From: eb@felix.Sublink.Org (Enrico Badella)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd
Subject: Re: Motif for 386BSD
Keywords: Motif 386BSD
Date: 5 Oct 92 18:31:50 GMT
Organization: Soft*Star s.r.l, Torino, Italy

In article <1992Sep16.172102.21219@fcom.cc.utah.edu> terry@cs.weber.edu (A Wizard of Earth C) writes:
>In article <7261@bigbird.hri.com.hri.com> erich@hri.com (Eric Hilfer) writes:
>>Has anyone used Motif on 386BSD?
>
>1.	Either an individual, company, or group of individuals under a legal
>fiction (organization/consortium/etc.) licenses the code and the right to
>redistribute for the full cost, and then builds and gives away or sells
>the resulting software.
>

How much would you expect to pay for a Motif 386BSD? I ask you this
because I'm trying to understand if it could make sense for our company
to spend $15,000 or so for the distribution license. 

We have tried to go after the italian SUN market with OSF/Motif 1.1
but the 'was made in the States' sindrome prevails even if our product
costs less than 50% and uses SUN shared libraries. With this
problem I don't think we will every upgrade to OSF/Motif 1.2 just
to go after the Sun market.

My idea would be to find a minimum number of persons/companies
interested in Motif 386BSD and we could buy source and distribution
rights from OSF for Motif 1.2.
The binary-only distribution could cost something like

	(c - k)/n + r + s

where
	c = OSF cost of Motif 1.2,  should be around $15,000
	k = OSF cost of non redistribution license 
	n = number of initial subscribers.
	r = cost of OSF royalties. I think $40
	s = shipping costs

Our company will put in the porting effort and upgrade/maintenance.
All the n initiall 'subscribers' would immediately receive our port of
OSF/Motif 1.1.2 of which we have redistribution license,; when the number 
n quorum is reached and the port is done, they would receive an upgrade
to OSF/Motif 1.2 for just the shipping cost.

I already hear a lot of objections such as, you'r gonna make money
using 386BSD etc.. Before flaming me let me say that we are a 3 person
operation and cannot afford the new OSF/Motif 1.2 licensing police for
redistribution and don't even have the sales force to do it (see previous
part of the posting); my idea should sound a bit better than if it 
came from those big companies (don't make me mention names) that sell
Motif for Sun and Motif Training.

Maybe we (this newsgroup) could come up with some idea for the
initial subscribers (?) like free maintenace for one or two years.

For example if there were 200 parties interested in Motif 386BSD
it could cost
	(15000-2000)/200 + 40
which adds out to $105 + shipping costs. This is still much lower
than any Motif on the market, BTW all are 1.1.

Constructive feedback is welcomed! Unfortunately our news feeder is
quite unstable so consider these two other e-mail addresses:

	softstar@pol88a.to.cnr.it
	eb@icnucevx.cnuce.nr.it

>2.	Or we use something that can mimic Motif reasonably well, whether
>we write it ourselves, simply use gwm, or maybe get John Bradley's toolkit
>that he used in "xv" and roll our own... this currently has majorly
>restrictive licensing and distribution policies, unfortunately.

Maybe InterViews.

-- 
Enrico Badella				Internet: eb@felix.sublink.org
Soft*Star s.r.l.			          eb@icnucevx.cnuce.cnr.it
Via Camburzano 9			Phone:    +39-11-746092
10143 Torino, ITALY			Fax:      +39-11-746487
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd