Date: Wed, 12 Dec 2001 22:14:07 -0800 From: Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com> To: Greg Lehey <grog@FreeBSD.org> Cc: Hiten Pandya <hitmaster2k@yahoo.com>, Poul-Henning Kamp <phk@critter.freebsd.dk>, FreeBSD Chat <chat@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: IBM suing (was: RMS Suing was [SUGGESTION] - JFS for FreeBSD) Message-ID: <3C18472F.DD3A90D5@mindspring.com> References: <20011212105559.19177.qmail@web21103.mail.yahoo.com> <3C17482C.3792DAA9@mindspring.com> <20011213115519.F3448@monorchid.lemis.com>
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Greg Lehey wrote: > > I am a former IBM employee, of IBM GSB division (Global Small > > Business). > > I am a current IBM employee, in Ozlabs. One of my areas of activity > is JFS. Good. Go to w3.ibm.com, and search for "open source". Let me know when you get done reading the 18 page presentation on how to treat GPL'ed code as if it were toxic waste that would instantly mutate any intellectual property into dust. See also the IBM guidelines for the use of Open Source in IBM products, and what code is and isn't vetted, and the IBM approved IBM servers from which you are permitted to obtain the source, after attending the mandatory 3 day "How to treat GPL'ed software as toxic waste" IBM training. > It's pretty certain that IBM will never release proprietary code under > the BSD license. This is a stated direction, and it's not a > "religious/marketing GPL crusade", it's plain common business sense. > IBM has a stated policy to help open source projects, but they're not > prepared to release code under conditions which would enable their > commercial competitors to take the code, use it, and not return to the > community. I certainly understand and support this decision (though > it was made quite plain that nobody was requiring me to personally > agree with it). We are talking an IBM commercial product, and we are not even talking an Open Source license (though the BSD license would have been highly preferrable, it was not a business requirement for our FreeBSD based product). > > With JFS under non-GPL'ed terms, we wuld have been able to get > > perhaps another $120 per unit out of the final end customer cost. > > In the U.S., this would have let us drop our subscription cost > > $10/month. In Japan, it would have dropped ~20,000 Yen from the > > total per unit cost. > > I'm not going to ask you why this should have such drastic and > far-reaching effects, but I'll put on record that I have a hard time > believing it. The power supplies with the sufficient DC holdup time had a per unit BOM (Bill Of Materials) cost of ~$90. Standard ATX power supplies had a per unit BOM cost of ~$30. That's a difference of US$60. Assembly costs would have been approximately equal (assembly was contracted out to Solectron), meaning that there would have been a COGS (Cost Of Goods Sold) difference of ~US$60. For every $1 of COGS, that translates into ~$2 in cost to the customer (include amortized support costs, service costs, warranty costs, weight based shipping differences -- lower for the standard supply, EFI ceritfications which could have been avoided with an external "brick" supply, etc.). That means that there was a cost of $120 to the customer aded to the bottom line. Amortizing this across a 1 year subscription amortization schedule, and this comes out to ~$10/month. You might go as far as a 2 year or even 3 year period (the IRS rules permit amortization of computer equipment for 3 to 5 years). Even at the outside, this would have been $3.33/month. The contract terms were, in fact, public record, and set a minimum of a month-to-month, with preferential price breaks for 1 year and 2 year terms ($10/month or $5/month amortized cost). The NTT contract was for unit sales. The international inflation to Japan is a factor of 2. For $120 in additional cost to customer, this works out to $240, or ~24,000 Yen. My ~20,000 number was conservative. I don't see how the math is that hard to understand. I'm sure your division has a finance and/or channel marketing people available who could justify it for you. Julian Elisher can back me up on the power supply unit costs, FWIW. -- Terry To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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