AT&T Co’s Unix Software Operation looks set to announce pricing and licensing terms for the upcoming release of Unix System V.4 at the end of the month, according to sources inside AT&T. The announcemnet will come some weeks before the operating system itself goes on general release, for which a likely curtain raiser is the Unix Expo show in New York during the first week of November. AT&T has been hawking provisional pricing plans around Unix users and manufacturers since July – plans that Unix International, the group responsible for shaping the look of future Unix releases has had no say in drawing up. The reason for AT&T’s sole jurisdiction over pricing according to a spokesman is that Unix International, with over 100 companies affiliated to it, could have violated the stringent US anti-trust laws if it had taken part, and AT&T is still in the business of trying to make money out of its products. There are currently understood to be several different pricing options under review, but judging from reports in the US trade press a significant price hike compared with the flat $150 licence fee for V.3 seems likely. Computer Systems News estimates that System V.4 binary licence charges could represent 1% of a machine’s hardware cost, or up to 20% of its software cost, with the brunt being borne by workstation and minicomputer licensees. AT&T sources confirmed that work is currently focused on the implications different price strategies could have at the high and low ends of the the Unix market. On the licensing side however, Unix International has been providing much input into AT&T’s plans via its licensing conformance workgroup, which is headed by Dick Grunmeyer of Unisys Corp. And, although many of its recommendations have been adopted by AT&T, some appear to have been changed, and the workgroup has been meeting this week to thrash out the final details. Work apparently centred on the issue of whether members and users would have to conform to the System V Interface Definition, commonly referred to as the SVID, or to X/Open Group Ltd’s Portability Guide 3, XPG3.
