From: johnn@eskimo.com (John Navitsky)
Subject: Re: Is Sun losing touch with its customers?
Organization: =>ESKIMO NORTH (206) 367-3837 SEATTLE, WA.<=
Date: Mon, 28 Dec 1992 18:47:29 GMT

In article <...> nanook@eskimo.com (Robert Dinse) writes:
>In article <...>, johnn@eskimo.com (John Navitsky) writes:
>> In article <...> riyer@shakti.ncst.ernet.in (Rajappa Iyer) writes:

>> >I am a fairly recent reader of this group -- but even in the short time
>> >that I have been reading it, I find it increasingly hard to ignore the
>> >fact that Sun seems to be fucking its customers over. The new LX series

[...]

>> I really suspect that Sun is trying to set themselves (and us) for the 
>> long haul.  Unfortunatly this means (among other things) some pain, as
>> in the move to SV4 derived Solaris.  It would seem to me that they want
>> to get it over with.  
>
>     Nah, don't see any big advantages to System-V4r for the customer for
>either the short or long haul.  I do see some big advantages to AT&T.
>
>     I suspect it went something like this... Sun is becoming a major vendor
>but they're a little short on cash..  The BSD4.4 project is nearing
>completion and almost all Sys-5 source has been removed.  Sun's kernal is
>based on BSD..  If the Sun were to move to a BSD 4.4 based kernal, all of
>AT&T's royalties would be out the window..

This might be if Sun was actually short on cash.  Actually as I understand it,
Sun had (and has) a health cash-flow.  Of course, selling their stock to AT&T
gave Sun a decent windfall, but, also, Sun purchased back their stock which
would be a problem if they were short on cash.  Also not that Sun has less
market share now.  

>     So they get together, they say to Sun, (mind you this IS speculation
>and nothing more), they say, "Gosh, we can help you with your short-term
>cash difficulties, if you'll just agree to make the next major release of
>Sun/OS system-V4r based so that we can continue collecting outrageous
>royalties from your customer base.

I think it was more like, Sun see's the industry moving towards System V, thinks
hey, we have good programming capabilities and figures they can get in on the
bottom floor.  Sun & AT&T make the deal, & Sun pays less royalties and gets
some control on the direction of SVR4, and the advantage of having it first.

>     And so Sun, with their cash difficulties at the time, agreed, and
>Sun, AT&T, both benefited, Sun had it's cash problem fixed, AT&T was
>assured of continued royalties from Sun's customer base, and only Sun's
>customers got the shaft..  Such a deal!

Since they have to plan these things years in advance, they can only speculate.
I really doubt they "sold out" the customers.  Do you think they could keep
people like Bill Joy if they did?  (who incidently was highly involved in the
System V thing)

>     The only question that remains, will the customers tolerate it?
>
>     The position I've taken, is to condition any purchases of Sun
>equipment upon it being able to run 4.1.x.  I write this right into the
>purchase order.  So far, 4.1.x has worked on all of the boxes we've
>purchased (mostly 4.1.3), though I'm told it won't run on mutli-processor
>SS10's.
>
>     I would encourage everyone who has a problem with being forced into a
>new, incompatible operating system, do the same.
>

Solaris 2.x will continue to improve.  I really think that
Solaris 2.x > System VR4, not Solaris 2.x = System VR4.

-- 
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Newsgroups: comp.sys.sun.misc