DEC does NOT have an SVID OS

[Every system needs one]

In article <254 at sdba.UUCP>, stan at sdba.UUCP (Stan Brown) writes:
> > Please don't forget that DEC was eliminated from an ongoing Air Force bid of
> > some $970mil (If I recall correctly).  Being barred from almost a Billion
> > dollars worth of business is sure going to make the likes of IBM, DEC and HP
> > take notice.
> 	Lets see if we can egt our facts straight here.  As I recall
> 	DEC protested the Air Force contract you are talking about
> 	because it specifiec SVID.  At the time DEC (I believe) a
> 	SVID compliant OS that they were selling to other markets,
> 	but wanted to make the point that the Govenmrnt (which can't
> 	specicfy vendor specific details) couldn't (in DEC's opinion)
> 	specify SYSVID as it was vendor specific.

	DEC does NOT have an SVID complient operating system.  AT&T UNIX
system V runs on DEC machines.  DEC does not have this themselves... it is
third party.  DEC (aparrently) hates third party.  What DEC has is Ultrix,
and it's not likely to be anything complient in the near future.  The machine
I am typing this on is running Ultrix, and there are a number of rather severe
problems.  Among these is it's inability to use 8 data bit and no parity to
talk out it's LAT ports... the LAT protocol driver is particularly screwed.
The update in 2.0 (supposedly the fix) crashes the LAT I/O entirely.  We are
currently running 1.x drivers with 2.0 Ultrix.  Besides, Ultrix is mostly
Berkeley, and Berkely is not SVID... this, along with it's inability to
display international character sets via 8-bit characters makes it a real
loss when POSIX becomes involved in the specification.

	What DEC did is protest any time someone said SVID out loud anywhere.
This was in an attempt to talk the Air Force into using VMS (Version Making
System), something very propritary to DEC, instead of UNIX (something that
runs on everything.  This would have tied the Air Force to DEC hardware;
since the Air Force already had hardware, they needed something to run on
most of it.  UNIX was the obvious choice, as most of the hardware that was
running anything was running UNIX anyway.  SVID was chosen because it was a
standard.  Since there is OFICIALLY no such thing as a published X/open or
POSIX standard, SVID was it.  DEC wouldn't have lost so big had it:

	1)	Been willing to support a third party (AT&T's) OS
	2)	Been willing to work on compliance (fix Ultrix)
	3)	Ported VMS to anything (not likely; BLISS doesn't
		run on an Intel 310 or a TACCS box) which the AF
		had.
	4)	Shown a willingness to provide an alternate standard
		any kind whatsoever.

	The Air Force wouldn't play VMS, so DEC tried to bully it into
playing by DEC's rules (Munging the Air Force with VMS is suicidal); when
that failed, DEC aparrently gave up.  Aparrently, the Air Force doesn't
feel it's any great loss.  Besides, it's the Air Force's money and they
should be allowed to do what they damn well please with it, especially if
it means ANY kind of standardization that might carry over into industry.

	I'd rather have my taxes spent reasonably and responsibly any day
of the week.  DEC was stupid trying to make the Air Force knuckle under.

> 	If I have any of this wrong please feel free to correct me.


| Terry Lambert           UUCP: ...{ decvax, ihnp4 } ...utah-cs!century!terry |
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