> I'm not sure that "free" was a big deal when the machines themselves cost so much It was for the hardware manufacturers who now didn't need to produce a whol

> I'm not sure that "free" was a big deal when the machines themselves cost so much It was for the hardware manufacturers who now didn't need to produce a whole new OS for their hardware. It also was for the universities who could play with the OS without astronomical OS licensing costs. After that, the former could take advantage of so many of the latter coming out of school with UNIX experience.