lim ((n -> infinity) UNIX System V Release n) == Multics ?

[William G. Hutchison]

 When I was a student programmer I remember laughing at the huge size of the
Multics Systems Programmer's manuals -- imagine: a whole shelf of books just
to document an operating system!

 Well, I have just seen the UN*X System V Release 4.0 Software Developer Notes
and I'm not laughing.  To Quote Han Solo "I've got a bad feeling about this!".
I'm wondering if UN*X System V might be getting just a tad too big?

 In particular:

   many styles of networking: SunOS, TCP/IP, BSD sockets, streams;
   multiple interfaces: curses, OPEN LOOK, NeWS, X11/NeWS;
   more file system types: s5, BSD ufs, nfs, rfs, proc;
   more types of inter-process communications: Xenix semaphores, sockets,
        Sun RPC, Sys V ipc, named streams.

 I could go on, but you get the idea.  Extrapolating from Sys V rel 3, I bet
that the rel 4 manuals will be as bulky as the Multics manuals.

 Now, for my point: can small-to-medium UN*X software vendors cope with this
complexity?  I see several things that might happen:

 (1) The market might reject Sys V Release 4 as too bulky (not likely, but
     possible: this might move people to OSF/AIX),
 (2) Lots of small vendors might go broke for lack of qualified personnel,
 (3) UN*X porting houses might cope by just porting compilers and selling
     straight AT&T code with no modifications (this might not be so bad),
 (4) Software houses might stick with their historical orientation:
      BSD shops would only use the features of Rel 4 that are common to BSD,
      Xenix shops would stick to the Xenix features, etc.
      Would this work or would it help retain the fragmentation in the UN*X
      software that we see today?

 My crystal ball is cloudy today.  Do people who port UN*X have some opinions
on this issue (we here at the Unisys UNIX Portation Center port applications to
UN*X, we do not port UN*X itself).

 An alternative, semi-serious hypothesis: have Ritchie, Thompson, Kernighan,
Plauger, et alii, been secretly working to re-invent Multics all these years
 :-) ?
-- 
Bill Hutchison, DP Consultant	rutgers!liberty!burdvax!ubbpc!wgh
Unisys UNIX Portation Center	"What one fool can do, another can!"
P.O. Box 500, M.S. B121		Ancient Simian Proverb, quoted by
Blue Bell, PA 19424		Sylvanus P. Thompson, in _Calculus Made Easy_