From: bruce@ais.com (Bruce C. Wright)
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy
Subject: Re: Bundling Networks, OS/2 v. NT
Date: 13 Oct 92 17:43:51 GMT
Organization: Applied Information Systems, Chapel Hill, NC

In article <1992Oct13.154010.23632@mksol.dseg.ti.com>, mccall@mksol.dseg.ti.com (fred j mccall 575-3539) writes:
> In <1992Oct11.134647.5784@ais.com> bruce@ais.com (Bruce C. Wright) writes:
> 
>>Sigh.  The problem is that different people are interested in different
>>feature sets.  If you unbundle them ALL, then the extra costs of
>>distribution and marketing become significant, both for the vendor
>>and the customer.  If you include them ALL, then you may sell more
>>copies of the package as a whole, and the per-unit costs of any one
>>feature go down for both the vendor and the customer.  I seriously
>>doubt that the development costs of TCP/IP for NT would be very large
>>relative to the development costs of the entire system (read: barely
>>^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>>visible).  How much would I guess that it increases the development
>>cost of NT, per copy?  _Maybe_ a few cents.
> 
> If it's really that cheap and easy to do bug-free comm software, you'd
> think we'd be up to our armpits in it and it would be real cheap to
> buy.  That doesn't seem to be the case.

In the first place, much of the comm software that's out there in the
PC marketplace is third party comm software -- therefore, it has to
be _separately packaged_ and _separately marketed_ and _separately
supported_.  There are relatively few comm packages bundled with
other things (like operating systems).  As I said in other parts of
the article, much of the per-unit cost of a software product is _NOT_
the initial development -- it's ongoing costs like marketing, packaging,
distribution, and support.

In the second place, please read what I underlined above -- I'm not
saying that comm software is trivial (I have written various commercial
comm packages so I know it's not trivial), I'm saying that it's not
that expensive to develop _relative to the rest of an operating system_.
That's a very different thing.  Do you really think a comm package costs
more to develop than a full-blown OS??

Now I'm not so sure that TCP/IP is so wonderful to include in NT, as
I said I'm not sure that it is really a very appropriate choice for
a PC network.  I just don't share the opinion that it's necessarily
some kind of horrible mistake, unless MS decides that they can set some
kind of sky-high price for the OS because of it.  Some companies,
especially those with very heterogeneous networks, may go for it;  but
most companies that are running networks on their PC's aren't using TCP
and probably don't want to.

>>Why did I have to pay for Rexx when I bought OS/2?  I don't want to
>>pay for features I'm not interested in either ... can I buy a copy of
>>OS/2 without Rexx at a discount???
> 
> An OS without a CLI is probably a non-starter, insofar as arguments
> about 'bundling' go.

You consider Rexx the OS/2 CLI?  I don't think so!  You can certainly
install and run OS/2 without it, and the normal command-line mode will
work just fine.  It's certainly more flexible than the batch language,
for what that's worth.  _You_ may use it as _your_ CLI, but it's hardly
the only option, or even the only option shipped with the system.  I'd
consider Rexx as more of a simple programming language, in more-or-less
the same category as Basic (in terms of product category, not necessarily
in terms of features or data model).

>>Please let's not talk about non-issues.
> 
> Why is it a 'non-issue', other than the fact that NT is still in the
> 'non-product' category?

Why is your comment not a `non sequitur'?

The discussion was about the practice of `bundling' a number of different
features in a single package -- an OS in this case.  I interpreted the
discussion as pertaining to the generic practice of bundling, with the
case of NT as a specific instantiation.  I personally have no problem
with that practice whether it's OS/2, NT, or whatever the OS-du-jour
is, and I think the argument against it was fundamentally flawed.  I
don't see why the actual `product' status of NT has anything to do with
the discussion of that point (although obviously it bears rather
pointedly on whether you can actually _use_ NT as a finished product).

BTW I don't consider myself a religious partisan of either side --
think of me more as a bookie trying to figure out how to set the odds
on a horse race :-).

Bruce C. Wright
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy