Splinter Unix?

[Chuck Karish]

In article <7922 at brl-smoke.ARPA> gwyn at brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) <gwyn>) writes:
>It should be obvious what their real motives are.  It must grate to
>have to pay AT&T royalties.
It must also grate to have AT&T try to dictate the exact form
of the distributed product, with all the conditions in the SysV.3
licensing agreement.

>We sure don't need a DIFFERENT system interface.  A true UNIX clone
>would be okay (although it would lag in picking up new developments),
>except I doubt they will produce one.
The press release said that the interface will be based on AIX, which
is a port of SysV.2.  IBM is already publicly committed to adding
numerous BSD extensions, and NFS, to AIX.  Is there any indication that
OSF intends to write a complete, incompatible implementation?

>I get pissed off at companies that prefer to resort to marketing and
>legal strategies rather than responding technically.  If they're
>really going to develop an alternative operating system instead of
>adding value to an established standard one, it should be SIGNIFICANTLY
>BETTER than UNIX, not just a small incompatible tweak, or else they're
>wasting everyone's time.
What do you think of the Sun/AT&T decision to keep their code secret
while it's being developed?  I expect that they'll produce a good
system, but others say that the way they plan to do it will give Sun an
unfair marketing advantage (several months) over their competitors
(and uneasy bedfellows).

I speak only for myself.
Chuck Karish	ARPA:	karish at denali.stanford.edu
		BITNET:	karish%denali at forsythe.stanford.edu
		UUCP:	{decvax,hplabs!hpda}!mindcrf!karish
		USPS:	1825 California St. #5   Mountain View, CA 94041