In common with many other Western computer manufacturers notably DEC, whose PDP-11 and VAX were mercilously ripped off before the Iorn Curtain crumbled to rust, Prime Computer GmbH is offering its loyal but illegal user base in East Germany customers a relatively cost-effective means of going legit. Prime estimates that around 150 East German businesses are using its UK-developed Medusa computer-aided design software, and, reports Computerwoche, the company is asking East German users to pay a fee of $321 per CPU to make legitimate continued use of their heavily-exploited programs. And if they can find $12,841 a third of the original licence fee, they can upgrade to the 6.04 release of Medusa, which unlike the current Release 7.0, will run on machines built by VEB Kombinat Robotron. Both offers will remain open only until the end of the year – Prime’s business manager, Erwin Leonardi, is well aware that he must take into account the present economic situation facing East German businesses. At the beginning of 1987, the East Berlin Zentralinstitut fr Kybernetik und Informationsprozesse recommended Medusa for use in what was then a very unDemocratic Republic – nice when you can take your pick of the world’s leading software without having to worry about irritations like royalty payments. Having carefully removed all signs of the original identity and origin of the software, the Leitzentrum fr Anwendungsforschung put its pirated booty onto the East German market. Letting bygones be bygones, Prime reckons that that decision made Medusa one of the market leaders in computer-aided design across the Wall and behind the guard posts. Prime’s newly-discovered customers will initially be looked after by the West German sales and support teams, but Prime plans to open an office in Berlin and to follow with another one in the south-east of the area that will become the five eastern Lder of the Federal Republic of Germany. And Prime warns that Medusers wanting support will have to upgrade to a current release and run it on current Western hardware rather than on obsolete Eastern European machines of doubtful provenance.
