From: nazgul@alphalpha.com (Kee Hinckley)
Subject: Re: Question for net.views column in UNIX Today!
Organization: none
Distribution: comp
Date: Wed, 8 Apr 92 17:46:22 GMT

In article <STEINARB.92Apr3104504@bergfuru.idt.unit.no> steinarb@idt.unit.no (Steinar Bang) writes:
>>>>>> On 1 Apr 92 16:10:10 GMT, marbru@auto-trol.com (Martin Brunecky) said:
>>   FLAME ON !
>>   Wake up from your dreams. Amanda is not talking about software for 
>>   hackers. We are talking about end-user software. I have yet to see
>>   an end-user (customer) that would prefere "MIT freeware" to the 
>>   vendor supplied X (which he paid for).
>>   The fact that many "hacker nests" are using MIT X on Sun instead of
>>   Open Windows gives me warm and fuzzy feeling, but no chance of selling
>>   such a "solution" to any customer.
>
>Bullshit! Depends on who you are defining as "customers". We are
>speaking of two types of "customers" [*] here:
>  i) Administrative users
> ii) Technical users (CAD/CAM, program developers etc.)
>
>You're probably considering only group i) as the customers here.
>However, customers in group ii) have been shelling out $ (or Nkr. as
>'twere) for workstations, as long as there have been workstations in
>existence. Without having access to statistics I would hazard the
>opinion that this type of customer is still a significant part of the
>*workstation* market.

Quite right, note exactly what you said; "shelling out $.. for
_workstations_".  As has been made abundently clear by techies
on this thread, those users have very little desire to pay money
for software.  They scream bloody murder when Sun unbundles the
compiler, they claim they hate GUIs, they don't want to pay for
editors, mail programs, spreadsheets or anything else, they think
it all ought to be free, and they'll make do with whatever they
can find and hack together the rest.  And they'll refuse to believe
that the rest of the world isn't willing to do the same.  As a
software market that arena sucks big time.

>Speaking only from my own experience (I used to work for a company of
>customer type ii) these customers have people that are able to roll out
>MIT X, people that are interested in using gcc because the ANSI C
>compiler because the vendor's ANSI is to expensive for the current
>budget and/or the licensing is to restrictive.

Now you are talking very large type ii customers - those with an
inhouse development staff.  Those customers will (and do) deal with
Unix, but I suspect they are tending more and more towards Unix as
a server and PC/Macs on the desktop.  Their software is currently
well over 50% homebuilt/special-purpose - they don't have a lot
of interest in generic third-party software applications - and
particularly not ones with graphical interfaces.

>>   And unless UNIX community  - both hackers and Unix vendors - respond 
>>   *now*, quit their childish "over my dead body" wars and start delivering 
>>   solid, stable and uniform products (instead of talking about them and 
>>   every week defining a new "open" stamp), Microsoft NT will be a winner.
>>   Regardless of it's technical merits. A single, stable source, a single
>>   set of features (and bugs, same bugs).
>
>Bah! Bullshit! How much did Bill Gates pay you to say this?
>What we need is a stable API. The underlying system doesn't count. 

I believe that's what the paragraph above implies.  Unfortunately
there isn't a stable API on Unix for doing anything complex
(networking, RPC, threads, memory mapping...).  Sure, there are
some standards that all companies claim to support, but...

-- 
Alfalfa Software, Inc.          |       Poste:  The EMail for Unix
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I'm not sure which upsets me more: that people are so unwilling to accept
responsibility for their own actions, or that they are so eager to regulate
everyone else's.