Date: Tue, 22 Aug 1995 14:39:57 -0400 From: dennis@et.htp.com (dennis) To: paul@FreeBSD.ORG Cc: hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: SCO and high prices Message-ID: <199508221839.OAA24912@mail.htp.com>
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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
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