ksh availability

[Griff Smith]

>>> Well, I don't know about you, but it only cost me $800 for UNIX, including
>>> the csh.  Now they want to sell me the "ksh" for another $2000.  No thanks.
>>> This is one piece of software that for the price deserves to be pirated!
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>>Point 1: (reasonable rebuttal)...
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>Counterpoint:
>Educational institutions pay $800 to get source licenses for Unix Sys V.
>Another $150 (?) will get a Berkeley distribution tape. Do you think many
>of us are going to pay $2000 for ksh?  No!  Nor are many of us going
>to shell out the bucks that AT&T is charging for the new uucp stuff.
>I don't know about other places, but we can't afford it here.
>
>I guess many educational institutions, especially the public ones, will
>never find out if the Korn shell is all that great, or if Honey DanBer
>uucp is the niftiest thing since sliced yogurt.   Whether that will
>affect the future market for other AT&T goodies is beyond my ability
>to forsee.

I suppose the "software for the people" contingent will rise in
righteous indignation, but...

Assuming that the current academic price for System V is still $800, we
are still giving it away.  If your school can't afford normal
commercial software prices for at least some key utilities, it must be
a shoestring operation.  When I was at the University of Pittsburgh, it
was "business as usual" to shell out about $5000/year for a software
maintenance contract; we had to pay $10000 for the "virtual memory"
upgrade for our TOPS-10 operating systems.  Any useful software product
usually cost us at least $1000, and some were in the $5000 to $10000
range.  A large product such as DISSPLA/TEL-A-GRAF had a special
educational rate of "only" $20000; the commercial rate was at least
$80000.

The Korn shell is a good product!  I used csh for a year; then Dave
finally added BSD (i. e. real) job control and command edit mode to
ksh.  I switched, and haven't looked back.  Given the improvements it
can add to your computing environment, the price is low by commercial
standards.

Credits:
UNIX is a trademark of my employer.
TOPS-10 is probably still a trademark of Digital Equipment Corporation.
DISSPLA and TEL-A-GRAF (or some variation of those spellings) are
	trademarks of ISSCO.

Disclaimer:
Prices are guesses, opinions are mine.
-- 

Griff Smith	AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill
Phone:		(201) 582-7736
Internet:	ggs at ulysses.uucp
UUCP:		ulysses!ggs  ( {allegra|ihnp4}!ulysses!ggs )