all, but we listen.

I need there to be more than 1500 machines to sell to, and a way to find them.

Correction or corroboration welcome.  Any other A/UX developers on the net?
-- 
John Gilmore    {sun,pacbell,uunet,pyramid,amdahl}!hoptoad!gnu    gnu at toad.com
  A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State,
  the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.