From: terry@cs.weber.edu (A Wizard of Earth C)
Subject: Re: Novell buys Unix Systems Laboratory
Organization: Weber State University  (Ogden, UT)
Distribution: alt
Date: Sat, 26 Dec 92 21:39:58 GMT

In article <HSU.92Dec23172701@laphroaig.cs.hut.fi> hsu@cs.hut.fi (Heikki Suonsivu) writes:
>
>In article <1992Dec23.033508.3126@fcom.cc.utah.edu> terry@cs.weber.edu (A Wizard of Earth C) writes:
>   many reasons, not the least of which is commercial support.  The most likely
>
>I use free software because it *has* support, which no commercial company
>has been able to provide to me this far.  True, my views are not views of
>the greater public, as I'm mostly using software development tools and
>things like TeX.

Right.  We're talking about the potential market which might impact a
commercial companies profits.  Unless you are talking about a software
tools company, your point isn't really relevant.

If we look at the larger market, where commercial companies *care* if you
take market share away from them, then we are pretty much left looking at
DOS and Windows.  Some time after that, comes the workstation market, and
way, way after that comes the tools market.

>Commercial software is better supported in the USA than it is in the
>Europe.  Local support either ignores the problems or forwards them to USA,
>so if you get help, you get it in some monts, when you have already figured
>out a workaround or replaced the faulty software.

This says more about your local support, which is supposedly a "partner"
with the foreign supplier and capable of providing a decent level of
support to its customers.  If it can't, it's probably in violation of
it's agreements with those foreign suppliers.  In my personal experience,
support through local distributors has always been excellent; but then
again, this may have more to do with the people I choose to do business
with.

Often in the past, I have seen "grey market" import of software into
countries; rather than paying the higher "non-US" prices (which is what
pays for local support), they purchase from "less expensive" dealers
who buy directly from distributors in the US.  This is, of course,
against the contractual agreements by the US distributors... sales to
international destinations are generally allowed only through international
distributors and at international pricing so that support is guaranteed.
Is it any wonder that your local authorized distributors won't support
product not purchased through them?  Pick the right people to do business
with and your support will be excellent.

>Now the situation is changing rapidly, most unix tools and all the
>development tools have been replaced with GNU variants and free 386 unixes
>are getting stable enough to be used in commercial environments, not just
>home use.

I think the "support" you get from GNU tools, unless you pay a support
company, is largely inferior to that you would get from, for instance,
Sun Europe.  There is no guarantee that your bug reports will be acted
upon, and, worse, there is no financial reward/penalty for your bugs
being ignored.

>Actually, the sale to Novell would be a great business to AT&T.  They
>probably get a good price now, but if they fail the Net2 suit, the shares
>will undoubtely drop a lot.  Not just because of the free software, but
>also because of lots of savings to OSF, BSDI and other companies which
>could use or are using Net2 code.

I don't think the value of USL will change significantly one way or the
other.  I think the case is about strategic positioning.  What you suggest
is a refragmentation of the market back to what it was several years ago,
and I sincerely doubt that this is in anyones best interests as long as
licensing code from USL is cost effective.  As I have stated previously,
I believe there is a profit potential in a BSD variant with USL licensing
of their allegedly infringed trade secrets; certainly the end cost would
be less than a full SVR4 licensing of networking, etc.

>Commercial software is good only for companies making commercial software.
>For customers, it would be a lot better if the software would be free.

Your second sentence probably applies to meat, bread, wine, and cars, too.
This does nothing to make the generalization in your first sentence true.

>I would rather pay $10k to a company for free software than $5k to a company
>for commercial software.  Good example of this would be the GCC for
>Solaris.

So you are saying that you will get better support for $10k than you will
for $5k; this is probably true.  8-).  But you could get equal or superior
support from the local distributor if your country had local distributors
who cared about giving quality support (I have been employed by a company
that had such distributors in Finland, so it is possible), and then avoid
buying grey market products simply because they are cheaper by a few $(US).
This should be an easy practice to follow for someone willing to spend $5k
on top of the normal market cost of a product for nothing more than better
support.

>I would expect this to be seen in things like accounting software
>in a couple of years, when the larger customer base will realize this.

I would doubt your accounting software scenerio, if only because the market
for accounting software is far from global; differences in tax laws make it
difficult to use the same software from county to county in the US, let
alone from country to country.  Very few "free" software packages are
sufficiently internationalized to use internationally in a commercial
(say a "point of sale") application.  You, as with most programmers, may be
able to use non-native language software sufficiently for it to be useful,
but what about your average retailer, salesman, or dentist?


					Terry Lambert
					terry@icarus.weber.edu
---
Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present
or previous employers.
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