From: bruce@ais.com (Bruce C. Wright)
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy
Subject: Re: Bundling Networks, OS/2 v. NT
Date: 11 Oct 92 13:46:47 GMT
Organization: Applied Information Systems, Chapel Hill, NC

In article <1992Oct10.231756.49561@ns1.cc.lehigh.edu>, sjb5@ns1.cc.lehigh.edu (STACY JOHN BEHRENS) writes:
> In article <1992Oct06.213627.3688@microsoft.com>, petesk@microsoft.com (Pete Ske
> lly) writes:
>>
>>I'm a bit curious about why people don't want networks bundled.  This is
>>regardless as to whether the network is more integrated or not.
> 
> Pay attention please and read this very slowly.  *Some of us don't wan't to
> pay for things we aren't going to use!*  I have basically zero use for
> networking on my own PC.  I do have stuff for doing it, but I don't need it
> and didn't pay for it and currently don't use it.  Why should I be forced by
> the system vendor to buy something I don't need or want, just because it is a
> bit simpler for them to ship it together.

This really doesn't make much sense coming from anyone who advocates
_EITHER_ OS/2 or NT.  In BOTH systems you are probably, in effect, already
paying for a lot of things you don't need or use;  in fact this is true
of a great deal of modern software, operating system software especially.
Why should I pay for Rexx when I'm not going to use it?  I did when I
bought a copy of OS/2 to evaluate.  I hardly complained about it though!
If you can tailor it off your disk so that you don't have to have it
taking up space, why do you care?  Unless it makes a big difference in
the price of the software, I really can't see what the issue is.  And
if the distribution is bundled into the OS, I can't imagine that it
_should_ cause a noticeable price differential (whether it will or not
is another point, one that really hasn't been answered yet ... when it
has you _may_ have cause for gripes).  A minimal TCP/IP stack and some
simple apps can be implemented in a VERY small amount of code -- the
bottom level protocols are not very complex.

I'm not sure I think TCP/IP is that wonderful a choice of network, but
it's an obvious one since it has so many implementations on different
systems -- you can use it to tie a lot of systems together (not just
NT and Unix boxes), so it would be interesting in a lot of commercial
environments (it's certainly interesting to us because we live in a very
heterogeneous environment and TCP/IP is about the only common denominator).
But it's not one of the more common PC network protocols and it's sort
of a pain for a novice network administrator to configure correctly.

>>1) You think the final product would be cheaper if these things were not
>>   included.
>>
>>Well, I hate to say it, but software doesn't work that way.  Software
>>is almost all startup up cost and and very little production cost.
> 
> So no money went into developing that networking software?  If people want
> and/or need the networking, they *will* buy it.  If they don't need it, don't
> force them into it.  Are you claiming that NT would cost just as much if we
> removed networking, multiprocessing, and security features?  Of course it
> wouldn't.  In fact people would really bitch and moan about this.

Sigh.  The problem is that different people are interested in different
feature sets.  If you unbundle them ALL, then the extra costs of
distribution and marketing become significant, both for the vendor
and the customer.  If you include them ALL, then you may sell more
copies of the package as a whole, and the per-unit costs of any one
feature go down for both the vendor and the customer.  I seriously
doubt that the development costs of TCP/IP for NT would be very large
relative to the development costs of the entire system (read: barely
visible).  How much would I guess that it increases the development
cost of NT, per copy?  _Maybe_ a few cents.

Why did I have to pay for Rexx when I bought OS/2?  I don't want to
pay for features I'm not interested in either ... can I buy a copy of
OS/2 without Rexx at a discount???

Please let's not talk about non-issues.

Bruce C. Wright