🚀 go-pugleaf

For people who bought NeXT's before January this year (and
perhaps somewhat later) at an edu site, you should know 
the following fact. I did not notice anyone pointing this out.

These NeXT owners are licenced for unlimited number of
mma2.0 processes per CPU. NOT! if you upgrade, however.
Wolfram R. Inc. have changed the policy so that the maximum number 
of processes on NeXTs is *2* in contrast to the previous unlimited mma2.0. 

So if you are going 2.0->2.1, be sure to know what you are doing.
You will get mma2.1 (for $50 if you are edu) which might not be 
a bad deal, but you will lose the ability to run more than 2 processes. 
Depends on what's important to you.
If you don't have many users who use mma or do not run
background jobs, it probably does not matter that much.

Also, I am a bit worried that some people might upgrade
(have ugraded) without knowing the consequences.
We almost missed it, but noticed it after loading the disks.
It does say on the licence sheet.

*** Personal opinion follows *******************************
Please post the articles regarding the rest to c.s.n.advocacy.

For very good reasons (like mem) you might not want to run 
more than two mma sessions at a time anyway; 

BUT, IMHO,

a) people who have mma2.0 unlimited-number-of-processes
licence should NOT lose this licence just by an `upgrade'.
(Especially by a minor upgrade from 2.0->2.1.)
This is probably legal, but still seems mean to me.

b) I wish if this point was much more well advertised.
We certainly had not noticed it anywhere before we
ordered it. It was not mentioned to us when we
ordered it. Also, I wish they had included something
like a little note/warning pointing this out in the
package for non-computer geeks. 
They do say on the lincence that the max # processes is
2, though.

c) In closing, where can this go? Does this mean 
that if we upgrade next time they can limit you to one process?
Or perhaps make people pay extra for the standard
packages? Or perhaps ..... boggles my mind.

People might point out it is free on the NeXT. I consider
not so; it is included in the cost of buying a NeXT.

OK. I'll get off my soapbox now 8-)
Happy computing,
-- 
                        ___Kenichiro Aoki. (aoki@physics.ucla.edu)