1-2 / multiuser licences

[Bob Palowoda]

>From article <32411 at ism780c.isc.com>, by darryl at ism780c.isc.com (Darryl Richman):
[bit bucket]

> And that original $50-150 (or whatever) for licensing is now $200-600
> of the cost.

  This is interesting, you mean to say ISC sign a contract for the
$50-$150 range and ATT changed the contract mid-stream. 

> Which is why it is critical to have a 1-2 user system
> as well as an unlimited.  I know that as a consumer I don't much appreciate
> this, since I hardly find retailers to be value added (and in some cases,
> like autos, they are often value subtracted),
              ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  How in the world can a retailer "value subtract" from your product. Sure
they can offer different packages but I don't think they go around removeing
programs or recompile some program with less functions. If what you mean
by *value subtract* is reduceing the price, the consumer views this as
*value added*. 


> but you're gonna have
> to reform a the whole marketplace before you get around to us.
> 
  I wouldn't worry about this until *your* company seeks more 
revenue.

  
> I can only offer you my own naivette' here, but this is my understanding
> of why prices get set the way they do.  I'm not in marketing or sales,
> and (as my .signature claims below) these are only my opinions.  I
> know that a couple grand is a whole lot of money for a personal
> system, and even for a small company.  But everyone seems to be
> desparately clinging to the idea that Unix is going to be a business
> OS.  (I'd like to see some proof of concept, myself.  IBM seems to
        ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
 Proof, go down to the bookstore and pick up a couple of UNIX releated
magazines. Read the articles than forget everything you read. Now
look at the little boxes and you will notice that alot of them 
advertisements for spreadsheets, wordprocessors desktop publishing
programs. Surely they are not selling these to programmers. Look at
ATT's ads. Every one of them explain how they soulved a *business*
problem with a UNIX OS. The only reason IBM cannot sell a multi-tasking
system is they cannot get it to work without crashing every five
minutes. Wake up Darryl, UNIX is a business OS already. To give credit
where it is due I think that you and INTERACTIVE have done an
outstanding job on your product. But as the market matures and becomes
more of a consumer demand the prices will have to drop to sustain
the market. These are pressures that INTERACTIVE will have to deal 
with very soon.  As for the 1-2 user license I still hope it will
not develop into a multi-tiered marketing game to inflate the price
of UNIX. By the way does INTERACTIVE have a upgrade from
the 1-2 user to the unlimited? If so how much is it?

> be having a difficult time convincing people that they want to pay
> a few hundred dollars for multitasking.)




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