Message-ID: <558@dual.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 2-Jun-84 14:32:01 EDT
Article-I.D.: dual.558
Posted: Sat Jun  2 14:32:01 1984
Date-Received: Tue, 5-Jun-84 07:51:04 EDT
References: <425@hogpc.UUCP> <2727@brl-vgr.ARPA> <1971@rlgvax.UUCP>
Organization: Dual Systems, Berkeley, CA
Lines: 42

[ the bug is an optional (extra cost) part of this System V release ]

Well, well, I wondered when we were going to tackle this topic.
We always prided ourselves on supplying the `full UNIX '.
[ Silly disclaimer: actually, UniSoft's concept of the full system ].
We have done well with this because our market has primarily been people
who need the whole ball of wax.

Then I got System V. If I load it all onto the machine we have the large
base of out in the field, all of a sudden, no more room for users to store
THEIR programs. After a full distribution, plus swap space, you don't have
much left of a 20 meg disk....Solution? Make everybody buy a 500 meg disk,
of course!

No seriously, this IS a problem. My solution is to supply what is needed to
run with installed on the system, and the rest, partitioned into neat
little packages, is supplied on backup media, and can be installed on demand.
We have compiler tools in one package, accounting (acct and sa) in another,
on-line manuals in a third, games in a fourth, etc. This costs US money,
since we need to supply all the media to hold this stuff, but then, we always
supplied a full backup of the system anyway. My position is that the customer
has paid for it all anyway, so he should get it all. I mean, our kickback to
AT&T is the same whether I ship a floppy containg kernel, init, sh, and su
(basically enough to boot...), or if I ship 12 megabytes of software installed
on a hard disk. So why should the customer have to pay more for things I
have decided are less crucial and should be options?

By no means do I claim that a machine has to have the full distribution on
it to be worthwhile - most people only need a small subset of what comes
with AT&T Sys V. We have to try to make efficient use of the machine we
sell, or it won't be a good value. Why force someone who only wants to
run a spreadsheet to have YACC an LEX (and SNO?) on line. But until AT&T 
starts selling me UNIX in pieces (okay, so they have started already), I 
won't *SELL* it in pieces, although I may distribute it in pieces.

Except for the line eater bug, which costs $250 extra.

This solution is right for us, it may not be right for others.

	    Mats Wichmann
	    Dual Systems Corp.
	    ...{ucbvax,amd70,ihnp4,cbosgd,decwrl,fortune}!dual!mats