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.
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
Bert Driehuis
>- ever heard of thousands of people making a living, providing for their
> families and supporting the economy thanks to Bill Gates?
Seriously, this argument keeps coming up in discussions about free
software. It all revolves around a perceived desirability of job creation.
I do *not* want a job to be created for me. If my options are to spend
the rest of my days doing helpdesk support for MSDOS PC's, or to quit the
computer business and become a janitor, I'll choose the latter option. Of
course, the computer bizz is my trade, so I prefer to have interesting
work using interesting tools. Be they freeware (thanks, rms, for Emacs
and gcc!) or commercial (yes, I *still* like to work on Suns or Macs).
And finally, the best work in this industry still is consulting. Which can
equally well be for commercial software, or for freeware.
--
Bert Driehuis, drie...@ooc.uva.nl
Morssingel 243, 2312 EX Leiden, The Netherlands.
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
********************************************************************
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
>As quoted from <1f1epb...@smurf.sti.com> by wes...@smurf.sti.com (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)
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.
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
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?
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.
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
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.
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.
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
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
Eric Youngdale
>mac...@avalon.eecs.nwu.edu (Chris Walsh) writes:
>
>>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.
[blah blah blah deleted]
If it weren't for the fact that I am interested in any comments that
actually have to do with the linux CDROM around which this thread started, I
would have added this to my kill file long ago. Could people PLEASE edit the
newsgroups line and restrict this sort of blathering to gnu.misc.discuss.
--
Eric Youngdale
Rob Healey
|> 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
If IBM had gone with Digital Research CP/M and MP/M would have run on
8086 the day it was released. All MSDOS was at that time was a striped
down CP/M port.
|> 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.
It also sucked dead bunnys through a straw compared to TRS-DOS, LS-DOS, DOS+
and a few other OS's running on TRS-80's of the time. It also was
ALOT less functional than the CP/M 8085 and Z80 systems out there. When
the IBM was released guess what businesses were running on? CP/M and MP/M
running on 8085's and Z80's with the smarter folk running on Z80's. B^).
MP/M on z80's was providing multiuser capability before PC's were even
released although it was primative by today's standards. MSDOS itself is
STILL not multiuser, even on machines with more than 64k of memory and
5M of disk space 10 YEARS later...
Read the BYTE magazines that were out a few months before and after the
IBM release for the TRUE history of the micro industry. I guess Microsoft
and DOS company's own to much of BYTE's ass now for it to be too truthful
about the past. Digital Research made a MAJOR mistake and the rest of
us are still paying for it, Motorola as well.
-Rob
Rob Healey
|> 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?
|> In addition look at the computers available when MSDOS was written.
|> micros. Another thing to consider is that MSDOS was written very
|> quickly. I keep hearing how great Herd is going to be but when was the
|> idea first proposed? I remember hearing about it just after the
|> macintosh was released eight 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.
There was a belief back in the early days that 'ol Billy boy
"borrowed" quite a bit for the first Msoft BASIC. Judging from the fact
they had to buy MSDOS, they couldn't write their own, and the
quality of Microsoft products through the years I tend to believe
that rumor.
The TRS-80 had a 2k Level I BASIC as I remember although level II BASIC
was based on a Z80 version of the Microsoft Basic + extra stuff. I
believe Apple's originally had a small BASIC as well not coming from
Microsoft. I know in the late seventys and early eightys Microsoft
languages, assemblers and compilers for the TRS-80 were generally
perceived as inferior to other offerings.
MSDOS may have been written quickly but NOT by Microsoft some other
person wrote it, Willy was slick enough to buy it at the right time at
the right price. There is one programmer on this planet who is kicking
himself REAL hard for not extracting more blood out of microsoft
for his QDOS...
-Rob
Rob Healey
|> 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.
|>
No, Bill threw it back in to the stone ages. QDOS, from which
MSDOS was derived, was a quicky attempt at an 8086 port of
CP/M. CP/M-86 was available but Digital Research was out playing
golf when IBM came to call. Bill said, "ya, sure, I got this
little thing over here you can use" and thus history was
doomed to Intel based MSDOS systems forever more.
At the time, CP/M-86 was a much better OS. If IBM had gone
m68k, Motorola didn't want ALL their 68k's to be monopolized
by IBM so Intel got the deal, CP/M-68k would have run on it too.
If Digital Research, and Motorola, had had their shit together
we'd all be in ALOT better shape right now OS wise and system
architecture wise.
CP/M-86 or CP/M-68k would have been the other OS and at that point
in time CP/M was alot better OS that MSDOS would be for years. It
also had decent compiler and application support as opposed to
MSDOS. Remember, all early MSDOS products were quicky ports of
8080 or Z80 based CP/M programs since MSDOS used similar
BIOS calls. Going with CP/M-86 would have made life alot easier and
we would have had multi-user systems immediately, multi-user
Z80 CP/M, MP/M, was already available.
sigh,
-Rob
Greg Lindahl
>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.
In fact, he's already behaved in such a fashion that I don't ever plan
on ordering any product from his company. Sorry, Adam, but you lose.
peter da silva
> In article <id.4M...@ferranti.com> pe...@ferranti.com (Peter da Silva) writes:
> >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.
Windows is a completely different operating system, that happens to use
MS-DOS to boot and do file I/O. I'm talking about DOS 5.
Chris G. Demetriou
>Windows is a completely different operating system, that happens to use
>MS-DOS to boot and do file I/O. I'm talking about DOS 5.
<sigh> last time i checked, booting and ways to do file I/O were two
ways used to distinguish between various operating systems.
Windows is not an OS in it's own right, esp. in un-enhanced mode...
Chris
--
Chris G. Demetriou c...@cs.berkeley.edu
"Sometimes it is better to have twenty million instructions by
Friday than twenty million instructions per second." -- Wes Clark
Sue Miller
>In article <1992Nov29....@news.nd.edu>, dmat...@virgil.helios.nd.edu (david matiskella) writes:
>|> 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?
>|> In addition look at the computers available when MSDOS was written.
>|> Sure Unix was available but it was not going to run on the available
>|> micros. Another thing to consider is that MSDOS was written very
>|> quickly. I keep hearing how great Herd is going to be but when was the
>|> idea first proposed? I remember hearing about it just after the
>|> macintosh was released eight 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.
>
> There was a belief back in the early days that 'ol Billy boy
> "borrowed" quite a bit for the first Msoft BASIC. Judging from the fact
> they had to buy MSDOS, they couldn't write their own, and the
> quality of Microsoft products through the years I tend to believe
> that rumor.
> MSDOS may have been written quickly but NOT by Microsoft some other
> person wrote it, Willy was slick enough to buy it at the right time at
> the right price. There is one programmer on this planet who is kicking
> himself REAL hard for not extracting more blood out of microsoft
> for his QDOS...
>
How many people have written a BASIC in 3K? A few, and it's not
the toughest thing in the world. Especially when you consider
how little those BASICs did. I worked on a port of the PCC
('People's Computer Company' - who remembers them?) BASIC to
a 6502 kanji system in 1981. It looked remarkably like MS-BASIC
and we always assumed that MS-BASIC borrowed it. The source code
was floating around everywhere - I don't even know if the company
I was doing the work for had obtained it legally! I think they had
obtained it from Commodore, but can't swear to it.
Tim Smith
Please set the followup somewhere else...I'm not sure where it should
be for this one]
c...@eden.CS.Berkeley.EDU (Chris G. Demetriou) writes:
>Windows is not an OS in it's own right, esp. in un-enhanced mode...
The last time this was debated in comp.os.windows.advocacy, quite a few
references to OS textbooks whose OS definitions would include
Windows were posted. What is your definition of an OS, and what
authority can you cite for that definition?
--Tim Smith
Tim Smith
>('People's Computer Company' - who remembers them?) BASIC to
>a 6502 kanji system in 1981. It looked remarkably like MS-BASIC
>and we always assumed that MS-BASIC borrowed it. The source code
It would have been kind of hard for Gates and Allen to have borrowed
PCC BASIC, since Gates and Allen wrote their BASIC in 1974, for the
Altair.
If Gates had not gone on to become an obnoxious billionaire whom
everyone hates, he and Allen would be admired as great hackers
for this. First, they wrote the first microcomputer BASIC. Second,
most other people were saying that it couldn't be done for a computer
as limited as the Altair. Third, they told Altair they already had
BASIC when in fact they hadn't even started, so they were under
pressure. Fourth, they didn't have an Altair to test on, so they wrote
a simulator on the PDP-10. Fifth, they wrote the BASIC and the
simulator quickly (8 weeks). Sixth, the first time they got to try
it on a real Altair was in front of the Altair people, and it worked
the first time.
On the other hand, he was screwing people even way back then. Who
ever hears of Monte Davidoff, for instance, who joined Gates and Allen
halfway through the project to write the math package?
Didn't anyone else follw the "know the enemy" rule and read _Hard
Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire_, which is
an unauthorized biography of Gates (and, according to rumor, one
that Gates is not at all pleased with)?
--Tim Smith
William Baer
Linux. Help Wasn't sure of how to change the headers.. but andways
I have just installed the rootdisk on my 386sx. I can not finger(spell)
out how to access the floppy to be able to load other packages into
the system.
Tim Pierce
>If Gates had not gone on to become an obnoxious billionaire whom
>everyone hates, he and Allen would be admired as great hackers
>for this.... Third, they told Altair they already had
>BASIC when in fact they hadn't even started, so they were under
>pressure.
No mean feat. Some of us have trouble working *without* it.
In any case, Basic is none too complicated a language. One of the
finalists in The Obfuscated C contest a couple of years ago
implemented a Tiny-BASIC interpreter.
Ray Jones
>In article <ByLM2...@digiboard.digibd.com> rhe...@dellr4.digibd.com (Rob Healey) writes:
>>In article <1992Nov29....@news.nd.edu>, dmat...@virgil.helios.nd.edu (david matiskella) writes:
>>|> 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?
>>|> In addition look at the computers available when MSDOS was written.
>>|> Sure Unix was available but it was not going to run on the available
>>|> micros. Another thing to consider is that MSDOS was written very
>>
I think you have your facts wrong here, Unix WAS available for the micros of
the day, namely the Mot. 68000 chip. In fact MS was one of the first
suppliers of Unix with a product called Xenix. Another supplier of Unix for
the 68000 was UniSoft in Berkeley, CA. The company I worked for at the time
was Cosmos Systems and we purchased Xenix from MS but they got the contract
from IBM for DOS and never delivered Xenix. We then bought from UniSoft and had
to go to court to get our money back from Bill.
[...]
>> MSDOS may have been written quickly but NOT by Microsoft some other
>> person wrote it, Willy was slick enough to buy it at the right time at
>> the right price. There is one programmer on this planet who is kicking
>> himself REAL hard for not extracting more blood out of microsoft
>> for his QDOS...
It was written by a company named Seattle Computer, and they kicked
themselves so hard that they sued MS for $10,000,000 and won!
>>
--
INTERNET: r...@Celestial.COM Ray A. Jones; Celestial Software
UUCP: ...!thebes!camco!ray 6641 East Mercer Way
uunet!camco!ray Mercer Island, WA 98040; (206) 947-5591
The probability of one or more spelling errors in this missive approaches
Ron Mayer
Note: comp.unix.wizards removed from Newsgroups:, and Followups
dirrected to alt.flame, comp.os.linux, and gnu.misc.discuss.
In a flame war to comp.unix.wizards, etc.
mes...@netcom.com (Tony Porczyk) <1992Nov26.0...@netcom.com> says:
>mac...@avalon.eecs.nwu.edu (Chris Walsh) writes:
>>[Tony Porczyk says:]
>>>
>>>- ever heard of thousands of people making a living, providing for their
>>> families and supporting the economy thanks to Bill Gates?
This is totally irrelivant. There is no reason to believe that these
people would not be just as productive, and providing for their
families just as well, if it were not for Microsoft. Some could argue
that they would be even better off if Gates were not skimming the
profits off their software; however neither of us knows enough about
the situation to know whether or not whether or not Gates uses his
wealth more efficiently to further the interests of his employees
or to further his own interests.
>>> 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.
Waste it somewhere else next time. The extension of his email address
proves nothing about the quality of Linux, Microsoft, Stallman, or
anything else. Enough people's productivity has been increassed by
Stallman's work to contradict your example anyway.
>>[Chris wrote a sarcastic comment on Tony's flame]
>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.
Gee. This sure has a lot to do with linux, comp.unix.wizards, etc.
Perhaps you should go back to an .edu yourself and learn something
about what you're talking about before crossposting flame wars to the
entire net.
If you really have a need to waste everyone's time with
ranting flames, please keep them off of comp.unix.wizards and try
using email in the future. At least crosspost to alt.flame so
people's kill files can handle it.
Ron Mayer
ma...@acuson.com
Thomas Beagle
>> In article <id.4M...@ferranti.com> pe...@ferranti.com (Peter da Silva) writes:
>> >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.
>
>Windows is a completely different operating system, that happens to use
>MS-DOS to boot and do file I/O. I'm talking about DOS 5.
Damn it's hard to keep up with whether Windows is an OS or a "pathetic
extension to a useless operating system". It seems to depend who
you're talking to. :-)
But yes, I agree Dos has not substantially improved since Dos 2.11
I still can't believe I let myself be suckered into adding to this
thread in public.
BTW, thanks for removing the ^L from your sig.
--
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.
Troy Frericks
$13.00 per disk. After contacting the proper service center, the first 50 would be sold
at cost. The rest would be sold at $11.75 profit per.
-
Troy Frericks Internet: tr...@MICROWARE.COM
Microware Systems Corporation UUCP: uunet!mcrware!troyf
1900 NW 114th St Phone: (515)224-1929
Des Moines, IA 50325-7077 Fax: (515)224-1352
Tim Smith
to pick groups to respond in.]
>>> MSDOS may have been written quickly but NOT by Microsoft some other
>>> person wrote it, Willy was slick enough to buy it at the right time at
>>> the right price. There is one programmer on this planet who is kicking
>>> himself REAL hard for not extracting more blood out of microsoft
>>> for his QDOS...
>
>It was written by a company named Seattle Computer, and they kicked
>themselves so hard that they sued MS for $10,000,000 and won!
It's more complex than that. Tim Patterson wrote it at Seattle Computer,
then went to work for Microsoft, then went back to Seattle Computer. By
this time, it was quite a bit improved over what he had done before working
for Microsoft.
When Microsoft bought the first version from Seattle Computer, the price
was $50,000 *AND* a royalty-free license for Seattle Computer to ship
future versions.
When Seattle Computer went under, they tried to get Microsoft to buy back
the license for $20M, and Microsoft refused. Microsoft thought that the
license could not be transferred. Seattle Computer thought that it could
be, and wanted to sell it to raise money. When Microsoft tried to prevent
this, Seattle Computer sued for $60M.
However, before the jury came back with a verdict, they settled for $925,000
to sell the license back to Microsoft (Microsoft had already managed to get
back the only other royalty-free license that they had granted, so they
were much relieved).
Afterwards, Seattle Computer's lawyer took a straw poll of the jury, and
found that it was 8-4 in their favor. 2 of the 4 voting for Microsoft
were not strong in their convictions and said that the majority could have
changed their minds had deliberations went on longer. That would be 10-2,
which is all that would have been required under Washington law in this
suit.
In summary, Seattle Computer sued for $60M, and probably would have won,
but they chickened out for under a million.
Microsoft did not part with that million without getting revenge. The
lawyer who represented Seattle Computer later ended up representing
someone Microsoft was suing over piracy. That party was not paying the lawyer,
and the case was dragging on. Frustrated at losing money, the lawyer
tried to withdraw from the case. To do that required the permission
of the judge. Normally, this is easy to get, because the other side
does not object -- they are happy to have their opponent change lawyers
in the middle of the suit. Microsoft, however, opposed this, making
the firm that had dared to cost them a million lose a lot of money
staying on the case.
These are not nice people.
--Tim Smith
Tim Smith
sh...@cs.sunysb.edu (Shane Bouslough) writes:
>: Windows were posted. What is your definition of an OS, and what
>: authority can you cite for that definition?
>
>It needs DOS to perform many resource management functions (esp. disk)
>therefor it cannot be an os.
So, by your argument, diskless workstations don't have an operating
system -- they need a server for disk.
Besides, Windows manages the disk. It does this through code running
in a V86 task. Big deal. It is still controlling the environment of
the V86 task. This is not really different from, say, a device driver
in Unix. DOS:Windows :: Device Driver:Unix.
--Tim Smith
David Giller
>In article <id._N...@ferranti.com> pe...@ferranti.com (peter da silva) writes:
>>In article <1992Nov30.0...@datamark.co.nz> tho...@datamark.co.nz (Thomas Beagle) writes:
>>> In article <id.4M...@ferranti.com> pe...@ferranti.com (Peter da Silva) writes:
>>> >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.
>>
>>Windows is a completely different operating system, that happens to use
>>MS-DOS to boot and do file I/O. I'm talking about DOS 5.
>
>Damn it's hard to keep up with whether Windows is an OS or a "pathetic
>extension to a useless operating system". It seems to depend who
>you're talking to. :-)
>
>But yes, I agree Dos has not substantially improved since Dos 2.11
>
>I still can't believe I let myself be suckered into adding to this
>thread in public.
Yes, folks, and lets notice something...
Not ONE, not a f***ing ONE of the *6* newsgroups this thread is
crossposted to has anything do do with Windows or DOS.
_And_, this question has been beaten into the ground MANY MANY MANY
times in MANY newsgroups.
I've got some news. The readers of comp.os.linux, alt.o.linux
comp.unix.pc-clone.32bit, comp.unix.wizards, comp.unix.misc, and
gnu.misc.discuss don't give a damn one way ot the other.
-Dave
--
David Giller, Box 134 | Q: How many Oregonians does it take to screw in a light
Occidental College | bulb? A: Three. One to replace the bulb, and two to
1600 Campus Road | fend off all the Californians trying to share the
Los Angeles, CA 90041 | experience. ---------------------------rafe...@oxy.edu
Bob Goudreau
>
>>>|>In addition look at the computers available when MSDOS was written.
>>>|>Sure Unix was available but it was not going to run on the available
>>>|>micros. Another thing to consider is that MSDOS was written very
>
> I think you have your facts wrong here, Unix WAS available for the
> micros of the day, namely the Mot. 68000 chip.
Uh, I think you are interpreting the original poster's comments
incorrectly. The word "micros" appears to mean "microcomputers",
not "microprocessors" (remember, he/she said "look at the *computers*
available..."). The original poster is thus quite right to state
that UNIX wouldn't fit on a typical microcomputer of that time
(e.g., 16 KB of memory with a single 160 KB floppy drive).
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Bob Goudreau Data General Corporation
goud...@dg-rtp.dg.com 62 Alexander Drive
+1 919 248 6231 Research Triangle Park, NC 27709, USA
oxen...@chaos.cs.umn.edu
>r...@Celestial.COM (Ray Jones) writes:
>>
>>>>|>In addition look at the computers available when MSDOS was written.
>>>>|>Sure Unix was available but it was not going to run on the available
>>>>|>micros. Another thing to consider is that MSDOS was written very
>>
>> I think you have your facts wrong here, Unix WAS available for the
>> micros of the day, namely the Mot. 68000 chip.
>Uh, I think you are interpreting the original poster's comments
>incorrectly. The word "micros" appears to mean "microcomputers",
>not "microprocessors" (remember, he/she said "look at the *computers*
>available..."). The original poster is thus quite right to state
>that UNIX wouldn't fit on a typical microcomputer of that time
>(e.g., 16 KB of memory with a single 160 KB floppy drive).
Long about 1982 I remember a UNIX work-a-like called REGULIS
that was for a 68008 processor. It worked on an old SS-50C bus computer,
and it worked in 256K. However, two years before, the same SS50C bus
computer was running a multi-user/task OS called OS9 Level II. It was
running on a 68B09E with a 1 Mhz clock. This was a year before
the Personal Crud from IBM was out for the management sloths to snap
up like so much (fill in the blank). The Smoke Signal was a good
computer, but I will admit that it was a bit beyond Joe Average for
price. Yes Virginia, it had 256k and 1 8" floppy, and if you did not
have a terminal, you didn't get anything. In the sales flack and
the mags of the era, they billed it as a *microcomputer*.
BTB, the Smoke Signal out ran the PC even with 2 users on it.
peter da silva
> In article <id._N...@ferranti.com> pe...@ferranti.com (peter da silva) writes:
> >Windows is a completely different operating system, that happens to use
> >MS-DOS to boot and do file I/O. I'm talking about DOS 5.
> <sigh> last time i checked, booting and ways to do file I/O were two
> ways used to distinguish between various operating systems.
Really? So my Amiga is running MS-DOS since it includes and MS-DOS file
system?
Last time *I* checked, an operating system consisted of system elements that
manage memory, CPU time, secondary storage, I/O devices, and so on. If it
doesn't have a scheduler I don't even consider it an operating system, and
how you boot is completely irrelevant. VAX/VMS used to boot from a PDP-11
console processor. Does that make it RSX-11?