UNIX standard

[Jim Barton]

From: jmb at patton.SGI.COM (Jim Barton)

Having been justifiably chastised by the moderator, I'll keep my personal
opinions to myself, and stick with the issue at hand, which is "standard"
UNIX.

In article <151 at longway.TIC.COM>:
> From: uunet!wlbr.eaton.com!etn-rad!jru (John Unekis)
   ...
> 
>   ........ My question was actually more concerned with the future of UNIX
>   as an open standard. Obviously keeping UNIX open is a double edged sword 
>   for AT&T, they gain great credit as the source of the most widely accepted
>   non-hardware dependent OS, but does it really benefit the sales of their
>   machines? If AT&T were ever to pick a hardware standard as the basis for
>   a product dependent UNIX, the SPARC would be an excellent choice. The 
>   real question, I suppose, is can an open standard like UNIX really survive
>   in today's feircely competitive marketplace?
> 

AT&T has some real problems in attempting to manage UNIX, and looks to Sun
to solve some of them.  There are several points to consider about the
current mess:

1) AT&T >owns< UNIX, and don't you forget it.  Sun doesn't own it, Berkeley
   doesn't, and CMU doesn't.  They feel very strongly about it.

2) Cassoni (President of AT&T Data Systems) believes that a hardware
   platform is necessary to the success of UNIX, similarly to the
   IBM PC.  I obviously don't.  The PC is basically hardware, and thus
   a different beast than UNIX.  By making UNIX hardware specific, you
   destroy it.

3) AT&T licenses UNIX to a large number of people in various ways.  Were
   they to take action that would seriously harm a large number of licensees
   (especially the big ones) they would be facing an anti-trust suit so
   fast your head would spin.

4) AT&T and Sun are attempting to define a new standard by a simple existence
   proof, the infamous "open" standard.  This group has carried much 
   discussion about P1003 and other efforts; those are a "standard".  AT&T
   and Sun wish to define a standard suitable for their own uses without
   going through the hassle of getting everybody to agree - thus bypassing
   most of the technical community.  Thus, they want an IBM style "standard".
   This is the current, openly announced, plan for V.4.

5) The "open" standard and promises to licensees are efforts by AT&T to
   pacify competitors.  It is clearly to AT&T's advantage to have a "standard"
   which looks open on the surface (i.e., everybody >could< duplicate it
   without AT&T source code), but is really as closed as possible (you
   really have to buy AT&T source and hardware to realize it).  This is
   true today.  Consider RFS, which is in SVID Issue 3, but is un-implementable
   from the SVID as specified.  Somehow, though, this is a "standard".

6) You've obviously been hiding under a rock for the past six months.  A
   large number of UNIX licensees have complained directly to AT&T about
   the AT&T/Sun deal and the pronouncements by Sun salespeople.  AT&T
   has come out with many assurances that they will take care of
   everybody.  Rumoured deals are in the making to work on competing
   versions of UNIX (though obviously >not< with that name).

I'd like to make one last point.  A "competing" standard arose with Berkeley
UNIX because of the legally restricted support that AT&T had to give 
originally and because of the anti-UCB sentiment back in New Jersey.  By
attempting to force one standard without the technical and business input
of the UNIX licensees, AT&T engenders an environment where another
competing standard can rise and flourish.  After all, V.4 will have
Sun's favorite enhancements, but it won't have mine, or yours, and it may
break what I do have.

The heavy-handedness of the AT&T/Sun actions may do more to trash any
emerging UNIX standard than to promote it.

-- Jim Barton
Silicon Graphics Computing Systems    "UNIX: Live Free Or Die!"
jmb at sgi.sgi.com, sgi!jmb at decwrl.dec.com, ...{decwrl,sun}!sgi!jmb
--

Volume-Number: Volume 13, Number 39