Splinter Unix?

[David H. Wolfskill]

In article <10892 at steinmetz.ge.com> davidsen at crdos1.UUCP (bill davidsen) writes:

>f) In my opinion they're trying to kill UNIX with similar but
>   proprietary clones. Like killing flys by releasing sterile males.

There is a certain amount of precedent for that, just within IBM alone
(at least, as far as IBM's actions seem to indicate -- I have absolutely
no "inside information" about what goes on inside IBM, nor am I certain
that I would want any).

IBM has (at various times) made different (incompatible, to various
degrees) flavors of UNIX available on several of the machines it
makes.  Indeed: in spite of the (fairly) recent announcement from IBM to
the effect that AIX was to be the standard IBM port of UNIX, there is a
product (available only to the academic community, to the best of my
knowledge) called "IBM/4.3" that is (you guessed it) a port of 4.3BSD.

I would say IBM has done a fair job of promoting the "splintering" of
UNIX all by itself -- and (more to the point) of encouraging the
mindsets that "there are lots of different -- incompatible --
implementations of UNIX out there" and that "there's no software out
there for UNIX."

I rather mistrust IBM's involvement with UNIX.
-- 
David H. Wolfskill
uucp: ...{trwrb,hplabs}!felix!dhw68k!david	InterNet: david at dhw68k.cts.com