OS costs

[Craig W. Shaver]

In article <1990Aug28.182758.29036 at ico.isc.com>, rcd at ico.isc.com (Dick Dunn) writes:
> In an article following up on looking for good prices on 386ish UNIX,
	...
> 
> Can 386 UNIX get to the "commodity market"?  Depends on a lot of stuff.
> In the past, we've been on the wrong side of a positive-feedback loop:
> Prices are too high, so people don't buy; the quantities stay too low to
> get the prices down enough.
> 
> Comments?
> -- 

When the micro started out in the late 70's and early 80's it was mainly sold
to hobbyists.  These people developed incredible things on very primative
equipment, but it took a while for the mass market to catch on.  When itty
bitty machine company introduced the "pc" business use caught on big and
the mass market started to generate good momentum.  The stories of big
money (lotus, microstuff, etal) brought more people in and BOOM.

I can smell the hackers out there with their own full blown UNIX 
system at a cheap price hacking away.  I can also sense
the lure that UNIX is posing to DOSOIDS that have tapped out the 640k
segmented (demented) architechture and want to build some REAL software.
UNIX offers more to these hackers, but is a tough hill to climb for someone
used to DOS programming.

However, the UNIX market is somewhat different.  It is in competition 
with the mini's and mainframes on the one hand, with workstations 
on another, and to a small degree with pc's.  But, the people in the
business now want to charge and get what the market will bear.  That 
means less volume and poor software.  That will change in the next 2 
years.

As more hackers rev up their 386's, 486's and get some cheap UNIX going
they will start to spit out some decent software.  This will be low
overhead software and they will be content just to recover some costs.
Some of this stuff will be fantastic, maybe one or two will become
blockbusters.  It may take a little longer than DOS/pc's to get this
out because of the learning curve for (good) UNIX development.

What can we do to accelerate this?  Buy ESIX because it is cheap and
they have a dialog on the net.  Try to use ESIX in more business situations.
If ESIX is successful because they have a low price and good software
then SCO and ISC will be forced to follow.  I also think that
all the 386 UNIX vendors should be more open with non-ATT parts of
the code.   I mean the drivers.  Put out source on these things and
let the hackers at em.  You will see some pretty good drivers that
have been tested on quite a bit of equipment and probably see
some nifty innovations.  The UNIX shops could probably reduce their
staff quite a bit on that one.

more comments?  

	Craig W. Shaver

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