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Date: Tue, 22 Aug 1995 14:39:57 -0400
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To: paul@FreeBSD.ORG
From: dennis@et.htp.com (dennis)
Subject: SCO and high prices
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>In reply to Jonathan M. Bresler who said
>> 
>> [snip]
>> 
>> ....Last year, when the Santa Cruz Operation raised the price of SCO 
>> Unix, the move caused barely a stir among the company's  users.  The 
>> reason: Because SCO's products were significantly cheaper than Novell's 
>> and Hewlett-Packard's, some technology managers had a hard time 
>> convincing management that the SCO products were on a par with those of 
>> other vendors.  But at a higher price, SCO's product gained respect.
>> 
>> [snip]
>> [end]
>> 
>> 
>> 	perhaps this is the attitude that dennis and others have been 
>> referring to--if i dont pay a lot, i dont get squat. (can we sell these 
>> people "Fresh Air" ?? ).   without a high dollar price tag and an 
>> acceptable name, the just cant deal with it.
>> 
>
First of all, this is NOT the attitude of Dennis. Dennis has to earn a
living. Dennis is just doing his job. Often you get what you pay for, but it
USUALLY true that you get more when you pay something.

I think that your analysis of the above, as well as the author's, is clearly
wrong. SCOs customers didn't wince when they raised their prices because
most of their BIG customer are under contract and the rest of them are so
rich it doesn't matter. SCO doesn't participate in the low end market, so
you can't compare them to FreeBSD or anything similar. Most large corps
don't like freeware because they can't get anything in writing regarding
continuity or ownership. When I was at NYNEX the auditors would come in and
ask us for receipts. Anything we didn't have receipts for, they'd say to
delete it.

"But I'm a Programmer", I'd tell them, "I wrote this stuff". The auditors,
or course, would have none of it.

>BSDI used exactly the same argument when they bumped their prices
>recently.
>

BSDI's problem is that they're trying to set up distribution, and
distributors want deep discounts so they can make a profit. And as they say,
50% of nothing is nothing. Frankly I think they're making a mistake because
they don't have a general purpose product.


Dennis