Showcase - SGI please respond!

[James Helman]

If showcase were sold separately, it would be an unbundled (adj., not
bundled) software package, even though SGI never actually unbundled
(vt., to split off) it.

      The question which arises is should all customers pay for DWB, even
   if they don't use it.  SHould the customers who do not use DWB foot
   the bill for those who do?  Maybe they should?  But maybe they
   shouldn't?

Not including DWB or at least an "nroff -man" equivalent for man pages
in the Developer's Option is brain damaged.  I don't particularly care
whether it's AT&T's fault or not.  It basically means that customers
can't integrate many free or commercial third party packages nicely
into IRIX.  Most new IRIX users and those coming from BSD systems find
it disorienting enough even with man pages.  Because DWB is an
unbundled product, many IRISes around here aren't useful unless you
can find a Sun with similar software to read the man pages on.  Pretty
silly.

Also, when a company does sell unbundled software, it would be a big
help if its sales force informed customers' purchases.  I don't think
our sales rep ever mentioned DWB.  Not that it would have done much
good; most of us are pretty dense BSDers here, and I doubt that it
would have occurred to us that we had any use for DWB.  After all, we
don't use the IRISes for any doc prep.  (Hopefully, these otherwise
fruitless DWB posting festivals have at least educate some users to
order DWB, but that's really the sales force's job.)  Sun's no better
on this count.  We don't learn that something has been unbundled (like
Fortran) until we upgrade and paniced users appear.

My point about site licenses also stands.  We'll soon have a group
license on Suns for everything from C++ to Common Lisp to SunVision.
It's unlikely that the same will be done for IRISes on campus because
there are so many fewer of them.  Since software is a big factor in
hardware purchases, unbundled software puts SGI at a disadvantage.

Jim Helman
Department of Applied Physics			Durand 012
Stanford University				FAX: (415) 725-3377
(jim at KAOS.stanford.edu) 			Work: (415) 723-9127

P.S. awf, an awk-based "nroff -man" hack by Henry Spencer is available
by anonymous ftp to fresnel.stanford.edu in pub/4D.