SGI Software and support (was Showcase)

[John D. Woolverton]

   I have had numerous discussions with SGI over their pricing
of products, and time after time they explain to me that they
are just getting back the cost of development, distribution
and support.  I can understand their position, and am certainly
willing (well sort of) to pay for that in most cases.  Sometimes
I would like not to though.

   While I paid full price for the development kit, and 
X windows, it would be nice to get a Right-To-Use/Unsupported
for things like NFS and Motif.  (Even better if that was free).

   The hardware situation is a good example.  I bought my PI
with an official SGI drive, so that if there was any problems
SGI would come out and fix the problem.  For a tape drive however,
the price of $1500 seemed too high, even with a developer's 
discount.  So I went out and bought a 3rd party tape drive for $600.

   Now if my tape drive breaks, I'm certainly not going to go
crying to SGI, and it will be slightly less convenient to ship
the drive back to the 3rd part for a replacement.  I can live
with that, especially for such a dramatic price difference.

   I can certainly understand SGI's position on Showcase.
Their install procedure is radically different from normal
unix, and couldn't easily handling anything like a anonymous
ftp file.   (inst showcase.tar.Z ???)  However it would be
nice if they just said that they wouldn't bring any legal
battle against any site that made showcase available via ftp.
I would expect them to support it though, just like I don't
expect them to support the copy that I squeezed out of my
service rep when I was at their office with a tape  :-).

   So how about offering a Right-To-Use/Unsupported license?
	woolstar at cobalt.caltech.edu