ANNOUNCEMENT: Alpha release Linux/GNU/X unix clone on CDROM for PC's
Adam J. Richter
I am now taking orders for the alpha release of my company's
Linux/GNU/X distribution on CDROM. Linux is an AT&T-free unix clone
for 386/486-class PC compatibles. The CDROM is an ISO-9660 filesystem,
so you can look at it from DOS, other unix boxes, and even Macintoshes.
The distribution includes:
o Linux 0.98.1 kernel,
o X windows (v11r5) for VGA displays with support
for higher resolutions such as 1024x768 256 colors using
the ET4000, ET3000, Paradise, or Genoa chip sets,
and the standard Xlib/Xt development environment,
o GNU utilities, including GNU C and C++, the GNU
debugger, bison, flex, GNU make,
o TeX and groff typesetting packages,
o Ghostscript: a postscript interpreter that can drive
a variety of printers and also display in an X
window,
o elvis and GNU emacs text editors,
o kermit 5A telecommunications program, and
o an installation script that uses the extended
filesystem, which supports long filenames and
symbolic links just like the BSD file system,
o iso9660 filesystem with support for the Rock Ridge
extensions for reading CDROM's (used by this
CDROM distribution),
o lots of other useful programs too numerous to mention.
The alpha distribution consists the CDROM, and 3.5" and 5.25"
high density bootable filesystem floppies, and installation notes.
This should be sufficient to install the system directly on a new
computer or on an unused partition on your hard disk.
You need a 386/486-class CPU, 8MB RAM, high density floppy,
100MB of IDE, SCSI or ESDI disk (200MB w/sources), SCSI CDROM drive
with an Adaptec 1542B, Ultrastor 14F, Future Domain TMC-1660/1680,
Seagate ST01/02, or Western Digital 7000fasst SCSI controller. I
don't think that Microchannel machines (e.g., PS/2's) will work, but
I'd be interested in hearing from anybody who tries installing on one.
If you can't make the CDROM distribution work, then you may
return it within 30 days for a refund of the purchase price and any
sales tax, provided that you delete any files copied from the CDROM.
In such cases, please call in advance for return authorization. If
you are experiencing a problem which is supposed to be solved in a
subsequent release, you will be allowed to wait for that release
before having to decide whether or not you want to exercise your
refund option.
Bear in mind that this is an alpha release. If you experience
problems, be prepared to do a certain amount of detective work to try
to narrow the problem down to certain hardware or software components.
If you can debug and fix the problem, that's even better. I have only
tested the distribution on a couple of machines, all of which had
ET4000-based VGA cards, various IDE hard disks, and an Adaptec 1542B
SCSI controller. However, I am not aware of anyone being unable to
get Linux working on any other supported hardware.
The price of the CDROM distribution does not include support.
If you or your company are interested in providing support for this
CDROM distribution, give me a call at (510) 526-7531, 9am-5pm pacific
time. I want to make the availability of third party support an
important selling point of the production releases.
If you or your company wants to resell the these releases,
that can be arranged. In order for these distributions to be
perceived as a viable alternative to Destiny and Solaris, I want there
to be a single standard for these CD's, which means making sure that
reselling is a more attractive alternative than developing a competing
CD. To that end, deep wholesale discounts will be available for very
high quantity resellers who don't need return privileges. In the
interest of having knowledgeable resellers, Linux developers will be
able to qualify for these deals at somewhat lower quantities.
Of course, I'm also interested in improving the software on
the CDROM. I intend to reinvest heavily in continuing free software
development. In the mean time, if you are currently the principal
maintainer of a program, device driver or other module of the CDROM
distribution, I'll send you a complimentary copy.
I have attached an order form for people in the United States
and Canada who want to order the CDROM now. Once the advance orders
have been shipped, I will make another posting that will hopefully
include information on foreign shipping and other payment methods such
as credit cards and purchase orders. The CD is being replicated now
and shipping of advance orders should be completed by Tuesday,
December 8th.
The $99 price includes free copies of the beta and production
releases. The beta release should ship in January and the production
release should ship in February under a catchier trademarked name.
Subsequent releases will be issued quarterly at $99 each. You'll also
be able to get the CD's as a subscription at $60 per quarter with
automatic billing available (minimum subscription: 2 quarters). If
you buy the alpha or beta release, you will be able to convert to the
subscription service and have your $99 and your copy of the production
release counted as part of the subscription, so you will not be
penalized for buying before the availability of subscriptions.
Legalities:
1. Any offers or prices are subject to change at any
time without notice.
2. THERE IS NO WARRANTY FOR ANY OF THIS SOFTWARE
(not the alpha distribution, not the beta
distribution, and not even the production
distributions). THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS"
WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR
IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE
IMPLIED WARRANTIES OR MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS
FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
This will be the first free operating system CDROM ever. It is
remotely conceivable that I may be flooded with email and telephone calls
tomorrow. If you send me questions by email, I may not be able to
respond immediately. Instead, I may post a list of common questions
and answers to the newsgroups to which this announcement is posted.
Adam J. Richter
President
Yggdrasil Computing, Incorporated
------------------------------ CUT HERE ------------------------------
ADVANCE ORDER FORM
Linux/GNU/X CDROM alpha distribution
SHIP TO: ______________________________ DAYTIME PHONE: ________________
______________________________ EMAIL: ________________________
______________________________
______________________________
(USA and Canada only)
Unit price
Item Quantity (US dollars)
Linux+GNU+X alpha release _____ X $99 = $________
(beta and production release
will be sent to you free)
California residents add 8.25% sales tax $________
Shipping (flat fee, independent of quantity) $ 5.00
Total $________
Enclose money order or check payable in US dollars to
"Yggdrasil Computing, Incorporated" and mail to:
Yggdrasil Computing, Incorporated
CDROM sales
PO Box 8418
Berkeley, CA 94707-8418
If this order form is received after the beta release has
begun, you will only receive the beta release and the production
release. If this order form is received after the production release
has been made, you will receive only the most current production
release. This order form expires after March 1, 1993.
Call (510)526-7531 for a new order form after that date. You
may also call that number after December 8th for information on
orders outside of the United States and Canada.
Joel M. Hoffman
Does this include both source and binaries for the above? E.g., do
you include the complete TeX package, w/ source, and also the
binaries?
-Joel
(jo...@wam.umd.edu)
Adam J. Richter
The 100MB of /usr/src on the CDROM contains a lot of this
stuff, but the alpha version also is missing a lot of sources which
will be in the beta or production release.
Here is a list of which of the packages have source included
on the alpha CDROM:
Package Source included on alpha release?
Kernel YES
X windows NO (XFree86 diffs and R5 fixes are
included, though)
GNU C/G++/gdb YES
GNU utilities YES
TeX NO (although texinfo, dvi2xx, dvips
and tranfig are.)
groff YES
elvis NO
emacs YES
kermit YES
instal script (YES, it's a shell script.)
iso9660 fs YES (in fact there is a snapshot of
tsx-11.mit.edu:/pub/Linux/ALPHA)
The main limitation that I had to deal with in the alpha
release was that a tar file of the initial CDROM filesystem had to
fit on my 200MB disk. I won't have this limitation when I cut the
beta release, so /usr/src will be much more complete. It is my
intention to eventually be able to build the CDROM by saying
"cd /usr/src ; make install".
--
Adam J. Richter 409 Evelyn Avenue, Apt. 312
Yggdrasil Computing, Incorporated Albany, CA 94706
ric...@cerf.net (510)528-3209
Another member of the League for Programming Freedom (lea...@uunet.uu.net).
david carlton
> If you can't make the CDROM distribution work, then you may
> return it within 30 days for a refund of the purchase price and any
> sales tax, provided that you delete any files copied from the CDROM.
That last bit sounds like restricting the redistribution of GPL'd code
to me, which is a nono:
(From the GPL, version 2:)
> 6. Each time you redistribute the Program (or any work based on the
> Program), the recipient automatically receives a license from the
> original licensor to copy, distribute or modify the Program subject to
> these terms and conditions. You may not impose any further
> restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein.
> You are not responsible for enforcing compliance by third parties to
> this License.
Read the next-to-last sentence.
david carlton
car...@husc.harvard.edu
This MUST be a good party -- My RIB CAGE is being painfully
pressed up against someone's MARTINI!!
Robert Chen
>
> I am now taking orders for the alpha release of my company's
>Linux/GNU/X distribution on CDROM. Linux is an AT&T-free unix clone
>
> If you can't make the CDROM distribution work, then you may
>return it within 30 days for a refund of the purchase price and any
>sales tax, provided that you delete any files copied from the CDROM.
>In such cases, please call in advance for return authorization. If
>
>
>Adam J. Richter
>President
>Yggdrasil Computing, Incorporated
I don't think you can do that. I don't see how under the GPL you can
require that people erase their copies of Linux, even if they return
the CD to you.
Nice to see a CD ROM distribution though. Good luck with your
project.
- Ken
Rahul Dhesi
car...@husc11.harvard.edu (david carlton) writes:
>In article <38...@news.cerf.net>, ric...@nic.cerf.net (Adam J. Richter) writes:
>> If you can't make the CDROM distribution work, then you may
>> return it within 30 days for a refund of the purchase price and any
>> sales tax, provided that you delete any files copied from the CDROM.
>That last bit sounds like restricting the redistribution of GPL'd code
>to me...
A fine point of law, I think. The refund policy could have been
stated as:
If you waive rights granted to you by the GPL to use and
redistribute the files from the CDROM, and agree to delete any
files you have copied from the CDROM, then we will grant
you a refund if you return the CRDOM within 30 days.
--
Rahul Dhesi <dh...@cirrus.com>
also: dh...@rahul.net
Will Estes
> The $99 price includes free copies of the beta and production
>releases. The beta release should ship in January and the production
>release should ship in February under a catchier trademarked name.
>Subsequent releases will be issued quarterly at $99 each.
>
>
> This will be the first free operating system CDROM ever.
This is a bit embarrassing to have to point out, but did you realize
that Microsoft is selling Windows/NT on CD-ROM for $69? I mean, is
Microsoft's proprietary 32-bit operating system even more free than free GNU
UNIX? :)
Also, if there is no support thrown in with this, doesn't a price of $99
make quite a bit of profit above the costs of producing the disk and
advertising it? If there is no substantial profit margin in this, then
'ol Bill Gates must be laughing to know this his company has grown so
powerful, and has gained such economies of scale, that his competitors
can't even give away their software at *cost* for less money than the
price at which he is making a profit (and with substantial support
included). As much as I like UNIX, I think I'm starting to hear the fat
lady sing.... :(
--
Will Estes Internet: wes...@netcom.com
Wen-Chun Ni
>This is a bit embarrassing to have to point out, but did you realize
>that Microsoft is selling Windows/NT on CD-ROM for $69? I mean, is
>Microsoft's proprietary 32-bit operating system even more free than free GNU
>UNIX? :)
Different worlds. Does Microsoft release the source code of NT? Does the
NT package include the GNU utilities? Adam just wants to cover the
cost he produces the CDs. And you are free to copy all the stuffs in the
CD. Does MS permit you to copy things to give them to your friends?
Don't compare the GPL world with the commercial world. A guy like Adam
just makes a living by distributing it in CD form; he doesn't have
the right to enforce anything. Linus Tovalds doesn't object to this,
Bill Jolitz doesn't object to this, why should you object?
As for your assertion that MS's NT is "more free" than the Linux stuff.
I should say that NT is going to sell much more expensive when the
final release comes out. But the Linux+GNU+TeX+X stuffs will be
consistent in reflecting the labor+distributing+manufacturing fee,
be it alpha, beta, or final release.
>
>Also, if there is no support thrown in with this, doesn't a price of $99
>make quite a bit of profit above the costs of producing the disk and
>advertising it? If there is no substantial profit margin in this, then
>'ol Bill Gates must be laughing to know this his company has grown so
>powerful, and has gained such economies of scale, that his competitors
>can't even give away their software at *cost* for less money than the
>price at which he is making a profit (and with substantial support
>included). As much as I like UNIX, I think I'm starting to hear the fat
>lady sing.... :(
>
I won't argue with you at this because there have been enough flames
that disgust me in os2 groups. If you really like the way MS does,
go use their products. I personally respect Richard Stallman and
Linus Torvalds much much much more than Bill Gates.
As for the fate of Unix, cross your fingers. What I know is the first
time when I really got Linux+X working on my 386, I was too happy to
sleep within a week. OS/2 didn't give me that feeling, let alone Window/*.
Wen-Chun Ni, w...@cs.brown.edu (401) 863-7669
-------------------------------------------------------------------
I do more after 2 a.m. than most people do all day.
- from a T-shirt given by a friend.
Tony Porczyk
> I personally respect Richard Stallman and Linus Torvalds much much
> much more than Bill Gates.
I guess I just have to ask this question every time I see something so
childish: "okay, can you now explain why?"
Just in case you want to spill some ideological baloney here, let me ask
you a couple more questions:
- ever heard of computer revolution? computer on every desk? I
didn't see Richard Stallman or Linus Torvalds (as much as I respect
them both, make no mistake) having even 1/1000th to do with it as
much as Bill Gates.
- ever heard of thousands of people making a living, providing for their
families and supporting the economy thanks to Bill Gates? Show me where
that happened thanks to Richard Stallman or Linus Torvalds. But then,
I just noticed the extension of your email address. Sorry for
wasting the bandwith.
t.
Jonathan Stockley
Did you realise that 'ol Bill Gates is probably amortising the production cost
over several (tens of) thousand sales instead of several hundred.
Also does the $69 include *source for NT*? I think not.
Jo
Sean Eric Fagan
>- ever heard of thousands of people making a living, providing for their
> families and supporting the economy thanks to Bill Gates? Show me where
> that happened thanks to Richard Stallman or Linus Torvalds.
Cygnus Support, on the two coasts of the US, Wingnut (in Japan?), and some
company with a strange name (Crwynnr, something like that), all support Free
Software. PrimeTime Freeware and Walnut Creek CDROM both make money (not
inconsiderable money, either!) selling CD-ROMs with free software.
All told, I would not be surprised if more than a thousand people make a
living, provide for their families, and support the economy thanks to free
software (including the likes of RMS and Linus, as well as a few thousand
other people, some of whom are nameless, some of whom are very well known,
and lots of whom are somewhere inbetween).
--
Sean Eric Fagan | "we will probably just crash immediately; but at least
s...@kithrup.COM | we will have written less code."
-----------------+ -- Chris Torek (to...@ee.lbl.gov)
Any opinions expressed are my own, and generally unpopular with others.
Paul Ducklin
>This is a bit embarrassing to have to point out, but did you realize
>that Microsoft is selling Windows/NT on CD-ROM for $69? I mean, is
>Microsoft's proprietary 32-bit operating system even more free than free GNU
>UNIX? :)
Get real.
Microsoft Windows (non-NT) is also very cheap. But have you worked out how
much it costs you to buy more than Solitaire? Ever priced the Windows
SDK and a suitable compiler? For $99, the convenience of "everything"
you need for Linux all in one place is more than worth it. After all,
your friends can borrow your CD and copy/install it. The Linux CD is
*not* an "entry level" disc. It's the Real Thing[TM] -- and you get
the source code, a decent compiler, X, GhostScript, TeX...need more be said.
Microsoft's proprietary 32-bit operating system is just that: proprietary.
But you're right it's "embarrassing" -- embarrassing for you that you
should compare apples and monosodium glutamate...and seriously, at that.
--
--..--..--..--..--..--..--..--..--..--..--..--..--..--..--..--..--..--..--
Paul Ducklin du...@nuustak.csir.co.za
CSIR Computer Virus Research Lab * Box 395 * Pretoria * 0001 S Africa
/home/develop/marcel/.na
> didn't see Richard Stallman or Linus Torvalds (as much as I respect
> them both, make no mistake) having even 1/1000th to do with it as
> much as Bill Gates.
Yes - he gave us DOS, Windows 1.0, 2.x, OS/2 1.0 + SDK
We should be (H)/(Gr)ateful.
I'm not saying he isn't smart and that anything MS does is bad but
a lot of what comes out at MS is questionable. sorry.
--marcel
Frank Crash Edwards
>In article <1f1epb...@smurf.sti.com> wes...@smurf.sti.com (Will Estes) writes:
>>This is a bit embarrassing to have to point out, but did you realize
>>that Microsoft is selling Windows/NT on CD-ROM for $69? I mean, is
>>Microsoft's proprietary 32-bit operating system even more free than free GNU
>>UNIX? :)
>
>Different worlds. Does Microsoft release the source code of NT? Does the
>NT package include the GNU utilities? Adam just wants to cover the
>cost he produces the CDs. And you are free to copy all the stuffs in the
Bzzzzzt! It does not cost $99 to produce a single CDROM. The first
200 ROMs built from a master will be about $20 each. After that, they
cost roughly $2 per disk. Or did you not see the posting a few months
ago from the gentleman who posted all of his costs in having a ROM
produced? It cost him just under $4000 for the first 200. And then
he has a master and no more "startup" costs.
>Wen-Chun Ni, w...@cs.brown.edu (401) 863-7669
>-------------------------------------------------------------------
> I do more after 2 a.m. than most people do all day.
Strange; my day starts at 2am. ;-)
--
Frank "Crash" Edwards Perceptual Technologies
Fax: 813/786-6526 [Our office is moving; watch this space
Home: 813/786-3675 for the new phone number.]
"Darmok and Jillard; at Tenagra. Darmok and Jillard; on the ocean."
Zbigniew J. Tyrlik
+---------------
> In article <38...@news.cerf.net> ric...@nic.cerf.net (Adam J. Richter) writes:
> > The $99 price includes free copies of the beta and production
> >releases. The beta release should ship in January and the production
> >release should ship in February under a catchier trademarked name.
> >Subsequent releases will be issued quarterly at $99 each.
> >
> This is a bit embarrassing to have to point out, but did you realize
> that Microsoft is selling Windows/NT on CD-ROM for $69? I mean, is
> Microsoft's proprietary 32-bit operating system even more free than free GNU
> UNIX? :)
>
Will, point well taken, but you just started a flame war :).
Better bring into picture that whole bunch of other folks was and
is selling similar CD's for 25% of this price.... To mention only
Bob Bruce, Prime Time Freeware...
>
> --
> Will Estes Internet: wes...@netcom.com
Let them do their thing - and if they are too expensive, we will
see nice price cuts. Last time I heard, to prepare a CD costs $800
for matrix, and $2-3 for a piece on 1000 pieces run. Looks like I
should invest $5000 and get back... uhm... $99000. Marketing is
free - USENET!!!! USENET!!!!
_zjt
--
********************************************************************
Zbigniew J. Tyrlik DoD# 0759 VF700C '84 zb...@wariat.org
IBM PC SIG Sysop - Cleveland Free-Net aa...@cleveland.freenet.edu
APK Public Access UNI* Cleveland, (216)-481-9436
Feeds, shell, FTP & telnet access Uniboard distribution point
********************************************************************
Jim Winstead Jr.
Why are people always so quick to bitch about people distributing free
software for profit, despite the fact that the GPL specifically allows
this, if not encourage it? (And the fact that the FSF itself sells
tapes for well above mere cost.)
In article <1992Nov26....@wariat.org> zb...@wariat.org (Zbigniew J. Tyrlik) writes:
As quoted from <1f1epb...@smurf.sti.com> by wes...@smurf.sti.com (Will Estes):
+---------------
> In article <38...@news.cerf.net> ric...@nic.cerf.net (Adam J. Richter) writes:
> > The $99 price includes free copies of the beta and production
> >releases. The beta release should ship in January and the production
> >release should ship in February under a catchier trademarked name.
> >Subsequent releases will be issued quarterly at $99 each.
> >
Will, point well taken, but you just started a flame war :).
Better bring into picture that whole bunch of other folks was and
is selling similar CD's for 25% of this price.... To mention only
Bob Bruce, Prime Time Freeware...
Yes, but that's just one CD. Look two quotes up - the $99 includes
*three* different CDs - the alpha, beta, and production releases.
Also, I get the impression that this is more than just a snapshot of
tsx-11.mit.edu - it's an actual installable release of Linux. That
takes *a lot* more time to engineer than just a snapshot.
Let them do their thing - and if they are too expensive, we will
see nice price cuts. Last time I heard, to prepare a CD costs $800
for matrix, and $2-3 for a piece on 1000 pieces run. Looks like I
should invest $5000 and get back... uhm... $99000. Marketing is
free - USENET!!!! USENET!!!!
Right. If people think the price is too high, someone can make a
killing by coming in and producing another CDROM release and
underselling the current one.
(Also, you have to remember that he has said he will distribute free
copies of the CDROM to those who have software on the disk (or
something to that effect). Given the number of people that have
contributed to Linux, that could cost a pretty penny. :)
--
loveritablessencentipedependentalism+ Jim Winstead Jr. (CSci '95)
andaterrificklengtherealityearguessy| Harvey Mudd College, WIBSTR
mpathybridgenerationiceremonymphysic| jwin...@jarthur.Claremont.EDU
alendareadvertisexpresshothoughthend+ or jwin...@fenris.Claremont.EDU
Robert Chen
>This is a bit embarrassing to have to point out, but did you realize
>that Microsoft is selling Windows/NT on CD-ROM for $69? I mean, is
>Microsoft's proprietary 32-bit operating system even more free than free GNU
>UNIX? :)
>
Ha ha ha ha ha! Sorry, but that is very humorous. Do you honestly
thing that /when/ NT is released you will have a development system or
networking? If you think you are going to get either for $69, you
have been talking to different people at MS than me. Try >$600 for a
development system just for starters. I will bet that "NT for
workgroups" will be price comparable to Novel. And we won't even begin to talk
about source licenses (if they even grant any).
Personally, I think $99 is WAY UNDER PRICED. I find Linux to be very
comparable at this point to SCO ODT, which sets you back >$2000 for a
multiuser copy. Saying that $99 is overpriced for a complete X
window/C++ development platform is the silliest thing I have heard in
a long time.
- Ken
Will Estes
>Thus spake wes...@smurf.sti.com (Will Estes):
>>This is a bit embarrassing to have to point out, but did you realize
>>that Microsoft is selling Windows/NT on CD-ROM for $69? I mean, is
>>Microsoft's proprietary 32-bit operating system even more free than free GNU
>>UNIX? :)
>
>Get real.
>
>Microsoft Windows (non-NT) is also very cheap. But have you worked out how
>much it costs you to buy more than Solitaire? Ever priced the Windows
>SDK and a suitable compiler? For $99, the convenience of "everything"
>you need for Linux all in one place is more than worth it. After all,
>your friends can borrow your CD and copy/install it. The Linux CD is
>*not* an "entry level" disc. It's the Real Thing[TM] -- and you get
>the source code, a decent compiler, X, GhostScript, TeX...need more be said.
The Windows/NT SDK includes Windows, Windows/NT, and POSIX subsystems,
as well as the complete Win32 SDK and C++ compiler, as well as a
complete 16 and 32-bit implementation of TCP/IP, as well as some LAN
Manager server capability, all for $69. You can buy the GNU utilities
for the POSIX subsystem from a third party, but you are correct that this
costs more. And the POSIX subsystem is not UNIX, by a long shot, but it's
also pretty clear that within a year someone will be selling a viable UNIX
subsystem (or maybe porting Linux) to run under Windows/NT.
>Microsoft's proprietary 32-bit operating system is just that: proprietary.
>But you're right it's "embarrassing" -- embarrassing for you that you
>should compare apples and monosodium glutamate...and seriously, at that.
I think you trivializing the point. The point is that Microsoft might
well use its economies of scale to price its 32-bit OS as a commodity and
still manage to make a substantial profit. This makes it possible for
reasonable people to make an argument that their total cost to purchase,
develop for, support, and use Windows/NT would be equal to or less than
a totally free package such as Linux. The economics of such a
comparison should encompass issues like support.
Now I know that in your mind there is no comparison, Linux is going to
be cheaper for *you* to buy, develop for, and support. Fine. But if we
asked that same question to the guys who head MIS at the Fortune 1000,
or to people in the Federal Government, I don't think we would get the
same answer. And note that this is *just* the economic comparison; we
haven't even addressed the issue of which platform offers the widest
selection of applications. Unfortunately, there just isn't a
comparison there. Most UNIX workstation vendors are porting to
Windows/NT, and even Linux may end up getting a port as a Windows/NT
subsystem. And which platform supports Word For Windows, Excel, etc. at
$99 bucks a pop for upgrades?
Please note that I want Linux to succeed like crazy! A world where Bill
Gates controls all of our choices really does scare me. But I think I
am making a legitimate point about the economics of NT versus Linux that
will affect how much market share Linux can grab.
Personally, I wish the FSF were a company that understood what a market
is and sold Linux as a cheap UNIX with support. What the world really
needs is a solid UNIX that is approachable as a system for end-users
(i.e., the mass-market). That's sort of what Jobs has tried to do with
NeXTStep '486, but he is blowing it by pricing it at $999. I simply
find it frustrating that Bill Gates is the only person in the industry
who seems to understand how to sell an operating system for naive
end-users as a commodity. I think an important part of making Linux a
long-term success is to correctly identify what is Bill Gates' market,
and to hit him where it hurts. I'm afraid Linux doesn't do that, yet.
Will Estes
>> that Microsoft is selling Windows/NT on CD-ROM for $69? I mean, is
>> Microsoft's proprietary 32-bit operating system even more free than free GNU
>> UNIX? :)
>
>Will, point well taken, but you just started a flame war :).
I sure hope it doesn't become that. I do think it's a useful exercise
to study Microsoft's success, and to ask what can be done to Linux to
make it a success in the mass-market. Maybe we can end up sparking a
thought or two in someone's mind, and one or two years from now a
version of Linux might appear that causes Bill Gates to go without sleep
for a few weeks.
Tim Pierce
>w...@cs.brown.edu (Wen-Chun Ni) writes:
>
>> I personally respect Richard Stallman and Linus Torvalds much much
>> much more than Bill Gates.
>
>- ever heard of computer revolution? computer on every desk? I
> didn't see Richard Stallman or Linus Torvalds (as much as I respect
> them both, make no mistake) having even 1/1000th to do with it as
> much as Bill Gates.
Bill Gates couldn't have cared less about a "computer on every desk."
He's in it for the money (and the sports cars, natch). Now that the
computers are on your desks, Linus and RMS are at least making sure
that you've got a reason to use them.
>- ever heard of thousands of people making a living, providing for their
> families and supporting the economy thanks to Bill Gates? Show me where
> that happened thanks to Richard Stallman or Linus Torvalds.
It looks to me like Linus is about to ensure that Adam can support his
family.
--
____ Tim Pierce /
\ / twpi...@unix.amherst.edu / Rocks say goodbye.
\/ (BITnet: TWPIERCE@AMHERST) /
Wen-Chun Ni
>
>I guess I just have to ask this question every time I see something so
>childish: "okay, can you now explain why?"
>
>Just in case you want to spill some ideological baloney here, let me ask
>you a couple more questions:
>
>- ever heard of computer revolution? computer on every desk? I
> didn't see Richard Stallman or Linus Torvalds (as much as I respect
> them both, make no mistake) having even 1/1000th to do with it as
> much as Bill Gates.
No, I've never heard of computer revolution, at least in software. For
a casual user like my sister, I even recommended Mac instead of a PC
(thanks to your beloved Bill Gates).
What Bill Gates is running is basically a marketing game, since
Microsoft is really good at spreading public support even the product
is still buggy or unreleased.
From the viewpoint of marketing, I should admire Bill Gates and his
men. But, computer revolution? Steve Jobs deserves much much more
respect than Bill Gates.
Microsoft never has an idea of revolution. Otherwise, there will be no
dogs like MSDOS or Windows. Imagine why a Mac can run a window system
in a skimpy 2meg machine happily, while Windows crawls.
>
>- ever heard of thousands of people making a living, providing for their
> families and supporting the economy thanks to Bill Gates? Show me where
> that happened thanks to Richard Stallman or Linus Torvalds. But then,
> I just noticed the extension of your email address. Sorry for
> wasting the bandwith.
>
You mean MSDOS? Yes, this is why Norton Utilities and PC Tools can
survive because of the very weak system created by Bill Gates and his
company. Many software developers find oppotunities in the PC market
because of the damn weak system called MSDOS. There are many good
applications for PC doesn't mean the system itself provides thousands
of families. If Mac dominates the market, Apple will be the supporter
of those families. The releases of MBASIC/MSDOS/WINDOWS do not reflect
anything in technical advances as well as computer revolution. It is
the need of computerization and the initial momentum of IBM PC help
create the empire of Microsoft, not Microsoft creates the
computerization. Bill Gates is just a beneficiary of the era, and
(unfortunately) happens to earn a lot of money from his opportunity.
The contribution of Excel is much less than that of Visicalc. There is
no way we can view that MSWord contributes more than WordPerfect.
What Microsoft is good is the chasing of existing technology of
products and makes a well marketed one.
But there could be no Richard Stallman, gcc, emacs, etc. There could be
no Linus Torvalds and Linux. And we will not going to be aware of the
necessity of their existence. Once they appear, they shine like the
stars. Just like somebody admired Albert Einstein for his contribution,
because, without Einstein, it is not even predictable that we know
Relativity in 21st century.
Stallman gives the idea of "freedom." He is even the extremist of
untyped languages, since typed langugaes restrict the freedom of the
programmers. He is not necessariy correct, but he gives us the other
thought, a thought that we may not even come up with in AT&T's
monopoly and Microsoft's opportunism. The existence of GNU reflects the
sincerity we might have eventually lost.
Linus is a real activist. For nothing, he gets his fun in hacking an OS
and helping people to realize their 3(4)86 are not merely a "C:>"
junky. He also helps the poor guys like me to have a chance of probing
into the taking care of everything in Unix. The long-term effects is
unmeasurable from my viewpoint. It prolongs the lifetime of Unix, beats
the greed of AT&T, and educates us the values of some spirit beyond
money. All he gets is the "virtual beer" as he described.
merlin
>thing that /when/ NT is released you will have a development system or
>networking? If you think you are going to get either for $69, you
>have been talking to different people at MS than me. Try >$600 for a
>development system just for starters. I will bet that "NT for
>workgroups" will be price comparable to Novel.
I don't know about you -- but Microsoft has promised to the distribution
of 32 bit Windows / NT for 386/486 platforms will be made available to us
in such a manner that cost is no concern. If you are at an academic site
developing software for this environment I don't think you relly need to
worry about what people in that coarse callous claw your way to the top
commercial world might have to pay for their development tools. I don't
seen any reason to believe NT is going to cost academia more than $69 for
the SDK and $69 for the DDK.
>And we won't even begin to talk about source licenses (if they grant any).
DEC for one has a source code license for the 32 bit Windows / NT op system.
>Personally, I think $99 is WAY UNDER PRICED.
I would agree the price was reasonable if the distributor either wrote the
code or could show some kind of proof of ownership. In the absence of any
lawfull claim of ownership then I suspect we ought to be thinking more in
terms of compensating him for distribution costs -- and for no other costs.
Where exactly is his value added -- something which would philosophically
give him the right to make a profit on this venture? Perhaps the risk of
getting stuck with a pile of outdated glass disks -- but nothing else.
>SCO ODT, which sets you back >$2000 for a multiuser copy.
Try over $4,000 for one copy of multiuser base, server, and development kit.
David J. Fiander
>
>Personally, I think $99 is WAY UNDER PRICED. I find Linux to be very
>comparable at this point to SCO ODT, which sets you back >$2000 for a
>multiuser copy. Saying that $99 is overpriced for a complete X
>window/C++ development platform is the silliest thing I have heard in
>a long time.
>
No, $99 is probably just about right for somebody that is doing
this in his spare time. The reason that ODT is >$2000 is that
you get printed manuals, you don't have to worry about the
source, and if something goes wrong during the install, you can
phone for support. You don't know how expensive support is,
and the cost of development for the next release is even
higher.
If SCO didn't have to support or provide documentation for it's
products, and didn't have to pay AT&T for every single unit it
sold, the SCO could probably compete with a $99 CDROM.
But then, the Fortune 500 would never buy such a product.
- David (speaking for self)
Andreas Borchert
> Let them do their thing - and if they are too expensive, we will
> see nice price cuts. Last time I heard, to prepare a CD costs $800
> for matrix, and $2-3 for a piece on 1000 pieces run. Looks like I
> should invest $5000 and get back... uhm... $99000. Marketing is
> free - USENET!!!! USENET!!!!
Don't forget that...
(1) you'll probably get three CDs (alpha, beta and production version)
(2) there are not only production costs
--
_______________________________________________________________________________
Andreas Borchert, University of Ulm, SAI, D-W-7900 Ulm, Germany
Internet: borc...@mathematik.uni-ulm.de
Marc Unangst
>commercial world might have to pay for their development tools. I don't
>seen any reason to believe NT is going to cost academia more than $69 for
>the SDK and $69 for the DDK.
This is the key part. What about those of us who aren't in acedemia?
What about those of us that actually have to work for a living, but
like to hack on a Unix-like OS in our free time at home? I would bet
that non-academic sites will not be able to get the NT SDK for
anything less than $500, once NT is released. (The current price for
the SDK/DDK kit is artificially low to encourage people to develop
apps for NT. Once NT has been released, I think you'll see the price
take a massive leap.)
>DEC for one has a source code license for the 32 bit Windows / NT op system.
Great, if you work for DEC. But how much did DEC pay for their
license? Bet it's as much as your annual salary; maybe more. There's
no chance that a lone individual will be able to afford an NT source
license unless they're as rich as Bill Gates. That's the beauty of
Linux and 386BSD -- *anybody* can get the source, no matter who they
are or how much money they have.
>Where exactly is his value added -- something which would philosophically
>give him the right to make a profit on this venture? Perhaps the risk of
>getting stuck with a pile of outdated glass disks -- but nothing else.
His value is that he's collected everything together into one place,
made a CD master, and stamped some disks. If you don't think the
price is reasonable, by all means do it yourself and sell it for what
*you* think is a reasonable cost. If other people agree, then they
will buy it from you instead of from him, and you will make more
money.
I think it can be reasonably argued that he has ownership rights, at
least on the collection as a whole. If you don't agree, go do some
research on what's called a "compilation copyright".
[ODT prices]
>Try over $4,000 for one copy of multiuser base, server, and development kit.
So? Most people will not need multiuser base, server, and development
kit on their desk; they will only need the two-user base system. And
that costs $1500. Possibly overpriced; possibly not -- I'm inclined
to think not, after seeing the quality of SCO support. And academia
can get a substantial discount off list price.
Above all, you pays your money and you takes your chances. Linux is
free or nearly so, but it doesn't come with a fancy support contract
or a well-dressed guy with gold cufflinks who will say soothing things
to you when your system goes down.
--
Marc Unangst, N8VRH | "There are two ways to solve this problem:
m...@mudos.ann-arbor.mi.us | the hard way, and the easy way. Let's start
| with the hard way."
| - W. Scheider, from a Physics lecture
Zbigniew J. Tyrlik
> Personally, I think $99 is WAY UNDER PRICED. I find Linux to be very
> comparable at this point to SCO ODT, which sets you back >$2000 for a
> multiuser copy. Saying that $99 is overpriced for a complete X
> window/C++ development platform is the silliest thing I have heard in
> a long time.
>
> - Ken
Ken, $99 for such system is really chep; $99 for pressing CD and
shipping it is way too much. Read this damn add, bra!
What we are questioning is price for distribution - not for the
OS. Unless author of Linux will get $60 out of each $99.
You are barking the worng tree - get your facts straight.
Bill Riemers
> I am now taking orders for the alpha release of my company's
> Linux/GNU/X distribution on CDROM. Linux is an AT&T-free unix clone
> for 386/486-class PC compatibles. The CDROM is an ISO-9660 filesystem,
> so you can look at it from DOS, other unix boxes, and even Macintoshes.
> The distribution includes:
A list of good quality free stuff deleted.
> The $99 price includes free copies of the beta and production
> releases. (details delted)
>
> 1. Any offers or prices are subject to change at any
> time without notice.
>
> 2. THERE IS NO WARRANTY FOR ANY OF THIS SOFTWARE
> (not the alpha distribution, not the beta
> distribution, and not even the production
> distributions). THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS"
> WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR
> IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE
> IMPLIED WARRANTIES OR MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS
> FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
So basically you want $99 for packaging... Not a good deal. It sounds
like if it doesn't work, all you are going to do is have me packit
backup and send it back for a refund. If I want that quality of software
support, I can get it myself with ftp. In the end I'll probably save myself
time that way anyways, since I'll learn who the real people are to ask for
bug corrections from... If you really want to earn your money, you need
to offer some sort of support service and documentation... (i.e. I value
my time at $10 an hour, so you need to do something that will save me at
least 10 hours of thier time.)
Bill
A.W.P. Guy
> Personally, I think $99 is WAY UNDER PRICED. I find Linux to be very
> comparable at this point to SCO ODT, which sets you back >$2000 for a
> multiuser copy. Saying that $99 is overpriced for a complete X
> window/C++ development platform is the silliest thing I have heard in
> a long time.
>
> - Ken
Ken, $99 for such system is really chep; $99 for pressing CD and
shipping it is way too much. Read this damn add, bra!
What we are questioning is price for distribution - not for the
OS. Unless author of Linux will get $60 out of each $99.
You are barking the worng tree - get your facts straight.
If you read the original article it states that for $99 you get 3 CDs
alpha, beta, and production so $33 each seems to be reasonable.
Andy.
A.W.P. Guy
> Personally, I think $99 is WAY UNDER PRICED. I find Linux to be very
> comparable at this point to SCO ODT, which sets you back >$2000 for a
> multiuser copy. Saying that $99 is overpriced for a complete X
> window/C++ development platform is the silliest thing I have heard in
> a long time.
>
> - Ken
Ken, $99 for such system is really chep; $99 for pressing CD and
shipping it is way too much. Read this damn add, bra!
What we are questioning is price for distribution - not for the
OS. Unless author of Linux will get $60 out of each $99.
You are barking the worng tree - get your facts straight.
If you read the original article it states that for $99 you get 3 CDs
Magnus Alvestad
Zbigniew> What we are questioning is price for distribution -
Zbigniew> not for the OS. Unless author of Linux will get $60
Zbigniew> out of each $99.
Not the way I see it. One of the basic principles of GNU is that; if
you want to distribute at high price, go ahead. Someone will outprice
you. If you make a collection good enough to get people to buy it at a
high price, you've deserved it.
-Magnus
Eric Youngdale
>So basically you want $99 for packaging... Not a good deal. It sounds
>like if it doesn't work, all you are going to do is have me packit
>backup and send it back for a refund. If I want that quality of software
>support, I can get it myself with ftp. In the end I'll probably save myself
>time that way anyways, since I'll learn who the real people are to ask for
>bug corrections from... If you really want to earn your money, you need
>to offer some sort of support service and documentation... (i.e. I value
>my time at $10 an hour, so you need to do something that will save me at
>least 10 hours of thier time.)
Fine. You have ftp access. For those people who do not have ftp
access, life is not as easy. A cdrom like this gives people an opportunity to
get the compleat linux without having to wait hours for files to dribble in
through a modem. This is especially true if the closest bbs is a long-distance
phone call, if the local line quality is poor, or the local bbs does not
contain the complete distribution. A couple of people or a club could pool
their resources and get a disc, and save themselves hours of downloading.
Even if you do have ftp access (like I do), it is still preferable to
have a cdrom in many cases. I can browse the gnu sources or the X11 sources
without having to take up precious disk space, or waste time trying to download
from a machine at work. When I need to recompile something, I can yank the
sources from the disk whenever I please. If I want to try out some X demos
that are not in the standard X binaries, I can simply compile them.
As far as price is concerned, the 99$ is a bit higher than I would have
expected, but you are essentially paying for 3 disks. Adam is sticking his
neck out on the line financially with this, and if no one buys any disks he
could stand to lose quite a bit. This is all due to the large upfront cost for
getting the first disk (in economics, they call this a fixed cost). This means
that the breakeven point for a CD depends a *lot* on the volume that you sell.
My guess is that if Adam can generate a large enough sales volume (especially
in subscriptions to the quarterly updates) the price will eventually drop.
If you do not like the price, then feel free to make your own disc.
There was a survey on the 386bsd list quite recently where they were
asked about a cdrom of their own. I am enclosing the results for your
entertainment (provided that you find this sort of thing entertaining :-)).
-Eric
386bsd CD-ROM Survey Results
Well, here are the results from my cd-rom survey as promised. Each
blank is filled in with the number of people who "checked" it. For
example:
[15] I think foo.
28%
would mean that 15 replies had a X or equivalent in the blank, and
that 15 responses represents 28% of the total replies received.
To put the numbers in perspective, there were 55 total returned surveys.
Executive Summary and My Conclusions
------------------------------------
I was a little surprised that so few surveys were returned. Perhaps
that just means that usenet was not in the mood for another survey,
but it's something we have to consider before plunging into this.
I think we're just about at the critical mass needed to make cheap
cd-rom distributions of 386bsd possible. But perhaps we're not quite
there. If only 50 people buy, mastering costs alone will come to
$30/disc. That's not really what I consider "cheap" enough to make it
painless for people to buy repeatedly as new versions are released.
We really need volume of at least 100 repeat buyers, if we're going to
bring the costs down to around the $15 mark.
So it may be necessary to include Linux & 386bsd on a disc at this
point in time, just to get sufficient volume to make this effort cost
effective. Of course, that's a whole bunch of extra work, since Linux
doesn't really have coherent releases, as 386bsd does.
Most people agreed that unpacked distributions were critical. I
personally feel very strongly about this point. Having a mountable
distribution will allow even those with minimal disk space to compile
packages and rebuild kernels. Several people suggested having scripts
to "mirror" portions of the disk on the hard drive, to get around
ISO9660 name length limitations. Actually, I would prefer to use the
RockRidge extensions which Bill is currently adding. However, if for
some reason these don't make it into 0.2, some other solution would be
required. I hadn't mentioned these two options in the Survey, because
I thought it went without saying that we'd have to deal with long
filenames in one of the "Right Ways."
Most people (60%) seemed to favor including a contribution to the
Jolitz's in the purchase price. The rest seemed to favor making it
optional. Someone raised a valid point that making the pricing
confusing would discourage sales. Another person commented that what
went to the Jolitz's was (paraphrase) "no one's business except the
seller's." While that may be true in some sense, I'd like to keep as
many people as possible happy if I do this thing. The Net is such a
political beast... ;-)
At any rate, enough commentary from me. Here are the full results:
General information:
--------------------
Yes No
--- ---
[41] [14] I am currently a user of 386bsd.
75% 26%
[24] [28] I currently own a cd-rom drive.
44% 51%
[27] I don't own a cd-rom drive now, but I would buy one if
49% cheap 386bsd distributions were available.
[50] [2] I am interested in cd-rom distributions of 386bsd.
91% 4%
[4] [11] I'm not interested in cd-rom 38bsd distributions right now, but:
7% 20% [0] Might be interested in the future.
0%
[7] Would definitely be interested in the future.
13%
Thoughts on pricing:
-------------------
I've been thinking that it might be reasonable to charge a bit more
the first time someone buys a 38bsd cd-rom, but make distributions
very cheap for repeat customers. I was thinking of numbers like
$30-40 for first-timers, and $15 or less for upgrades. Obviously the
exact figures would depend on what volume we expect to see, but I hope
you get the idea. It would be great it enough people were interested
that we could get *lots* cheaper.
Please check all that apply:
[38] I like the sound of this two-level pricing.
69%
[1] I don't like this idea. I probably wouldn't buy a
2% cd-rom distribution at all if I were going to be
charged more the first time than repeat buyers are
paying.
[13] I'm not sure I like this pricing scheme, but I
24% could live with it.
[30] I would be willing to pay $30-40 the first time,
55% as long as cheap update versions would be available.
[23] I would be willing to pay $15 or so for updates to
42% the latest/greatest versions, as they are
released.
[7] I would be willing to pay the above prices, but only
13% temporarily until higher-volume/cheaper prices can
be achieved.
[0] These prices are ridiculously high! Are you nuts?
0%
[11] These prices are ridiculously low! Start shipping,
20% quick, before the Death Star ruins you!
Contribution to the Jolitz's:
-----------------------------
I think it would be nice to include a contribution to the Jolitz's in
this idea somewhere, as thanks for their past work, and to help them
continue the good work in the future.
Please check all that apply:
[33] I think it would be great to include a Jolitz contribution
60% in the cd-rom price. Everyone should contribute!
[13] I think it would be best to make it an optional, but
24% recommended portion of the cd-rom price.
[7] It's ok to make it an option, but I don't think it should
13% be recommended, or pushed on people in any way.
[3] I'd rather keep my contributions to the Jolitz's separate
5% from the cd-rom distribution.
Disk structure:
--------------
I think a cd-rom would be great for people with minimal hard drive
space. Therefore, I think exploded directory structures are a
necessity, so that people can build new kernels, build X, etc, while
leaving all the sources on the cd-rom.
Yes No
--- ---
[38] [8] I think an unpacked directory structure is a must.
69% 15%
[18] [11] I think an unpacked structure is nice, but I would really
33% 20% like to see the packed distribution images included as well.
[16] [9] Packed distribution are ok, but I would rather see the
29% 16% space used on other useful net-stuff.
User profile:
------------
Please check one:
[6] I'm primarily interested in a cd-rom distribution as a means
11% of keeping an archival copy of 386bsd distributions around.
[7] I'm most interested in freeing up hard disk space by
13% keeping rarely accessing things mounted via cd-rom.
[39] I'm interested in both uses.
71%
[5] I'm interested for other reasons: ___________________________
9%
Here are their other reasons:
- freeing up disk space,
- convenience for installation (one CD-ROM vs. hundreds of floppies)
- I'm also interested in *bootable* CD-ROMs, to again aid the
installation process.
- Getting started with 386bsd
- Looking for a quick easy way to install alot of machines.
- easier than ftp'ing everything!
- No ftp-access (version 0.2) !
- (1.) confidence in having an unscrewed up directory structure
which I can always rely on and
- (2.) a way to be sure I have the latest version
Software to be included:
-----------------------
Check those you would like to see on a 386bsd cd-rom:
98% [54] XFree86 sources/binaries
78% [43] TeX
87% [48] Lots of GNU software
44% [24] RFCs
55% [30] Random net goodies, like the net-hackers dictionary, etc.
34 people suggested at least one addition to this list.
Here's the list of what people wanted to see added:
Lots of these were repeated several times, such as Net/2, X11R5
contrib, etc. Someone even had the gall to suggest proprietary
software, such as Windows NT and Deskview/X. ;-) Yeah, right.
[X] Linux (combined CD)________________________
[X] the BSD Net2 tape__________________________
[X] original NET-2 and/or BSD4.4 light if at all possible ????
[X] perl
[X] Decent mail readers (INN and/or Elm), etc...
[X] Julian Elisher's SCSI driver improvements__
to 386BSD so that CD and tape are supported
[X] Tools to cope with ISO short file names to_
long file name conversion/linking______
[X] _comp.sources.unix archive_________________
[X] _comp.sources.games archive________________
[X] _comp.sources.misc archive_________________
[x] LPmud, NNTP, an archie database
[X] 386bsd mailing list/newsgroup archives
[x] documentation (ascii format and maybe postscript also) on basic
unix stuff such as how to get started with networking, how to get
started with x, etc.
[x] Document on buying pc hardware for unix systems (whatever it's
called that floats around on the net every now and then)
[x] MIT-X11 + contrib__________________________
[Y] Everything in all archives at nova and rachel, anywhere else?
[x] elm
[x] new reader (nn or similiar)
[X] Archives of some (or all) of the best postings to comp.unix.bsd.
[X] The patchkit.
[x] "useful" X software like ups, xview, etc.__
[x] Kermit, pcomm, xc or other serial communications package.
[x] Anything that will fit. Should be built so that
anyone with 386BSD installed would be able to just
'install' new packages. I have a package format
involving perl you may like to use. I designed it just
for this - installing off CD-ROM either by double symlinks
of copying - for read only media and NFS ro mounts.
[X] BSD manuals (like those on gatekeeper.dec.com
in /.0/BSD/manuals)
[X] Any available tutorial information on system
and network configuration.
[x] MS Windows NT
[x] Desqview X
[X] TCL/TK (BOS)
[X] pbmplus and xv
[X] comp.sources.{unix,games,x} archives.
[X] FAQs and useful documentations
[X] C-News, nn ___________________________
[X] smail3.x, elm ____________________________
[X] essential X-Stuff (xview, xfig, xdvi, olwm)
[X] NETHACK____________________________________
[X] WEB would be nice__________________________
[X] Emacs______________________________________
[X] Motif, when ported.________________________
Comments sections:
-----------------
[ed. I have deleted all (I think) identifying information, in case people
thought their comments would in anonymous. Hope no one minds. --Jon]
------------------------------------
You might attract new people if you can tap into some market research
such as the clarinet streetprice report and quote people low prices on
one or two drives.
I would be much more inclined to participate if the project has some
direct contact with the Jolitzes.
Also, since they are working on CD-ROM support, it seems reasonable to
bundle some financial support for them into the costs. I'm certain it
would have a very positive effect.
------------------------------------
Jon, Thanks for the chance to respond to a survey. I hope others respond
so you get some needed feedback. Madtown was my home for 11 years, Please
say hello to the Union for me! Good Luck
------------------------------------
There has been some talk of a Linux CD as well. (Yes, I know about
the flame wars.) I don't currently run 386BSD, but use Linux instead.
A CD with both Linux and 386BSD would be particularily attractive to me
as it would give me an archive of Linux and an easy way to try out 386BSD.
I realize this might be more difficult to put together, but Linux
does have CD-ROM support available now so it is possible.
------------------------------------
a cdrom is a VERY good idea !
realize it as fast as possible !
------------------------------------
Please hurry! I can't stand using System V much longer!
------------------------------------
Great idea! Do you think it will be ready before Thanksgiving?!
------------------------------------
Great idea. Hope it flies. I would like to be able to use a
translucent file system to keep the sources on the CD-ROM, and only
force things to disk if changes were made. This, of-course, requires
someone to do the TFS thing...
if an unpacked directory structure is on the CD-ROM, there is no reason
to waste more space with a packed version as well.... perhaps a script
to make a packed version for those that want to make floppy distributions
from a single CD-ROM.
I would be willing to help out with a package of ported software to be
put on the CD-ROM. Let me know if you get good response.
------------------------------------
In terms of additional software to be included on a CD distribution, I
would really only like to see patched sources/binaries for 386BSD, as
CD-ROMS already exist from sources like Walnut Creek for the GNU, X,
Usenet sources groups, etc.
I've already mentioned the necessity to update the ISOFS driver for
Rock Ridge.
------------------------------------
an excellent idea, how do you overcome the 8+3 filename limitation of ISO 9660?
------------------------------------
The biggest hurdle for people with systems at home is getting all the megabytes
of data onto the hard disk the first time. A CD-ROM would be great for that.
------------------------------------
I ran a UNIX/XENIX BBS for a number of years and am planning on switching
to 386 BSD, especially if the legal issues get settled (sigh..).
------------------------------------
An upgrade policy is a must. I recently read that a 386bsd cdrom
distribution is available for $75 but this price is rather high and
there's no talk of an upgrade policy. Since I just finished
installing everything (except for x) I don't really feel I can justify
$75.
Unix is forever being bashed because of lack of documentation. As can
be seen above, I believe 386bsd should make some sort of effort to
help solve that problem. It is, after all, for educational purposes.
Also, documents should be on the cd-rom in ASCII format. Many don't
have access to a postscript printer, many would like to read documents
on-line, many have no plans (or disk spce) to install x, therefore
postscript won't be useful to all.
Finally, Perhaps the initial price for the disk should be slightly
higher and that additional cost should be the contribution to the
Joltz's. If you force a contribution once, and leave future
contributions up to the purchaser of the cd-rom, you don't force
people to continually contribute.
------------------------------------
This sound like a great Idea. Keep me posted!
------------------------------------
I don't think you're pricing scheme is un realistic, but I would be
willing to pay more if I knew that a larger contribution would go to
the Jolitz's Careware programs. I want a cd-rom because I have more
access to a cd-rom drive than a network, AND because if someone builds
a cd-rom image of the OS, it should be a more stable version because
someone took the time to put in the right patches and build and "test"
them.
------------------------------------
I thick this a CD-ROM is a good idea, specialy the contribution
for the jolitz.
Fill up the CD-ROM with all stuff that you find.
------------------------------------
Almost everything I'm interested in *except* 386bsd and XFree86 is
already available on the Prime Time Freeware CD-ROM distribution,
which BTW lists for $60 (includes two CDs; update subscriptions cost
$42). It includes the GNU stuff, complete X sources, and much more.
Therefore, I'd rather see the CD-ROM space devoted to 386bsd (packed
and unpacked) and related goodies, such as ported software and/or
patches to such. PTF was to have included 386bas in their latest
release, but backed off because of the USL suit.
------------------------------------
Go for it.
------------------------------------
Frankly, I'm a bit cautious about even admitting I'm using 386BSD
because of the USL legal threats. I would prefer that identifying
information about myself not be kept in any "386BSD users" database.
[ed. I'll be deleting all the information everyone submitted after the
survey is completed, so don't worry about this... ;-) --Jon]
------------------------------------
Binaries and sources for all possilbe software for 386bsd MUST BE INCLUDED.
Only then should you consider making a NICER distribution.
One of the nicer things will be unpacked binaries to allow novices
to work immediately given only a boot floppy. It only takes 60Mbyte to have
XFree86 and 386bsd networked OS, with all development tools, even olwm libs.
------------------------------------
$30-$40 is exactly what I was thinking as a reasonable start-up price.
$75 (current price from one company) isn't worth it for `free' software.
idea of bootable cdrom recently posted to c.u.bsd by julian E. is intriguing.
thank you for making this effort.
------------------------------------
do it!!!
------------------------------------
I'd really like to see this happen, maybe even as a linux/386BSD cooperative
effort as someone(s) have mentioned. I probably will not be able to get
386BSD running at home without such a distribution, so I'm the sort of
person who would be most helped by such a project.
------------------------------------
Hmm, I wonder if my last message prompted this survey... I do think a
cdrom is a very good idea. Using it to save hard drive space is quite
important to me so it must contain unpacked sources in a usable form
(this requires having file names outwith the ISO9660 standard.
I think you should seriously consider having Linux sources and binaries
on the disk as well, as this would probably double the customers and
most of the sources (GNU, TeX, and most of XFree86) are the same. Of
course it would probably square the amount of work needed in getting
together a useful distribution
I think it should be the case that people can buy this CD and easily
boot up 386bsd (or linux). This requires boot floppy images on the
disk in an accessible place from MSDOS and rawwrite.exe or similar to
put them on floppy (or even an MSDOS program that allows booting an
image directly off the CD). Then from there you can mount the CD and
unpack the rest. This would require fairly careful planning but it
would make it worthwhile.
As regards CD prices. I bought the Infomagic CD for 75$ so I don't
think it unreasonable to charge 50$ for a complete operating system even
if it is free.
------------------------------------
it would be nice to be able to boot from the cdrom and install from it.
------------------------------------
Make the distribution a self-supported environment for 386BSD development.
Don't include alot of unrelated netstuff like the dictionary, gifs, etc -
there are many other inexpensive sources of these around, and the extra
effort involved in acquistion and maintenence might impact the primary
goal: current 386BSD sources.
BTW: not all of us with CDROMs have 300+MB disks to store sources and
binaries. A natural CDROM-based build tree would be great - for that
matter, even prebuilt objects, libraries and binaries could be on the
disk. That way, a simple sparse tree could be organized with minimal
impact on disk space or (re)build time.
| I'm thinking of doing it under the auspices of a not-for-profit
| corporation, so that we wouldn't be taxed on the distribution charges.
| Any profits realized would be used to make future distributions
| cheaper and better. In any case, I would like to do this thing as
| cheaply as possible, to help get 386bsd out to the masses.
*** Bravo! However, I don't have a problem with you making a little money
*** from the distributions - this is hard work. If you realized $5 a disk,
*** you should do quite well. I understand it takes only a few dollars to
*** cut disks once the equipment and procedures are in place.
*** BTW, at this point, I'd even pay $60 for a complete 386BSD (sources
*** and binaries).
------------------------------------
The problem with this is that there are no device drivers for all the
different CD-ROM controllers (except SCSI controllers).
I don't know how you will want to cope with those ?
It's not a problem for me (I have a 1742A) but it might be for others.
Most of the people will buy a low-price CD-ROM drive and there is no
support for those. In addition all the sound boards (appearing daily on the
market) with, again, proprietary CD-ROM interfaces.
How about shipping to Europe (sorry, no credit-card, e.g.) ?
One last comment: How about saving the environment ? Can you recycle CD-ROMs ?
They are obsolete (almost) after three days of pressing them, right ?
That's what happens with books for software and programs, as well.
------------------------------------
$40 is cheap. But, there is a *big* problem with falling behind on
updates and getting bug fixes. Could you make a new disc every three to
four months?
[x] If you make the pricing as confusing as possible, you'll
lose sales. CDs can hold a *lot* of software and you'll
soon lose to the $40-$60 Cds that have 386BSD, Linux,
comp.sources.unix, the entire GNU and X Window System
sources, etc.
1. Frequent updates are a must; the software must be up to date.
2. You will eventually have a lot of competition.
3. Keep the pricing simple; confusing sends people to your competitiors.
4. Focus on ease of installing, not just your CD-ROM, but *all*
of 386BSD.
------------------------------------
See above :-)
------------------------------------
I think a Jolitz contribution should be included in the cd-rom price.
That way it will be tax deductible.
------------------------------------
I think the best things to go on CD-ROM are those bits and pieces which are
relatively stable, and not being constantly revised. 386BSD largely falls
into this category, as the main changes are going on in the i386/isa bits of
the kernel. X386 (including all the MIT X11R5 stuff) and tex are also very
stable.
GNU software, on the other hand, is being quite frequently revised. e.g. I'd
see little use in having gcc 2.3.1 on the disk since it'd be out-of-date
very quickly. But if you've got free space...
------------------------------------
Include unofficial directory
------------------------------------
The main thing we need to do is provide a stable version of 386BSD
with a clearly written online manual for beginners. The release
should include X windows and ave an automated setup program which
creates a new user, gives him or her an optional password, and
optionally configures X. CDROM is the best way to do this due to the
size of 386BSD.
I have spent many many hours downloading 386BSD and getting it
running. That went pretty well, given the horrible state of Unix
documentation. I am NOT criticizing the man command, which is a great
idea and works as a reference tool -- but not as a 'user guide'. The
closest thing Unix has to a reference guide are the Berkeley tutorials
and a couple of excellant but terse books. I still run as root
because I don't know how to add myself as a user. That is ridiculous.
Listen, I am not a begineer at computers. I've been a Unix user since
Version 5 at Berkeley in 1975. I've hacked GNU Emacs internals, I've
written foreign function calls to sockets code from Lisp, I've been to
the moon. But I am NOT a Unix sysadmin and DON'T WANT TO BE ONE. IS
ANY ONE LISTENING TO ME? (large smiley face goes here).
ALL my attempts to get X up have met with doom. However, I just
recently learned what 'recompiling a kernel' means and, kind of, how
to do it. It's a truely trivial procedure! Too bad it's taken me two
months of on again off again guess work in my spare time to get to
this point. Horrible as it is to say, MS-DOG and WINDOZE are WAY WAY
better at helping the user get the damn things up and running and
helping them once they're there. Why can't the devastingly large and
wonderful world Unix community do the same for installation procedures
and online help that they have for cc, make, grep, and rogue? I mean,
a new Unix user must be TOTALLY intimiidated by this system!
I'm trying to do my part. I'm taking notes and, someday, when I
actually have a windowd 386bsd reliably running on my 386, I will
write up my notes, I will send money to the Jolitz', and I will help
push 386bsd more into the world. But not until then.
Note, I love Unix and the 386bsd idea. Don't get me wrong.
------------------------------------
Please do this!
------------------------------------
Mind? I don't have no steenkin' mind! :-)
Good luck.
------------------------------------
I like your idea. Please set up a distribution point in Germany or somewhere
else in Europe before you start shipping. It is much more economical to ship
100 CDs via a commercial carrier than to mail them separately. Also, many
people shy away from getting stuff from the US since there is no reasonable
way of getting your money back if anything goes wrong.
I could distribute the CD in Germany if you like. I would need about DM 10
= $6.50 per CD at a first guess. I'm not sure about your pricing scheme but
can't really come up with something better.
------------------------------------
I can just about afford a CD-ROM drive, help convince me I should
afford one. Unpacked directory structure is an absolute must, symbolic
links to obj directories on a real disk, so I don't have to find lots more
money for another disk.
------------------------------------
Note that my drive is a Panasonic drive with the Creative labs->soundblaster
interface. My interest depends critically upon someone coming up with a
driver for it!
On re-reading, I think you have left out the option I'd like to see.
I'd like to see it as a DOS readable distribution, everything compressed.
Largely for archive purposes. (Obviously I don't want rawrite.* and *.fs
compressed! (Nor mount for that matter - NFS mounting is undoubtedly a
useful installation mechanism for many people, especially if the CD is placed
in a CD server remote to the user.
------------------------------------
I think this is good idea, and I believe many people do.
I want to send my donation to Jolitz's by getting this CD-ROM.
------------------------------------
I find the idea of CD-ROM distibution superb ! I'd be willing to spend
even more than $40 on the first disk.
Carry on !
------------------------------------
I think it would be a great thing. I am planning to get myself a CDROMplayer
sometime this spring (to bad I have sold my AHA1542 :-( and bought an IDE
controller )
To include 20-30 $ contribution to the Jolitz also seems like an excellent
idea. But make the standard price include the contribution and let it be
optional to NOT pay the contribution.
If made the other way around, i.e. make standard prize not include contribution
and make contibution optional would make a lot of people to ignore to pay
it.
Otherwise, I think anything below $100 is dirt cheap for this quality software.
(In sweden $100 is what I pay for 4 Music CDs. :-( )
--
-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.
Jon Cargille jcar...@cs.wisc.edu
Want your .sig compressed? Reasonable rates
and fast turnaround. Call today!
--
Eric Youngdale
Clarence Wilkerson
$40. The 3 for $99 doesn't convince me, since at the end I have only one
ROM of any real interest.
--
Clarence Wilkerson \ Bitnet: wilker%math.purdue.edu@purccvm
Prof. of Math. (topology)\ Internet: wil...@math.purdue.edu
Dept. of Mathematics \ messages: (317) 494-1903, FAX 494-0548
Purdue University, \ office: (317) 494-1955 (voice/modem)
W. Lafayette, Indiana 47907 \
Rick Kelly
Well, I don't think you'll see anyone getting source for NT.
I have seen a comment from SGI, which will sell NT on their bottom of
the line model, that stated that NT was unsuitable for high end systems
due to the inability of NT to be configured to system load, etc. This
seems to imply that SGI doesn't see NT source, either.
Linux has reached a state where it is nice and fast, has networking and
X11, and the kernel is still at a reasonable size. It doesn't have shared
memory, message passing, and semaphores. It doesn't conform to the Intel
binary standard shared by SVR3, SVR4, Coherent, and others.
In a professional/business environment it can't run the commercial shrink
wrapped apps that are available.
--
Rick Kelly r...@rmkhome.UUCP unixland!rmkhome!rmk r...@frog.UUCP
Rick Kelly
>In article <duck.722767414@nuustak> du...@nuustak.csir.co.za (Paul Ducklin) writes:
>>Thus spake wes...@smurf.sti.com (Will Estes):
>>>This is a bit embarrassing to have to point out, but did you realize
>>>that Microsoft is selling Windows/NT on CD-ROM for $69? I mean, is
>>>Microsoft's proprietary 32-bit operating system even more free than free GNU
>>>UNIX? :)
>>
>>Get real.
>>
>>Microsoft Windows (non-NT) is also very cheap. But have you worked out how
>>much it costs you to buy more than Solitaire? Ever priced the Windows
>>SDK and a suitable compiler? For $99, the convenience of "everything"
>>you need for Linux all in one place is more than worth it. After all,
>>your friends can borrow your CD and copy/install it. The Linux CD is
>>*not* an "entry level" disc. It's the Real Thing[TM] -- and you get
>>the source code, a decent compiler, X, GhostScript, TeX...need more be said.
>
>The Windows/NT SDK includes Windows, Windows/NT, and POSIX subsystems,
>as well as the complete Win32 SDK and C++ compiler, as well as a
>complete 16 and 32-bit implementation of TCP/IP, as well as some LAN
>Manager server capability, all for $69. You can buy the GNU utilities
>for the POSIX subsystem from a third party, but you are correct that this
>costs more. And the POSIX subsystem is not UNIX, by a long shot, but it's
>also pretty clear that within a year someone will be selling a viable UNIX
>subsystem (or maybe porting Linux) to run under Windows/NT.
Windows NT, which will be released as Windows 3.1 NT, will mainly be sold
as a server OS for systems running Windows 3.1 on a network.
Windows NT is not released. Microsoft, in marketing literature, has stated
that the final release price of Windows 3.1 NT will be "less than $495".
>>Microsoft's proprietary 32-bit operating system is just that: proprietary.
>>But you're right it's "embarrassing" -- embarrassing for you that you
>>should compare apples and monosodium glutamate...and seriously, at that.
>
>I think you trivializing the point. The point is that Microsoft might
>well use its economies of scale to price its 32-bit OS as a commodity and
>still manage to make a substantial profit. This makes it possible for
>reasonable people to make an argument that their total cost to purchase,
>develop for, support, and use Windows/NT would be equal to or less than
>a totally free package such as Linux. The economics of such a
>comparison should encompass issues like support.
In order Windows 3.1 NT to have the same rate of sales as Windows 3.x,
they will have to convince vendors to ship it with systems. And these
systems have have to have 16megs of memory and a large hard disk.
Remember, Microsoft can show high numbers for sales of Windows 3.1 because
an awful lot of people got it whether they wanted it or not.
>Now I know that in your mind there is no comparison, Linux is going to
>be cheaper for *you* to buy, develop for, and support. Fine. But if we
>asked that same question to the guys who head MIS at the Fortune 1000,
>or to people in the Federal Government, I don't think we would get the
>same answer. And note that this is *just* the economic comparison; we
>haven't even addressed the issue of which platform offers the widest
>selection of applications. Unfortunately, there just isn't a
>comparison there. Most UNIX workstation vendors are porting to
>Windows/NT, and even Linux may end up getting a port as a Windows/NT
>subsystem. And which platform supports Word For Windows, Excel, etc. at
>$99 bucks a pop for upgrades?
There actually aren't many UNIX vendors porting to Windows 3.1 NT.
The leading spreadsheet is Lotus 123, it runs on UNIX.
The leading word processor is Word Perfect, it runs on UNIX.
Go and look at a third part commercial software catalog for SCO UNIX.
The basic office system in a federal government office is a PC clone
running MSDOS with Multimate and Lotus 123 as the applications.
>Please note that I want Linux to succeed like crazy! A world where Bill
>Gates controls all of our choices really does scare me. But I think I
>am making a legitimate point about the economics of NT versus Linux that
>will affect how much market share Linux can grab.
Only marketing and media weasels think that Bill Gates controls the
computer industry.
>Personally, I wish the FSF were a company that understood what a market
>is and sold Linux as a cheap UNIX with support. What the world really
>needs is a solid UNIX that is approachable as a system for end-users
>(i.e., the mass-market). That's sort of what Jobs has tried to do with
>NeXTStep '486, but he is blowing it by pricing it at $999. I simply
>find it frustrating that Bill Gates is the only person in the industry
>who seems to understand how to sell an operating system for naive
>end-users as a commodity. I think an important part of making Linux a
>long-term success is to correctly identify what is Bill Gates' market,
>and to hit him where it hurts. I'm afraid Linux doesn't do that, yet.
Bill Gates' market is still MSDOS, as that is the way most PC clones are
configured and sold. It is the slim requirements of MSDOS that have driven
down the price of PC hardware.
A 486 PC with 4 megs of memory and a 100 meg drive will be USELESS for NT.
Paul Ducklin
>>Get real.
Will Estes retorts, inter alia, with:
>Now I know that in your mind there is no comparison, Linux is going to
>be cheaper for *you* to buy, develop for, and support. Fine. But if we
>asked that same question to the guys who head MIS at the Fortune 1000,
>or to people in the Federal Government, I don't think we would get the
>same answer. And note that this is *just* the economic comparison; we
I still think you're comparing apples and MSG.
Don't forget that your $99 Linux CD-ROM can be used to install a complete
system onto all of the machines supported by the guys who head MIS at the
Fortune 1000! You're paying $99 _for the convenience of having had some-
one slap everything you need on a CD-ROM_. Not for the operating system.
With Win/NT (don't you love the "N" in "NT"), you're paying your $69 per
copy of the OS. If you think $99 is too much to pay for a CD-ROM, get
together with 9 friends and pay $9.90 each!
See if you can do that with the MS stuff...OK, you can. But you may not.
Tim Smith
>I have seen a comment from SGI, which will sell NT on their bottom of
>the line model, that stated that NT was unsuitable for high end systems
>due to the inability of NT to be configured to system load, etc. This
>seems to imply that SGI doesn't see NT source, either.
It could just imply that SGI doesn't want to *change* the source too much
lest integrating new releases from Microsoft become difficult. If they
change it, and Microsoft doesn't put the changes in subsequent releases,
then SGI is stuck making the same changes in each new release from Microsoft,
or going through new Microsoft releases and picking out the parts they
want to port over to their diverging kernel.
If you are going to use someone else's operating system, a good case can
be made for leaving it alone, except for (1) any changes needed for your
specific hardware, and (2) fixing bugs that the OS vendor is also going to
fix.
Given the possibility of some pretty hot competition between NT and OS/2
and one or two Unix versions, I'd expect new releases of NT to take place
fairly quickly, which would indicate that people with NT source should be
cautious about making changes.
--Tim Smith
Tim Smith
>is and sold Linux as a cheap UNIX with support.
Imagine what FSF could do with Bill Gates' money:
1. First, convert Gates' stock to real money. Let's say that
yeilds 5 billion bucks.
2. Invest this. This gives easily 500 million a year to
throw around.
3. With that 500 million, do the following:
a. Hire 1000 programmers at 100K/yr to write free
software.
b. Hire 2000 support people at 50K/yr to support it.
c. Create 3000 "Free Software Grants" of 100K/yr. People
who wish to develop free software can apply for these
grants.
(the above breakdown is just to give an idea of the
magnitude of what could be done -- other breakdowns
might be better, such as including an explict
documentation category)
So, why didn't something like this happen? A lot of people reading this
now were quite capable of writing a BASIC interpreter for an 808x back in
the late 70's. Why was it Bill Gates? I'm also pretty sure that there
are a lot of people reading this who could have written something comparable
to the first version of DOS in about a week.
I know what excuse I and the people I hung out with then have. We were
hacking our PDP-10's back then, and didn't want to be bothered with
toys like the 808x. Does anyone else care to reminisce on the topic
of "What I was doing instead of making billions"? :-) :-(
--Tim Smith
Steven D Ourada
>[Scenario:What FSF would be if it had $5G]
>So, why didn't something like this happen? A lot of people reading this
>now were quite capable of writing a BASIC interpreter for an 808x back in
>the late 70's. Why was it Bill Gates? I'm also pretty sure that there
>are a lot of people reading this who could have written something comparable
>to the first version of DOS in about a week.
The basic reason this didn't happen is that those who make $5 billion in
the software market and those who give away free software must have very
different attitudes towards the sale of software. Someone like Bill Gates
is not likely to suddenly decide that all software should be free and devote
all his money to making that happen. And someone like Richard Stallman is
not likely to temporarily decide that it's O.K. to sell software so he can
make a quick billion to support free software.
It boils down a simple maxim: "There's no money in free software." :-)
(I know there are exceptions, but this is supposed to be a _simple_ maxim)
Later,
Steven Ourada
--
-----------------
Steven Ourada Member of the Students for Electronic Freedom
Ask me how Iowa State University is censoring my Usenet access!
sou...@iastate.edu "can't casts no shadow" -- cummings
Magnus Alvestad
>>>>> Ourada) said:
Steven> It boils down a simple maxim: "There's no money in
Steven> free software." :-)
Well, there is money in free users.
-Magnus
Ed June
AJR> In article <1992Nov25....@wam.umd.edu> jo...@wam.umd.edu
AJR> (Joel M. Hoffman) writes:
>>
>> I am now taking orders for the alpha release of my
>> company's Linux/GNU/X distribution on CDROM.
AJR> --
AJR> Adam J. Richter 409 Evelyn Avenue,
AJR> Apt. 312 Yggdrasil Computing, Incorporated Albany, CA
AJR> 94706 ric...@cerf.net (510)528-3209
AJR> Another member of the League for Programming Freedom
AJR> (lea...@uunet.uu.net).
How much will it co$t?
Ed June
Fidonet: 1:133/308, Atlanta's OS/2 Users Group BBS, 404-471-1549
Internet: ed_...@over.mind.org
UUCP: ...!emory!uumind!overmind!ed_june
* Origin: Information Overload, Atlanta's OS/2 Users Group BBS
(1:133/308)
Peter da Silva
> Why was it Bill Gates?
The rest of us were unwilling to produce less than the best product we could,
and unwilling to discard a technically superior design in favor of one which,
while tragically crippled, would make us more money.
That's also why Jobs and Wozniak aren't in charge at Apple any more.
--
%Peter da Silva/77487-5012 USA/+1 713 274 5180/Have you hugged your wolf today?
/D{def}def/I{72 mul}D/L{lineto}D/C{curveto}D/F{0 562 moveto 180 576 324 648 396
736 C 432 736 L 482 670 518 634 612 612 C}D/G{setgray}D .75 G F 612 792 L 0 792
L fill 1 G 324 720 24 0 360 arc fill 0 G 3 setlinewidth F stroke showpage % 100
Dave Eisen
>In article <1992Nov28.1...@u.washington.edu> t...@carson.u.washington.edu (Tim Smith) writes:
>> Why was it Bill Gates?
>
>The rest of us were unwilling to produce less than the best product we could,
>and unwilling to discard a technically superior design in favor of one which,
>while tragically crippled, would make us more money.
Speak for yourself, Peter. I for one would be overjoyed to
produce less than the best product I can and make 5 billion
dollars for doing so.
Bill Gates obviously has some talents that most of the rest
of us don't have. He might not be the hacker you are or I
am, but he is one hell of a better marketer. And that is a
much more difficult and much more valuable talent.
--
Dave Eisen Sequoia Peripherals: (415) 967-5644
dke...@leland.Stanford.EDU Home: (415) 321-5154
There's something in my library to offend everybody.
--- Washington Coalition Against Censorship
Matt Welsh
>In article <id.AC...@ferranti.com> pe...@ferranti.com (Peter da Silva) writes:
>>The rest of us were unwilling to produce less than the best product we could,
>>and unwilling to discard a technically superior design in favor of one which,
>>while tragically crippled, would make us more money.
>
>of us don't have. He might not be the hacker you are or I
>am, but he is one hell of a better marketer. And that is a
>much more difficult and much more valuable talent.
I sneeze at you.
mdw
--
Matt Welsh m...@tc.cornell.edu +1 607 253 2737
"We're going away now. I fed the cat."
Jeff McAffer
>This is the key part. What about those of us who aren't in acedemia?
>What about those of us that actually have to work for a living, but
yeah, like we don't work.
>like to hack on a Unix-like OS in our free time at home? I would bet
What about you/us? Free (or nearly) stuff is free. Us it. Don't
whine that the commercial stuff costs money. Remember, if there was a
reasonable market for *selling* complete source OSs, people would be
doing it and making money. (I don't cound Linux as being sold cause
you can ftp it for free. As you alluded to, its the CD compilation
that's being sold. Any hacker would download it himself :-)
>that non-academic sites will not be able to get the NT SDK for
>anything less than $500, once NT is released. (The current price for
...
>that costs $1500. Possibly overpriced; possibly not -- I'm inclined
>to think not, after seeing the quality of SCO support.
You're not willing to pay 500 for the NT stuff but you will pay 1500
for SCO? I don't really know anything about either as a product.
These just don't seem like basement hacker arguments.
> And academia
>can get a substantial discount off list price.
but you're not interested in academia! After all, they don't actually
do any work.
>license unless they're as rich as Bill Gates. That's the beauty of
>Linux and 386BSD -- *anybody* can get the source, no matter who they
>are or how much money they have.
Agreed entirely.
So what is your conclusion? Cheap/free mostly working but unsupported
stuff that 99% of the computer users could not handle is great.
Expensive but more solid and powerful stuff (SCO) that 80% of computer
users could not handle is great. Low priced stuff that at least holds
some hope of normal people being able to use it sucks because you have
to pay extra for the development environment.
--
--
ato de, |m -- Face it!
Rick Kelly
>>Now I know that in your mind there is no comparison, Linux is going to
>>be cheaper for *you* to buy, develop for, and support. Fine. But if we
>>asked that same question to the guys who head MIS at the Fortune 1000,
>>or to people in the Federal Government, I don't think we would get the
>>same answer. And note that this is *just* the economic comparison; we
>
>I still think you're comparing apples and MSG.
>
>Don't forget that your $99 Linux CD-ROM can be used to install a complete
>system onto all of the machines supported by the guys who head MIS at the
>Fortune 1000! You're paying $99 _for the convenience of having had some-
>one slap everything you need on a CD-ROM_. Not for the operating system.
>With Win/NT (don't you love the "N" in "NT"), you're paying your $69 per
>copy of the OS. If you think $99 is too much to pay for a CD-ROM, get
>together with 9 friends and pay $9.90 each!
Linux is covered by the GPL and is of course copyable. However, the original
announcement of the Linux CD-ROM for $99 had a caveat included that seemed to
imply that the makers of the CD-ROM wouldn't allow that. ??????
>See if you can do that with the MS stuff...OK, you can. But you may not.
There's lots of pirated copies of Windows 3.x out there.
Rick Kelly
>>I have seen a comment from SGI, which will sell NT on their bottom of
>>the line model, that stated that NT was unsuitable for high end systems
>>due to the inability of NT to be configured to system load, etc. This
>>seems to imply that SGI doesn't see NT source, either.
>
>It could just imply that SGI doesn't want to *change* the source too much
>lest integrating new releases from Microsoft become difficult. If they
>change it, and Microsoft doesn't put the changes in subsequent releases,
>then SGI is stuck making the same changes in each new release from Microsoft,
>or going through new Microsoft releases and picking out the parts they
>want to port over to their diverging kernel.
What they are saying, I think, is that UNIX comes with the ability to
change kernel variables on a per system basis to configure for optimum
efficiency at average system load. This is something that is needed by
a multiuser system. NT is a single user system and/or file server.
>If you are going to use someone else's operating system, a good case can
>be made for leaving it alone, except for (1) any changes needed for your
>specific hardware, and (2) fixing bugs that the OS vendor is also going to
>fix.
But SGI is talking about system administration functions.
>Given the possibility of some pretty hot competition between NT and OS/2
>and one or two Unix versions, I'd expect new releases of NT to take place
>fairly quickly, which would indicate that people with NT source should be
>cautious about making changes.
And a year from now, NT may still be in beta-beta-beta.
Brett Elliott
such as those arrows on the side of the street which flash.
Bob Stockler
> 3. With that 500 million, do the following:
> a. Hire 1000 programmers at 100K/yr to write free
> software.
> b. Hire 2000 support people at 50K/yr to support it.
I'd suggest you've sorta got this basackwards.
Comes the Revolution, and we're ALL EQUAL (except me, who'll be the
LEADER), I'd put the bucks you alloted to (a) into (b), perhaps
proportionately to your original pay schedule. That ought make it fly.
Otherwise, I think you've a pretty good idea (if we can get the 500 mil).
--
Bob Stockler b...@trebor.uucp CIS: 72726,452
Brian Downing
> of us don't have. He might not be the hacker you are or I
> am, but he is one hell of a better marketer. And that is a
> much more difficult and much more valuable talent.
I beg to differ. What Gates does simply requires having no integrity.
He's no different from the local street-corner drug dealers here in
New York City. Sales and profit ALWAYS come first. The quality MUST
be kept at a minimum in order to maximize profit. They also both try
to get'em hooked so they'll keep coming back for more. Anyone
participating in the use of DOS,Heroin or Cocaine is simply not
getting the most out of life possible.
;)
--
Brian...
brian downing@->fordham university, nyc ny
br...@dsm.fordham.edu bdow...@mary.fordham.edu
david matiskella
ago. Of course if you can spend several years designing something you are going to come up with a better system than if you design and build it in one year.
Marc Unangst
>You're not willing to pay 500 for the NT stuff but you will pay 1500
>for SCO? I don't really know anything about either as a product.
>These just don't seem like basement hacker arguments.
I'm actually not willing to pay either. Neither OS is for the
"basement hacker", and neither OS is intended as a research project.
>So what is your conclusion? Cheap/free mostly working but unsupported
>stuff that 99% of the computer users could not handle is great.
>Expensive but more solid and powerful stuff (SCO) that 80% of computer
>users could not handle is great. Low priced stuff that at least holds
>some hope of normal people being able to use it sucks because you have
>to pay extra for the development environment.
Not exactly. Cheap/free stuff with source is great because even if it
isn't exactly what I wanted, I can fix it easily. Expensive and more
powerful stuff (SCO) is good, not great, because it meets people's
needs and I can get by without source by leaning on their support
staff. (And SCO makes you pay over $1000 for the development
environment, too...)
I don't think it's necessarily true that 80% of computer users
couldn't handle SCO. Give them a reasonably-powered box on their desk
and let them run X.desktop, and they'll do fine. Just as user-cuddly
as Windows NT, but with the power of Unix underneath. I'm assuming,
of course, that you have some kind of administrator to handle
sysadmin-type tasks, but you'll need one with WinNT too. Or did you
expect to have a 50-node NT network without an administrator?
--
Marc Unangst, N8VRH | "There are two ways to solve this problem:
m...@mudos.ann-arbor.mi.us | the hard way, and the easy way. Let's start
| with the hard way."
| - W. Scheider, from a Physics lecture
M. Saggaf
Guys, don't you think it would be appropriate to cut down on
crossposting a bit now that the topic has digressed this far from the
original post? Please limit your discussion to gnu.misc.discuss, or
better yet, take it to alt.fan.bill-gates.puke.puke :-)
Have fun,
--
/M. Saggaf
alsa...@athena.mit.edu
Stimpson J. Cat
>> Why was it Bill Gates?
>
>The rest of us were unwilling to produce less than the best product we could,
>and unwilling to discard a technically superior design in favor of one which,
>while tragically crippled, would make us more money.
>
>That's also why Jobs and Wozniak aren't in charge at Apple any more.
Bwhahahahahaha!!!! That's a good one.. Ever concider cross-posting to
rec.humor.funny? The Apple II put them on the map, yet it had one of the most
badly hacked os-es I had ever seen. (If you could even call that a OS) The
Apple III was a badly assembled failure that was rushed out the door too
fast and the Lisa... Ugh. Proof that not just IBM and Microsoft don't get it
right at first...
IMHO, Apple became a *better* company once Scully took over and the *real*
macs came out...
Jobs was never more than a hardware version of Bill Gates. He saw an
opening and grabbed it.
--
Stimpy J. Cat sti...@dev-null.phys.psu.edu
"I want everyone to know the joy of my nipples!" -Stimpy
Peter da Silva
> produce less than the best product I can and make 5 billion
> dollars for doing so.
But would you be willing to do it for a long-shot chance at making those
5 billion? A billion-to-one chance?
Would you be willing to put your money where your mouth is and do this today?
> Bill Gates obviously has some talents that most of the rest
> of us don't have. He might not be the hacker you are or I
> am, but he is one hell of a better marketer. And that is a
> much more difficult and much more valuable talent.
Well, it's certainly a better-paid talent, but I don't equate that with
more valueable. I firmly believe that Bill Gates has single-handedly put
personal computers back ten years or more by his actions.
Tim Smith
Gates, the following:
>Another thing to consider is that MSDOS was written very quickly.
However, Bill Gates didn't write MSDOS, he bought the first version.
--Tim Smith
Peter da Silva
> I think you are a little harsh on Bill Gates. The guy was a great
> programmer. HOw many people do you know who have written a basic in 3k?
Well, I wrote a better language than Basic that ran on top of Forth in about
2K. With the base Forth (including interactive mode) that probably came to
about 6K, but I could have gotten down to 3K by leaving out the interactive
mode and all the Forth I/O routines. The Forth was commercial, but I could
have done that base subset myself... I certainly hacked enough Forth kernels:
even did a multitasker that was mostly portable (needed about 16 lines of
assembly for each processor) between the PDP-11, HP-1000, and 8080.
I can beat my hairless hacker breast with the best of them. PLUS I know how
to keep my lines down to 80 characters!
> In addition look at the computers available when MSDOS was written.
Yep, I was there. When MS-DOS came out I and most of my friends were amazed
at how bad it was. CP/M was better, and CP/M was none too good.
> Another thing to consider is that MSDOS was written very quickly.
Bill didn't write MSDOS. It was hacked together by another vendor and MS
basically fixed some bugs and shipped it.
> I keep hearing how great Herd is going to be but when was the idea first
> proposed?
I was running Unix on a PC/XT in 1984, and it was faster than MS-DOS.
Minix has been out for at least 6 years.
CP/M was better in 1978 than MS-DOS in 1982.
Cromemco had a UNIX-lookalike running on multiple Z-80s in 1980.
AmigaOS first shipped in 1985, and it was already better than any PC operating
system that was to ship until OS/2 2.0 seven years later.
MS-DOS, by any technical standard, is a disaster we're only now beginning to
recover from. There were dozens of better systems. Hell, the Atari 800 O/S
was better than CP/M and MS-DOS together and that ran on a game machine.
Roland Dreier
In article <1992Nov29....@news.nd.edu> dmat...@virgil.helios.nd.edu (david matiskella) writes:
> I keep hearing how great Herd is going to be but when was the idea first
> proposed?
I was running Unix on a PC/XT in 1984, and it was faster than MS-DOS.
Minix has been out for at least 6 years.
CP/M was better in 1978 than MS-DOS in 1982.
Cromemco had a UNIX-lookalike running on multiple Z-80s in 1980.
AmigaOS first shipped in 1985, and it was already better than any
PC operating system that was to ship until OS/2 2.0 seven years later.
I have been following the threads lately about GPLed vs. Public Domain
vs. Commercial software lately, and the above exchange struck me as
rather interesting. All of those OSes you cite in response to the
Hurd query are commercial. In March 1985, the GNU Manifesto was
published in Dr. Dobbs. In the 1986 Byte Interview, Stallman was
promising the kernel in a year or two. It is now almost 1993, and the
GNU operating system, now Hurd, is shaping up into vaporware of
proportions that would make Microsoft jealous.
It seems rather interesting that we have commercial operating systems
with versions like Nextstep 3.0 or Solaris 2.0, and even OSF/1 can be
had, all before Hurd gets out. Linux is almost up to 1.0, but Linux
does not have interesting new technology. Even Windows/NT, which will
probably be shipping before Hurd, offers new stuff like
object-oriented device drivers and so on. I'm not sure exactly what
the delay has been with Hurd, either; it seems like all that is been
done is taking the Mach 3.0 stuff written at CMU and crossing it with
the BSD stuff written at UCB, and tacking on MIT's X windows.
If we were truly living in the "post-scarcity" world the FSF dreams
about, there would be no commercial operating systems. Would we all
be running Hurd alphas? I reread the GNU Manifesto recently.
Stallman's vision for the future seems like a immensely bad idea.
Complain all you want about Gates and Microsoft, but the FSF wants to
eliminate all commercial software and fund development by a "software
tax" on computer sales. It seems to me that this would change an
industry that is one of the few that the US seems to do well into a
god-awful cross between the IRS and the current system of funding
research. The LPF can terrorize you with nightmares about software
patents; but how would you like to have to write grant proposals to
write software?
OK, the asbestos undies are on :)
--
Roland Dreier dre...@math.berkeley.edu
Peter da Silva
> Bwhahahahahaha!!!! That's a good one.. Ever concider cross-posting to
> rec.humor.funny? The Apple II put them on the map, yet it had one of the most
> badly hacked os-es I had ever seen.
Agreed, but the hardware was the best they could do with the resources at
their disposal... *and* they did try to get a better O/S standardised as
soon as they possibly could. ProDOS is another O/S to add to my list of
better-than-MS-DOS-in-the-early-80s-and-late-70s systems.
> Jobs was never more than a hardware version of Bill Gates. He saw an
> opening and grabbed it.
Perhaps, but he did the best job he could and still fit into that opening.
And he kept working on real improvements. Microsoft *still* hasn't done
anything to substantially improve MS-DOS since DOS 2.1.
Joe Rosenfeld
: In article <duck.722767414@nuustak> du...@nuustak.csir.co.za (Paul Ducklin) writes:
: >Thus spake wes...@smurf.sti.com (Will Estes):
: >>This is a bit embarrassing to have to point out, but did you realize
: >>that Microsoft is selling Windows/NT on CD-ROM for $69? I mean, is
: >>Microsoft's proprietary 32-bit operating system even more free than free GNU
: >>UNIX? :)
: >
: >Get real.
: >
: >Microsoft Windows (non-NT) is also very cheap. But have you worked out how
: >much it costs you to buy more than Solitaire? Ever priced the Windows
: >SDK and a suitable compiler? For $99, the convenience of "everything"
: >you need for Linux all in one place is more than worth it. After all,
: >your friends can borrow your CD and copy/install it. The Linux CD is
: >*not* an "entry level" disc. It's the Real Thing[TM] -- and you get
: >the source code, a decent compiler, X, GhostScript, TeX...need more be said.
:
: The Windows/NT SDK includes Windows, Windows/NT, and POSIX subsystems,
: as well as the complete Win32 SDK and C++ compiler, as well as a
: complete 16 and 32-bit implementation of TCP/IP, as well as some LAN
: Manager server capability, all for $69. You can buy the GNU utilities
: for the POSIX subsystem from a third party, but you are correct that this
: costs more. And the POSIX subsystem is not UNIX, by a long shot, but it's
: also pretty clear that within a year someone will be selling a viable UNIX
: subsystem (or maybe porting Linux) to run under Windows/NT.
:
: Personally, I wish the FSF were a company that understood what a market
: is and sold Linux as a cheap UNIX with support. What the world really
: needs is a solid UNIX that is approachable as a system for end-users
: (i.e., the mass-market). That's sort of what Jobs has tried to do with
: NeXTStep '486, but he is blowing it by pricing it at $999. I simply
: find it frustrating that Bill Gates is the only person in the industry
: who seems to understand how to sell an operating system for naive
: end-users as a commodity. I think an important part of making Linux a
: long-term success is to correctly identify what is Bill Gates' market,
: and to hit him where it hurts. I'm afraid Linux doesn't do that, yet.
:
: --
: Will Estes Internet: wes...@netcom.com
I agree completely with this last paragraph. If Jobs would only price his
OS at about $200, say, he would clean up, and once there was demonstrable
market share, the large vendors would pony up to the plate and start making
more apps available for use on NeXTStep 486.
But the interesting thing is that Linux, no matter its real merits, will
never be perceived in the same way that makes mindless consumers buy
Microsoft programs like they are going out of style. This is a shame!
Cowboy
Curtis Yarvin
>
>I agree completely with this last paragraph. If Jobs would only price his
$200? Bollocks.
When will people understand that selling operating systems is very different
from selling applications? Operating systems succeed through application
base. There are two ways to get an application base:
(1) massive sales, or
(2) backward compatibility.
To kill a preestablished system with no major defects - MS Windows - you'd
better have _both_. And do a bang-up job of it.
Now the only really good way to achieve massive sales is through bundling.
My guess is that nine-tenths of all the operating system copies that have
ever been sold, have been bundled. And, in the savage jungle of PC sales,
you'll never get manufacturers to default-bundle your software if it costs
more than, say, $100 more than your competitor's. It makes their product
look overpriced.
So, if Jobs comes out with a version of NeXTStep-486 that runs MS-DOS and
Windows apps seamlessly, and sells it for under $100, he might clean up.
Otherwise he hasn't a chance.
The same goes for Linux; if someone put together good DOS and Windows
compatibility, clean and easy system administration, and a nice user
interface, it might really go somewhere. If this doesn't happen soon,
it will be a hobbyist system for the rest of its lifecycle.
And, no, I'm not volunteering... :->
c
Scott Beckstead
>
>I think you trivializing the point. The point is that Microsoft might
>well use its economies of scale to price its 32-bit OS as a commodity and
>still manage to make a substantial profit. This makes it possible for
>reasonable people to make an argument that their total cost to purchase,
>develop for, support, and use Windows/NT would be equal to or less than
>a totally free package such as Linux. The economics of such a
>comparison should encompass issues like support.
>
>Now I know that in your mind there is no comparison, Linux is going to
>be cheaper for *you* to buy, develop for, and support. Fine. But if we
>asked that same question to the guys who head MIS at the Fortune 1000,
>or to people in the Federal Government, I don't think we would get the
>same answer. And note that this is *just* the economic comparison; we
>haven't even addressed the issue of which platform offers the widest
>selection of applications. Unfortunately, there just isn't a
>comparison there. Most UNIX workstation vendors are porting to
>Windows/NT, and even Linux may end up getting a port as a Windows/NT
>subsystem. And which platform supports Word For Windows, Excel, etc. at
>$99 bucks a pop for upgrades?
>
>Please note that I want Linux to succeed like crazy! A world where Bill
>Gates controls all of our choices really does scare me. But I think I
>am making a legitimate point about the economics of NT versus Linux that
>will affect how much market share Linux can grab.
>
>Personally, I wish the FSF were a company that understood what a market
>is and sold Linux as a cheap UNIX with support. What the world really
>needs is a solid UNIX that is approachable as a system for end-users
>(i.e., the mass-market). That's sort of what Jobs has tried to do with
>NeXTStep '486, but he is blowing it by pricing it at $999. I simply
>find it frustrating that Bill Gates is the only person in the industry
>who seems to understand how to sell an operating system for naive
>end-users as a commodity. I think an important part of making Linux a
>long-term success is to correctly identify what is Bill Gates' market,
>and to hit him where it hurts. I'm afraid Linux doesn't do that, yet.
>
>
>--
>Will Estes Internet: wes...@netcom.com
Look Will, If you like NT go buy it and leave us alone. I've seen it and
it don't like it! If you need NT you don't need Linux, if you need Linux
chances are you won't be happy with NT. Apples and Oranges! Yeah it's 69
bucks now, but that is just the Beta developerrs release. When the real
OS comes out it will be more like 239 bucks. And it will be worth it!
NOT! Just drop the subject and Re-read the group name. It says nothing
about MY OS is Better than Yours does it?
Scott
--
Reply to: sc...@yarc.uucp |
| Spin my nipple nuts and send me to
Smoke me a kipper, I'll be | Alaska.
back for breakfast |
Thomas Beagle
>Perhaps, but he did the best job he could and still fit into that opening.
>And he kept working on real improvements. Microsoft *still* hasn't done
>anything to substantially improve MS-DOS since DOS 2.1.
Well, IMHO, Windows is still a big improvement over MS-Dos. (And yes,
I know that I'm still running MS-Dos under Windows, but I don't see it
very often.)
I still wish my Amiga was more useful. And I wish that OS/2 was good.
--
Thomas Beagle | tho...@datamark.co.nz Work: 64 4 233 8186
Datamark Intl Ltd | tho...@cavebbs.welly.gen.nz Home: 64 4 499 3832
Technical Writer | Yes, I do have long ears, a black nose, and a tail.
Graeme Gill
> w...@cs.brown.edu (Wen-Chun Ni) writes:
>
> I guess I just have to ask this question every time I see something so
> childish: "okay, can you now explain why?"
>
> Just in case you want to spill some ideological baloney here, let me ask
> you a couple more questions:
>
> - ever heard of computer revolution? computer on every desk? I
> didn't see Richard Stallman or Linus Torvalds (as much as I respect
> them both, make no mistake) having even 1/1000th to do with it as
> much as Bill Gates.
Bill Gates just filled a void (for an OS) created by IBMs
legitimized of the PC. It might just as well have been (and nearly
was) CP/M 86 that filled this void. At the time MSDOS was a competent
but un-inspired product. That it has remained the dominant force
in desktop computing is a lesson on the perceived importance of
backward compatibility over innovation, and the importance of
marketing and image.
The story that Microsoft and IBM "created" the desktop
computer revolution is a great publicity, but there is
no doubt that the revolution would have happened without them
(albeit in a different way). (Ever heard of Apple, Commodore etc.? :-)
Graeme Gill
Dave Eisen
>In article <1992Nov29.0...@leland.Stanford.EDU> dke...@leland.Stanford.EDU (Dave Eisen) writes:
>> Speak for yourself, Peter. I for one would be overjoyed to
>> produce less than the best product I can and make 5 billion
>> dollars for doing so.
>
>But would you be willing to do it for a long-shot chance at making those
>5 billion? A billion-to-one chance?
The point is that for someone with Bill Gates's obvious marketing
talent, it was nowhere near a billion to one shot. And for me
it is absolutely impossible --- I have exactly 0 chance of convincing
IBM to use something I wrote as the basis for an entire product line.
>Would you be willing to put your money where your mouth is and do this today?
I do. Every day. I write less than the best code I can because
the customer wants it that way. I call it staying in business.
Bill Gates just did it better than I can.
>> Bill Gates obviously has some talents that most of the rest
>> of us don't have. He might not be the hacker you are or I
>> am, but he is one hell of a better marketer. And that is a
>> much more difficult and much more valuable talent.
>
>Well, it's certainly a better-paid talent, but I don't equate that with
>more valueable. I firmly believe that Bill Gates has single-handedly put
>personal computers back ten years or more by his actions.
He also had an opportunity to advance it by just as much. And
he didn't do it, which is really a shame. But for us here
sitting on the sideline feeling superior to Bill Gates because
we would have written a better OS, well, we are still on the
sideline here. And given that, it is completely irrelevant that
we would have written an OS.
For all we know, Bill Gates may have greatly advanced the personal
computer industry. You can't compare DOS to what we would have
written because we are totally irrelevant. You can only compare
it to the kind of OS IBM would have gotten if they had gone to
someone else with similarly powerful marketing abilities. That's
the only kind of vendor who could land an account like IBM. And
maybe the OS this hypothetical company would write would have been
even worse than DOS.
Matt Welsh
> Look Will, If you like NT go buy it and leave us alone. I've seen it and
>it don't like it! If you need NT you don't need Linux, if you need Linux
>chances are you won't be happy with NT. Apples and Oranges! Yeah it's 69
>bucks now, but that is just the Beta developerrs release. When the real
>OS comes out it will be more like 239 bucks. And it will be worth it!
>NOT! Just drop the subject and Re-read the group name. It says nothing
>about MY OS is Better than Yours does it?
>Scott
You don't "need" any OS. You can do just fine without an operating system,
or a computer for that matter, at all.
I don't "need" Linux (well, perhaps it's more of a psychological addiction,
than a physical one...).
You "liking" or "not liking" Windows NT has nothing to do with it.
And, actually, Scott, the group name "gnu.misc.discuss" is all about
"My OS is better than yours". And I'm getting this cruft out of
comp.unix.wizards and comp.unix.misc, because it's not relvant in the least.
Jeff Blaine
export.lcs.mit.edu and compiled it. The binary was uploaded to
tsx-11 minutes before this post. If interested, grab it when the
ftp maintainer moves it to its proper directory. It was compiled
on 0.98 pl1 linux with xfree86.
Description: for those who have never played it before, it is a
black screen with white line asteroids floating around to shoot at.
NOTE: To get all of the keyboard commands that can be used and how
to play instructions, ftp to export.lcs.mit.edu cd contrib and get
the very small xasteroids.Z ( i think ) source file. All of the
key commands and their functions along with the source code are all
in that one textfile. Cut out the key commands and save them as some-
thing like xast.doc. Here are the few key commands that I remember,
which should be enough to get you playing:
e,r rotation of your ship
o thrust
p fire
Q quit
esc pause
spacebar is hyperspace
--
_______________________________________________________________________________
| Jeff Blaine | cbl...@gnu.ai.mit.edu | jbl...@garnet.acns.fsu.edu |
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Tony Porczyk
> Richard Stallman and the FSF are looking ahead to a more civillised
> society where a person who has no money would not starve.
> Somehow I cannot think of Bill Gates as having the same altruistic
> attitude.
> Too many people are perpetuating an attitude that all life must be a
> struggle and that money is a part of the natural order of the universe.
> In the GNU manifesto a thing called the post-scarcity society is mentioned.
> I'd say this goal is much more worthy than one that perpetuates the
> philosophy of greed.
> Peter Cupit.
Oh, please... buy yourself a communist manifesto and cry over it. Ever heard
of Eastern Europe? Soviet Union? Laos? Cambodia? Why, you're quite close
to both Cambodia and Vietnam. Why don't you go there visit the paradise.
I do respect both Richard Stallman and Linus Torvalds, but this is pathetic.
Wake up, man.
t.
Bohdan Tashchuk
>When will people understand that selling operating systems is very different
>from selling applications? Operating systems succeed through application
>base. There are two ways to get an application base:
>(1) massive sales, or
>(2) backward compatibility.
>To kill a preestablished system with no major defects - MS Windows - you'd
>better have _both_. And do a bang-up job of it.
This post must be a forgery! :-)
Here is someone from an .edu site who understands the REAL world.
He has explained concisely why these two-bit OS pretenders like Linux,
NextStep, Destiny, etc., don't have a snowflake's chance in hell of
displacing Windoze (or the Mac's System 7).
Time and time again people keep pointing out the commercial realities of an
application base to the propellerheads in these newsgroups. Look at where the
money is. It's in Windoze, then System 7, then everything else.
This application base lets $Bill Gates and Micro$haft have more PROFIT each
year than virtually any other software company has sales.
But the propellerheads keep whining about how Windoze is missing some feature
or other and so can't be a real operating system.
Fortunately for $Bill, most customers are completely unaware of just how
inadequate and impure Windoze really is. They keep sending in those $129
"update" fees for Excel and Word, and he keeps laughing all the way to
the bank.
And Linux, 386BSD, Destiny, NextStep, etc., isn't going to change this at all.
-----
(I guess this post doesn't really belong in comp.os.linux any more. I did
delete most of the other extraneous newsgroups, though.)
Adam J. Richter
>So basically you want $99 for packaging... Not a good deal. It sounds
>like if it doesn't work, all you are going to do is have me packit
>backup and send it back for a refund. If I want that quality of software
>support, I can get it myself with ftp. In the end I'll probably save myself
>time that way anyways, since I'll learn who the real people are to ask for
>bug corrections from... If you really want to earn your money, you need
>to offer some sort of support service and documentation... (i.e. I value
>my time at $10 an hour, so you need to do something that will save me at
>least 10 hours of thier time.)
It is interesting to note that a 14.4kbps modem will transfer
no more than 64.8 megabytes in 10 hours, while the alpha CDROM has
70MB of binaries + 100MB of sources, and the beta and production
release will have even more stuff.
Nevertheless, I understand your sentiments. Tomorrow (Monday)
afternoon I will post an announcement of improvements to the CDROM
offer that will include a bare modicum support, a manual, a new refund
option and an inexpensive update plan for owners of an Yggdrasil
Linux/GNU/X CDROM.
--
Adam J. Richter 409 Evelyn Avenue, Apt. 312
Yggdrasil Computing, Incorporated Albany, CA 94706
ric...@cerf.net (510)528-3209
Another member of the League for Programming Freedom (lea...@uunet.uu.net).
Adam J. Richter
>I would agree the price was reasonable if the distributor either wrote the
>code or could show some kind of proof of ownership. In the absence of any
>lawfull claim of ownership then I suspect we ought to be thinking more in
>terms of compensating him for distribution costs -- and for no other costs.
On the one hand, I don't agree with your reasoning. Neither
the production effort, nor the capital needed, nor the value to the
customer are necessarily proportional to "distribution costs."
By the way, there are plenty of other reasons for the $99
price, which have to do with reseller channels and someday buying
advertising. Consider, for example, that a full page magazine ad
typically runs from three to ten cents per reader.
On the other hand, I accept your right to decide the
principles by which you will make your purchase decision. I'm
currently looking at a marginal cost of $35.70 to fill each
alpha/beta/1st-production subscription. Remember, I'm not just
selling one CD; I'm selling three CD's, six floppies, and three
manuals distributed across three shipments. If I were to distribute
the fixed production costs over 200 individual subscriptions, then the
average cost to fill a subscription would be $53.70, and the fixed
production costs are more than matched by the operating costs of the
company. Of course, I will find ways to lower the production costs,
such as by having the release notes printed rather than photocopied
and looking for better deals in a number of areas such as shrink
wrapping or reasonably fast shipping. Also, it's fair to say that my
marginal production costs would drop significantly if I were to
produce in higher quantities. Even so, at $99 + $5 S&H I have to sell
more subscriptions than you might think.
--
Adam J. Richter 409 Evelyn Avenue, Apt. 312
Yggdrasil Computing, Incorporated Albany, CA 94706
PO Box 8418, Berkeley CA 94707-8418 ric...@cerfnet.com
(510) 526-7531, fax: (510) 528-8508 (510) 528-3209
Another member of the League for Programming Freedom (lea...@prep.ai.mit.edu).
Robert Chen
>
> Richard Stallman and the FSF are looking ahead to a more civillised
> society where a person who has no money would not starve.
> Somehow I cannot think of Bill Gates as having the same altruistic
> attitude.
> Too many people are perpetuating an attitude that all life must be a
> struggle and that money is a part of the natural order of the universe.
> In the GNU manifesto a thing called the post-scarcity society is mentioned.
> I'd say this goal is much more worthy than one that perpetuates the
> philosophy of greed.
>
> Peter Cupit.
I think you have been watching WAY too much Star Trek The Next
Generation.
Beam me up! Beam me up! There is no intelligence on this thread... :-)
- Ken
Peter David Cupit
>t.
Huh? Gnu is not communism...
It's freedom, read the document.
I think that this topic has become very unrelated to the news group,
mail matches.
Peter Cupit.
(but quick, cause soon I am gone).
Peter Wabbit Peter David Cupit.
s89...@minyos.xx.rmit.oz.au
Charles Hedrick
>Time and time again people keep pointing out the commercial realities of an
>application base to the propellerheads in these newsgroups. Look at where the
>money is. It's in Windoze, then System 7, then everything else.
Who cares? Linus didn't invent Linux to make money, and I don't use
it because I think it's going to displace DOS. As long as it does
what we want it to do, and there's a large enough group of people
working on it to form a critical mass, what difference does it make?
I really don't like the tendency of Usenet groups to turn into
arguments over politics.
peter da silva
> In article <id.TJ...@ferranti.com> pe...@ferranti.com (Peter da Silva) writes:
> I was running Unix on a PC/XT in 1984, and it was faster than MS-DOS.
> Minix has been out for at least 6 years.
> CP/M was better in 1978 than MS-DOS in 1982.
> Cromemco had a UNIX-lookalike running on multiple Z-80s in 1980.
> AmigaOS first shipped in 1985, and it was already better than any
> PC operating system that was to ship until OS/2 2.0 seven years later.
> I have been following the threads lately about GPLed vs. Public Domain
> vs. Commercial software lately, and the above exchange struck me as
> rather interesting. All of those OSes you cite in response to the
> Hurd query are commercial.
I'm not a GNU apologist. I *am* a quality software cheerleader.
> In March 1985, the GNU Manifesto was published in Dr. Dobbs.
That was the year I first heard the joke: "Dateline: 1999, the GNU O/S is
released. It boots from /vmunix.el". I never expected anything different.
I'm not complaining that Gates isn't RMS. I'm complaining that he's not
Dale Luck or Steve Wozniak or Jay Miner.
Blair P. Houghton
>Let me add that Bill Gates started out young in programming traffic signs
>such as those arrows on the side of the street which flash.
And just look how popular THOSE things are!
--Blair
"I'll buy you Norway."
Blair P. Houghton
>opening and grabbed it.
Not.
Jobs and the Woz were the Anti-Gateses.
Gates shoved the next kid out of the way to grab the brass
ring and stunned the bull it was attached to into giving
him a percentage of the margin on the ground chuck.
Apple produced a passable product in a market of arcane
junk and was pulled up by its own customers. It's the
very fact that they had none of Gates' vaulting tolerance
of his own sleaze that forced them out of the "business."
>"I want everyone to know the joy of my nipples!" -Stimpy
--Blair
"Joyyyyyyyy.
(Well, he wrote a UNIX and
gave it away for free, so
he doesn't count...)"
Paul Prescod
use, word of mouth, marketing, reputation, and support.
In the long run, price isn't that important, if you are in the same
ball park. Besides, is the preson selling the CD-ROM officially
connected to the project anymore then you or I? Perhaps some other
companies should just undercut him, if it's possible.
Paul Crowley
>Bzzzzzt! It does not cost $99 to produce a single CDROM.
I can think of no reason why Adam shouldn't try and make a profit out of
this venture. If this is what you think, stop quoting figures and press
it yourself cheaper, I for one would appreciate it. Remember that the
master you make now will be out of date by the time it's ready, and if
no-one buys it you'll be thousands of dollars poorer.
__ _____
\/ o\ Paul Crowley p...@dcs.ed.ac.uk \\ //
/\__/ "I'm the boy without a soul." \X/
Graeme Gill
> > In addition look at the computers available when MSDOS was written.
>
> Yep, I was there. When MS-DOS came out I and most of my friends were amazed
> at how bad it was. CP/M was better, and CP/M was none too good.
Not to mention that a 6MHz Z80 beat the pants off a 4.77 Mhz 8088.
And the 8 inch disks held 4 times as much as the toy 360k disks. You could
actually run a compiler, editor and numerous other applications without
needing two drives or a hard disk. And the system didn't have to be
hardware compatible with every other CP/M system out there - it was a
half portable OS.
Graeme Gill
Eric R. Johnson
> --Blair
> "I'll buy you Norway."
Okay, but no kissing.
Drew Eckhardt
>I agree 100%. But perhaps price isn't the issue as much as
>ease of use
Word Perfect is among the most popular word processors on the PC,
inspite of its nonintuitive interface with obscenities like F7 for
help.
To do anything usefull with DOS (as in play a simple game),
you have to load in a memory mangler such as QEMM-386 or
EMM386, arrange your TSRs (as in essentials, like a
mouse driver, CD ROM extensions, etc) in some arbitrary order
so there are no conflicts, tweak various parameters like
FILES, and run another pseudo-operating system like Desqview or
Windows on top of it. Still, a large portion of PC owners
run DOS.
>word of mouth
Everyone I know with MicroSloth Windoze complains about the snail's
pace at which it runs and general instability of the system. At
the same time, they still use it and Windoze/DOS are bundled with
virtually every new PC sold.
>reputation
Virtually all of the Windoze users I know saw 3.1 as a $50 bug fix
to 3.1. There was a second map package for Ultima Underworld that
was essentially a bug fix for things like items in your inventory
disappearing for no reason. Poor reputation doesn't necessarily
have a real impact on sales.
>marketing
One valid point - marketing. The marketing departments at major
software companies could sell refridgerators to the eskimos.
--
Boycott AT&T for their absurd anti-BSDI lawsuit. | Drew Eckhardt
Condemn Colorado for Amendment Two. | dr...@cs.colorado.edu
Use Linux, the fast, flexible, and free 386 unix |
Adam J. Richter
Linux/GNU/X11 unix clone on CDROM for PC's. To the best of my
knowledge, this is the first directly installable free operating
system CDROM ever. I think that this an important milestone in the
history of free software.
Reaction to the CDROM offer has generally been favorable, but
a number of people have expressed what I consider to be reasonable
concerns about support, documentation and price. As I promised
yesterday, here is a list of changes to my original Linux/GNU/X CDROM
offer, which I believe addresses all of the concerns that were raised.
If you think that there is something else which a $99 free unix clone
on CDROM ought to provide, let me know.
For the benefit of those of you who may have missed the
announcement while you were away for Thanksgiving, the deal is that you
get the alpha distribution (Dec. 8th), the beta distribution (January)
and the first production distribution (February) for the price for the
production distribution alone, which is $99 + $5 S&H (in the US and
Canada). For more information, call, send email or anonymously FTP
to netcom.com:~ftp/pub/yggdrasil.
Adam J. Richter
Yggdrasil Computing, Incorporated
Yggdrasil Computing, Incorporated
(510) 526-7531, fax: (510) 528-8508
PO Box 8418
Berkeley CA 94707-8418
IMPROVEMENTS TO THE YGGDRASIL LINUX/GNU/X CDROM OFFER
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
1. A modicum of support
2. A manual
3. A new option in the money-back guarantee
4. An inexpensive update plan for owners of the Yggdrasil
Linux/GNU/X CDROM's.
1. A modicum of support
The CDROM distribution now includes a modicum of telephone,
fax and email support.
phone: (510) 526-7531
fax: (510) 528-8508
email: yggd...@netcom.com
Use this service as a last resort. Before you call, first
check the list of Frequently Asked Questions for Linux, a printed copy
of which is now included in the manual (see #2, below). Second, try
to narrow the problem down as much as possible (for example, if
appropriate, see if the symptoms change when you remove some or all of
the nonessential cards from your system, or when you're logged in as a
different user, or when you recompile the program in question).
You can call from 9am to 5:30pm, weekdays. If you get the
answering machine, feel free to call back later or leave a message
asking me to call you back, but be prepared to accept the charges for
a collect call. Email is fine too, but please leave a phone number
where you'll accept a collect call, unless your question has a very
simple answer. It takes me quite a while for me to compose email.
This is low intensity support. I will happily share whatever
useful knowledge I can with you over the course of a few minutes, but
I may not be able to drop everything that I'm doing to champion your
problem, especially if it involves more than typing one or two
commands in a window. If the company takes off, maybe I'll be able to
hire someone else to handle support.
If you are interested in providing support for the Yggdrasil
Linux/GNU/X distribution, I would be happy to include a pointer to you
in the manual. I'll accept either full page of postscript or anything
up to a full page of ASCII text. Eventually, I'd like to have an
advertising section in the production release manuals, but you'll
still be able to have the contact information for you company listed
for free.
2. A manual
I'm assembling (as opposed to writing) a bound manual,
approximately 100 pages long, to include with the alpha Linux/GNU/X
CDROM. The manual will include the release notes, the Linux "info
sheet", the Linux FAQ and the GNU service listing. If there is some
other important document that you would like to see included, send me
email before Tuesday 12/1/92.
3. A new option in the money back guarantee
Heretofore, the refund policy has been that if you can't make
the CDROM distribution work, then you may return it within 30 days for
a refund of the purchase price and any sales tax, provided that you
deleted any files copied from the CDROM. (You also must call in
advance for return authorization.) The requirement for file deletion
is not a copyright restriction. It is simply part of a refund offer,
which you are under no obligation to use.
Nevertheless, if you feel that the requirement to delete the
files from the CDROM's is too bothersome, you now have a second refund
option for the alpha and beta distributions. If you buy an alpha or beta
subscription, you may also curtail your subscription, keeping whatever
CD's you have received, for a refund prorated according to how much of
your subscription remained.
4. An inexpensive update plan for owners of the Yggdrasil
Linux/GNU/X CDROM's.
In my original posting, I stated that I planned to offer a
$60/qtr. update subscription to the quarterly production distributions with
a minimum subscription length of six months. Instead, when you buy a
copy of one of the production distributions, you'll get a card that will
allow you to subscribe to the quarterly updates at $30/qtr. with no
minimum subscription length. I may reduce that $30/qtr. price even
more between now and when the 1st production distribution is made, in
February.
--
Adam J. Richter Yggdrasil Computing, Incorporated
409 Evelyn Avenue, Apt. 312 PO Box 8418
Albany CA 94706 Berkeley CA 94707-8418
(510) 528-3209 (510) 526-7531, fax: (510) 528-8508
ad...@netcom.com yggd...@netcom.com
Keith Smith
> Richard Stallman and the FSF are looking ahead to a more civillised
> society where a person who has no money would not starve.
> Somehow I cannot think of Bill Gates as having the same altruistic
> attitude.
> Too many people are perpetuating an attitude that all life must be a
> struggle and that money is a part of the natural order of the universe.
> In the GNU manifesto a thing called the post-scarcity society is mentioned.
> I'd say this goal is much more worthy than one that perpetuates the
> philosophy of greed.
Hehehe, I think I'm going to vomit.
I *NEVER* want to live in this. I doubt RMS or LT would either. People
must be motivated to accomplish things. Intelligent people like RMS and
LT are obviously self motivated people. I doubt either are so
unrealistic to beleive that a disproportionate number of folks in
the world won't take a free handout instead of working for it.
Bill Gates is a shaker & mover, a salesman & a wheeler & dealer. He's
so good at it he's managed to build an empire. You people can say it's
all marketing until the cows come home, but marketing will only take you
so far (Can you say "Pet Rock"?). The product has to have a useful
function and Messy-DOS et al do.
Neither would it break my heart to see Linux Displace DOS on the
desktop. I would not see it as any "justice", and neither would BG. He
would probably just go on a create, build and market products for Linux,
and still make money. If he's good at the game, I see no reason why he
can't make money from people willing to give it to him (Not Me though!)
--
Keith Smith uunet!ksmith!keith 5719 Archer Rd.
Digital Designs BBS 1-919-423-4216 Hope Mills, NC 28348-2201
Somewhere in the Styx of North Carolina ...
Keith Smith
>Above all, you pays your money and you takes your chances. Linux is
>free or nearly so, but it doesn't come with a fancy support contract
>or a well-dressed guy with gold cufflinks who will say soothing things
>to you when your system goes down.
Where was this guy when our box went down?
But seriously SCO DOES have great support, and you DAMN sure paid for it!
If you are net connected and have a brain, you will however get BETTER
support thru this medium.
Adam J. Richter
>Linux is covered by the GPL and is of course copyable. However, the original
>announcement of the Linux CD-ROM for $99 had a caveat included that seemed to
>imply that the makers of the CD-ROM wouldn't allow that. ??????
The alpha Linux/GNU/X CDROM is free software, as will be the
subsequent CDROM releases. Even if you want to make a competing
CDROM from the Yggdrasil version, that will be legal. There are,
however, two conditions that are in the works:
1. There is a "meta-GPL" in the works which will
require any competing derivative distribution
also to be 100% free software.
2. I'm going to pick a logo and a name for these
CDROM distributions (suggestions welcome). You'll
be free to copy the files containing the names and
logos, of course. Just make sure that if you make
a competing CD that it doesn't use the trademarks
in a way that suggests that it's from Yggdrasil.
(E.g., it shouldn't display the logo when it boots
and proclaim "This is the Yggdrasil Y-nix 5.0 CDROM.")
I am aware that condition #2 could be used to effectively
restrict copying (e.g., by hard wiring a trademark into every non-GPL
program). I am looking for some language to put into the meta-GPL to
prohibit that kind of abuse. On any Yggdrasil CDROM's that have such
a trademark, there will be a clearly documented trivial procedure
for removing or replacing the trademarks without breaking the CDROM
distributions. If you want to sell a relabelled (or unlabelled)
version of the Yggdrasil CDROM, you'll even be able to have Yggdrasil
make it for you so that you will have the latest version as soon as the
regular CD's come out. Of course you'll also be free to make it
yourself if you prefer. I'm also thinking about having a smaller logo
that could be used to indicate that a particular CD is a relabelled
version of an Yggdrasil CD.
If you're thinking of making exact copies of the Yggdrasil
CDROM simply to have one to sell, check out the quantity discounts
first (especially the second schedule). If you still want to do your
own mastering because you want to do your own manuals or boot floppies
or something, call, because Yggdrasil may be able to offer you a
slightly better deal than your CDROM facility offers you.
Sean Eric Fagan
> Last week, I announced the alpha test distribution of a turnkey
>Linux/GNU/X11 unix clone on CDROM for PC's. To the best of my
>knowledge, this is the first directly installable free operating
>system CDROM ever. I think that this an important milestone in the
>history of free software.
Blah blah blah blah.
How many times have you posted what is essentially the same message now,
Adam?
How many times have you then cancelled your posting, only to post it again?
How many times are you going to continue to do this? And from how many
different machines?
--
Sean Eric Fagan | "we will probably just crash immediately; but at least
s...@kithrup.COM | we will have written less code."
-----------------+ -- Chris Torek (to...@ee.lbl.gov)
Any opinions expressed are my own, and generally unpopular with others.
Bo Kjellerup
But remember... Say, a car is a process in a multitasking system. There's
hell of a lot busy waiting while red light!
Kjellerup.
P.S. All right, as long you do not buy Denmark!
Gregory Robert Weiss
>In article <ByHyu...@cs.psu.edu> sti...@dev-null.phys.psu.edu (Stimpson J. Cat) writes:
>> Jobs was never more than a hardware version of Bill Gates. He saw an
>>opening and grabbed it.
>
>Not.
>
>Jobs and the Woz were the Anti-Gateses.
>
>Gates shoved the next kid out of the way to grab the brass
>ring and stunned the bull it was attached to into giving
>him a percentage of the margin on the ground chuck.
>
>Apple produced a passable product in a market of arcane
>junk and was pulled up by its own customers. It's the
>very fact that they had none of Gates' vaulting tolerance
>of his own sleaze that forced them out of the "business."
I think Apple's original success should be largely atributed to the
same factor that helped Gates: *marketing*. Why? Because
IMHO, Apple went as far as it did, largely because it promoted
itself so well through the American school system, through large
discounts. I'd be willing to bet that at least 80% of their
sales were influence by the wide distribution they recieved in
schools. Then, every kid who could ask for a computer asked
for the kind they used or played with at school- an Apple II
whatever.
And as for the Mac; that's another story.
And what was Gates's other key tactic? I agree with the poster who
claimed that *backward compatability* was key to bringing the IBM
to widespread use. When, thanks to backward compatibility, you're
software base is many times over as big as any competitor's, you've
got a big advantage, as was true in the mid-eighties. (of course,
it ain't called "backward" for nuthin! :-)
--Greg
Paul Prescod
>legitimized of the PC. It might just as well have been (and nearly
>was) CP/M 86 that filled this void. At the time MSDOS was a competent
>but un-inspired product. That it has remained the dominant force
>in desktop computing is a lesson on the perceived importance of
>backward compatibility over innovation, and the importance of
>marketing and image.
> The story that Microsoft and IBM "created" the desktop
>computer revolution is a great publicity, but there is
>no doubt that the revolution would have happened without them
>(albeit in a different way). (Ever heard of Apple, Commodore etc.? :-)
If it wasn't for Bill Gates' slimy double cross of IBM, selling MS-DOS
to clones, we wouldn't have the market we have now. There would be
fewer OEMS (probably Apple, IBM, Commodore and a few other proprietary
ones). There would also be fewer peripheral vendors (because there
would be fewer systems vendors) and computer prices would be sky high.
Let's face it: Bill Gates, evil though he is, did a "Good Thing." And
I'm willing to bet that the creation of this industry has a lot to do
with his betrayal of IBM.
Eric Youngdale
>In article <ByGnE...@eis.calstate.edu> bel...@eis.calstate.edu (Brett Elliott) writes:
>>Let me add that Bill Gates started out young in programming traffic signs
>>such as those arrows on the side of the street which flash.
>
>And just look how popular THOSE things are!
And they all probably run DOS. No wonder the DOS sales figures are so
high.
-Eric
--
Eric Youngdale
david matiskella
|> bhou...@sedona.intel.com (Blair P. Houghton) writes:
|>
|> >In article <ByGnE...@eis.calstate.edu> bel...@eis.calstate.edu (Brett Elliott) writes:
|> >>Let me add that Bill Gates started out young in programming traffic signs
|> >>such as those arrows on the side of the street which flash.
|>
|> >And just look how popular THOSE things are!
|>
|> > --Blair
|> > "I'll buy you Norway."
|>
|>
, or something very similiar) that collected data on road usage. The company went
out of bussiness when the Federal government began offering the service for free.
david matiskella
|> > In addition look at the computers available when MSDOS was written.
|>
|> Yep, I was there. When MS-DOS came out I and most of my friends were amazed
|> at how bad it was. CP/M was better, and CP/M was none too good.
|>
|> > Another thing to consider is that MSDOS was written very quickly.
|>
|> Bill didn't write MSDOS. It was hacked together by another vendor and MS
|> basically fixed some bugs and shipped it.
`
GNU didn't write Hurd. They got it from another company and changed it a
bit and then released it. :):):)
|> > I keep hearing how great Herd is going to be but when was the idea first
|> > proposed?
|>
|> I was running Unix on a PC/XT in 1984, and it was faster than MS-DOS.
|> Minix has been out for at least 6 years.
|> CP/M was better in 1978 than MS-DOS in 1982.
|> Cromemco had a UNIX-lookalike running on multiple Z-80s in 1980.
|> AmigaOS first shipped in 1985, and it was already better than any PC operating
|> system that was to ship until OS/2 2.0 seven years later.
|>
|> MS-DOS, by any technical standard, is a disaster we're only now beginning to
|> recover from. There were dozens of better systems. Hell, the Atari 800 O/S
|> was better than CP/M and MS-DOS together and that ran on a game machine.
|> --
|> %Peter da Silva/77487-5012 USA/+1 713 274 5180/Have you hugged your wolf today?
|> /D{def}def/I{72 mul}D/L{lineto}D/C{curveto}D/F{0 562 moveto 180 576 324 648 396
|> 736 C 432 736 L 482 670 518 634 612 612 C}D/G{setgray}D .75 G F 612 792 L 0 792
|> L fill 1 G 324 720 24 0 360 arc fill 0 G 3 setlinewidth F stroke showpage % 100
How many of those OS function with less than 64k? I would also like to point out
that CPM did not run of the 8086 under six months after the IBM was released.(Of
course I know you really want IBM to release thier computer based on the 8080 with
that wonder 64k memomry limitation with bankswitching :)) The amiga also had the
big advantage of the guys that designed the hardware also wrote the OS. I also
loved that Guru icon.
One final point MSDOS was much better than DOS 3.3 that apple was shipping
at the same time.
Chris Walsh
>
>- ever heard of thousands of people making a living, providing for their
> families and supporting the economy thanks to Bill Gates? Show me where
> that happened thanks to Richard Stallman or Linus Torvalds. But then,
> I just noticed the extension of your email address. Sorry for
> wasting the bandwith.
Ever heard of thousands of people making a living, providing for their
families and supporting the Reich thanks to Adolf Hitler? Show me where
that happened thanks to Mother Teresa or Albert Schweitzer. But then,
I just noticed the extension of your email address. Sorry for
wasting the bandwidth.
BTW: What's an "extension to your email address"? Do you mean the
top level domain name, do you mean the FQDN? Gee, maybe you don't
know *what* you're talking about.
(flame off. I *hate* Bill Gates. Like his money, hate him. Simple.)
Chris
Tim Pierce
>Virtually all of the Windoze users I know saw 3.1 as a $50 bug fix
>to 3.1.
Now that has to be the fastest money-making scheme I've ever seen
before.
--
____ Tim Pierce /
\ / twpi...@unix.amherst.edu / Rocks say goodbye.
\/ (BITnet: TWPIERCE@AMHERST) /
Blair P. Houghton
> In the GNU manifesto a thing called the post-scarcity society is mentioned.
> I'd say this goal is much more worthy than one that perpetuates the
> philosophy of greed.
Gag. Do I really want to get into aNOTHER religious war?
Yeah. I guess.
It is the net, after all...
"Post Scarcity" is a myth; a paradox; a utopia of mathematical
but not physical form.
We're soon to be too many for the petri dish we inhabit,
and we won't be able to convert the detritus into nutrients
fast enough, even if we evolve into something that knows how.
If we're fortunate, some intergalactic vector will appear
that will enable us to propagate to other planets, but for
now there's a lot of Outer Space and relatively no Rocket Fuel.
Meanwhile, we're human, and subject to psychologies
different from those of our Utopian leaders. In a Society
there is always Class, and always Bourgeois (Fr., "wannabe")
motivation, and always paranoia and want. Corruption of
the Utopian system is the result, and those in power end up
profiting at the expense of the proletariat.
It's like smoothing the ocean. Theoretically it's possible
for the ocean to be microscopically smooth, but we can't
control the weather.
To fail to compete in an area as potentially profitable
as software engineering is to fail to kill the beast to
feed the pride. Without charity, the pride will starve.
--Blair
"Isn't pride a sin?"
P.S. I didn't mix any metaphors, but it's a heck
of a mix of metaphors, nonetheless...
Blair P. Houghton
>Stallman's vision for the future seems like a immensely bad idea.
>Complain all you want about Gates and Microsoft, but the FSF wants to
The problem with Gates is that if Stallman had the
slightest inkling of a profit motive it's Gates who would
be in the street shouting "Death to the Bourgeoisie!"
Gates' "compensation" over the past 13 years is about 1% of
his net worth, which is a pile of paper until he sells his
bazillion shares of a company that needs to keep swimming
to survive.
--Blair
"A Lotus is a blossom underfoot."
mathew
> In article <id.4M...@ferranti.com> pe...@ferranti.com (Peter da Silva) wri
> >Perhaps, but he did the best job he could and still fit into that opening.
> >And he kept working on real improvements. Microsoft *still* hasn't done
> >anything to substantially improve MS-DOS since DOS 2.1.
>
> Well, IMHO, Windows is still a big improvement over MS-Dos. (And yes,
> I know that I'm still running MS-Dos under Windows, but I don't see it
> very often.)
I see it every time I try and save or load a file. Eight-letter filenames?
Oh, yuck! Even MINIX has 14-letter filenames, and that was supposed to be a
"toy" OS for teaching with. It's faster, too.
mathew
william E Davidsen
| I don't think it's necessarily true that 80% of computer users
| couldn't handle SCO. Give them a reasonably-powered box on their desk
| and let them run X.desktop, and they'll do fine. Just as user-cuddly
| as Windows NT, but with the power of Unix underneath. I'm assuming,
| of course, that you have some kind of administrator to handle
| sysadmin-type tasks, but you'll need one with WinNT too. Or did you
| expect to have a 50-node NT network without an administrator?
Never underestimate the power of good documentation. One member of the
local user's group is has a network of PC run as terminal emulators,
connected to a SCO box, running DOS apps in Merge. He speced the system,
installed the software, tuned it, and set up the backup schedule for a
secretary. Not bad for a 70 year old civil engineer who just wants to
use computers for his work.
As far as I'm concerned, most SCO documentation is dead solid. The
network docs really need a "how to" section for common simple things you
might want to do without diddling ten files in arcane formats, like
using a nameserver, for instance.
Don't believe users can't handle UNIX, that's pure DOS marketing.
--
bill davidsen, GE Corp. R&D Center; Box 8; Schenectady NY 12345
Keyboard controller has been disabled, press F1 to continue.
Tony Porczyk
>In article <1992Nov26.0...@netcom.com> mes...@netcom.com (Tony Porczyk)says:
>>
>>- ever heard of thousands of people making a living, providing for their
>> families and supporting the economy thanks to Bill Gates? Show me where
>> that happened thanks to Richard Stallman or Linus Torvalds. But then,
>> I just noticed the extension of your email address. Sorry for
>> wasting the bandwith.
>Ever heard of thousands of people making a living, providing for their
>families and supporting the Reich thanks to Adolf Hitler? Show me where
>that happened thanks to Mother Teresa or Albert Schweitzer. But then,
>I just noticed the extension of your email address. Sorry for
>wasting the bandwidth.
You are such a dickhead, it is simply unbelievable. Where do you moron
keep your head all day - between your legs? Well, thank you for speaking
up against me. That was the best argument I could possibly get. And, yes,
of course it came from .edu. Nowehere else do we have cretins like you
with access to public media.
t.
Joe Buck
> Last week, I announced the alpha test distribution of a turnkey
>Linux/GNU/X11 unix clone on CDROM for PC's.
And announced, and announced, and announced...
Adam, I wish you luck with your venture, but your use of the net for
marketing has been excessive. comp.newprod is the place to announce
new products. Continual posting to seven or eight groups at a time
is inappropriate, even with a Followup-To that goes to only one group.
How many marketing messages have you posted now? At least five or so.
Prime Time Freeware doesn't keep hassling us in this way. Cygnus doesn't
post price and service lists three times a week. Give it a rest (you too,
any would be Adams out there).
Use comp.newprod like all the other businesses. You aren't privileged
just because your business believes in the Gnu philosophy and is therefore
exempt from good manners.
--
Joe Buck jb...@ohm.berkeley.edu