Maybe it’s the Open Software Foundation’s non-profit status that made its chief Dave Tory reluctant to detail publicly such a gauche subject as money at last week’s press conference but the Distributed Computing Environment will not come cheap. For royalty purposes, the Foundation divided DCE into client and server software. The client side, tagged the DCE Executive, will cost an OEM customer $75 per node for the first 5,000 nodes but obviously nobody but the smallest OEM company will pay that even if they adopt a billback approach. Most DCE resellers will probably fall in the 5,000-to-500,000 nodes category and pay the Foundation $25 a shot. The Foundation has also aggressively anticipated quantities of 500,000 to 1.2m ($8 a node). All quantities are in systems per year with the clock starting when the first one moves out the door. On the critical server side, the software, dubbed DCE Services, has been divided up into directory service and security service priced at $400 each and both necessary to the system. There is also the non-mandatory advanced file service, a dedicated file server for larger networks costing $500, and X500 for $250. Annual discounts on volume orders here rate a schedule of their own: one to 500 carry full price, 501 to 5,000 get 10% off, 5,001 to 20,000 are 35% off, 20,001 to 40,000 50% off and 40,001 plus 60% off. All servers can be lumped together to qualify for discounts. In addition, the DCE Administration tools package, supporting remote services from any client, goes for $75 a copy or can be packaged with the Executive for a 20% premium over the Executive code fee. Since the prices are only royalties, none of these numbers in any way the reflect street prices, which will be set by individual vendors.
