From: peterd@pjd.dev.cdx.mot.com (Peter Desnoyers)
Subject: Re: Suggestions for the free Unix projects
Organization: Motorola Codex, Canton, Massachusetts
Date: Mon, 5 Oct 1992 12:40:10 GMT

terry@cs.weber.edu (A Wizard of Earth C) writes:

>My previous reply here got porked.  Sorry. --- here is what it should have
>looked like:

>=========================

>In article <1akqadINN76c@almaak.usc.edu> ajayshah@almaak.usc.edu (Ajay Shah) writes:
>>There may be a role for a profit-making company to make a $50
>>shrink-wrapped free Unix with a manual and limited support.

>I'll say!

>Consider the following (US dollars):

>o	The absolute minimum 150 page ring-bound manual and 3 disks costs
>	~$20 including shrink-wrap labor.  This is quantity 1000.

One place Coherent probably wins big is by selling perfect bound
paperback manuals, which go for a lot less than ring binders in quanity.

>o	Packing and shipping costs are a minimum of $16, assuming UPS
>	ground.

If you distribute it on CD, you can follow the example of the guy who
does the Prime Time Freeware CD. He binds a plastic pocket (holding
2 CDs without jewel cases) into a small (50 pages?) comb-bound book
that Kinkos could probably reproduce for $5-$10 in small quantity. The
whole thing sells for $60 ($50 from Quantum Books) and could probably
ship in a padded envelope at book rate if you're willing to wait.

>o	A "media charge" of $30 is not unreasonable if CD-ROM's are used,
>	due to the requirements of *huge* numbers to achieve the production
>	price breaks.

From what I've seen (a friend produced a music CD) you get a pretty good
price ($2-$3 per disc) at 1000 units. The economics of CDs have been 
changing drastically in the last few years. For music, mixing and 
mastering cost more than the discs. I don't know about data, though.


>o	Technical writing costs of the manual.
[...]
>o	The cost of real manuals when the small manual isn't enough any more.

The key here would be to only write documentation on the installation
process, and to print off some of the Linux documentation that comes
with the distribution.

>o	Legal costs of defending against AT&T if you ship before the AT&T
>	vs. BSDI suit has been resolved.

This isn't really a factor. Linux has never incorporated any AT&T code,
so it would be pretty hard to argue that it hasn't all been removed.

>o	Potential legal costs if the people who have contributed so far
>	get upset about you making money off their work.

Linux is covered by the GNU Public License, as (I assume) are all the 
extensions to it. (If they say they aren't, they probably are anyway as
derivative works) You can charge a million bucks for it if you want.

>o	Potential legal costs if UCB, CMU, or GNU get upset about you selling
>	their code (GNU is real uptight about this, and CMU and UCB could
                    ^^^

As Craig Burley has pointed out, this is an unwarranted slur on the
FSF.  As long as your customers can get source code, and can give
copies away to their friends, the FSF will be happy. (Companies which 
sell GNU software include DEC, Data General, Motorola, NeXT, and a host
of others. The FSF *likes* having large companies sell GNU software,
because they usually end up paying their programmers to work on it,
too.)

				Peter Desnoyers
-- 
Newsgroups: gnu.misc.discuss,comp.org.eff.talk