Interactive and me - An open letter to ISC.

[Jim Gottlieb]

Tom Reingold <tr at samadams.princeton.edu> says:
> I am amazed that a basic point has not yet been made yet!
> 
> Copy protection, serialization and other methods may prevent illegal
> copies.  But they do not necessarily make someone buy a product!  If
> someone can't copy something illegally, he may just do without it.  He
> may not be a potential sale at all.

This is accurate.  I know cases of students (and others) who pool 
together to buy expensive software, including the Unix operating
system.  Illegal copying is taking place, but no revenue is being lost
because there is no way each person could have afforded the product on
his/her own.  In fact, a sale may have been gained.


And Michael Jank <jank at ttidca.TTI.COM> says:
> I have the solution:  Software vendors should price their products such
> that businesses could afford to purchase copies for each machine.

Another excellent point.  Consider how difficult it is to convince
management to change over from DOS to Unix when you get to the issue
of cost and you get to tell them that their $70 operating system must be
replaced by a $1500 system, ON EACH MACHINE.  This may be not much less
than what they paid for the machines themselves.

Again, a foolproof copy-protection system may cost the vendor sales as
a few legal copies bring in more revenue than no legal copies.

Why don't vendors offer, for a cheaper price, a license to load
software onto an additional machine.  No shipping charges.  No printing
charges.  Their incremental cost is zero.  We don't need ten copies of
the manual to TCP/IP.


On the support issue, I must say that when asked (and I'm asked a
lot) I used to recommend that people buy Interactive Unix.  Now, I
ususally recommend ESIX.  Support is the reason, and Interactive better
fix it soon or they are going to alienate their entire customer base.

When in a jam, I used to be able to call Interactive in Santa Monica
and speak with someone who knew something.  Now I am asked to pay $645
a year for the privledge, not of speaking with someone immediately, but
of getting a callback the next day.  When I am out at a customer's site
and have a problem, I need an answer fairly soon.  I can't wait around
a day for someone to get back to me.  Another point that has not been
mentioned here is that the $645 buys "15 telephone consultations".  A
serious problem could lead me to use up a third of those in a week.
I wouldn't even mind paying $1/minute on a 900 number for support, if
I really got to speak with someone knowledgable.

--
Jim Gottlieb 					Info Connections, Tokyo, Japan
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