Splinter Unix?

[Matt Landau]

In comp.unix.questions (<1228 at ssc.UUCP>), fyl at ssc.UUCP (Phil Hughes) writes:
>The alternative, called Open Software Foundation involves a whole bunch of
>vendors (about 9 so far) and they are doing joint development on the
>standard and the code.  The best thing that could happen is that AT&T and
>Sun could say, "Ok, you win" and join in.

Actually, this may be the worst thing that could happen.  In some sort of
Platonic Ideal world, the idea of completely equal input in design and
implementation would be great.

In the real world, however, there are numerous examples of what happens
why you try design-by-committee, and it just doesn't seem to work very
well.  I cannot see how these 9 companies, historically competitors, each
with its own private interests and agenda, are going to manage to prodcue
anything reasonable in a realistic amount of time (especially given that
AT&T has the entire existing body of System V and SunOS code to work from,
while OSF seems like it has to start essentially from scratch to avoid the
possibility of a lawsuit for copyright infringement.)

It's really too bad that AT&T couldn't satisfy the Hamilton Group's desire
for resonable licensing terms and equal *access* to (as opposed to equal 
*input* on) the SysVR4 work.  Then they could have let AT&T and Sun do a 
good job on the core development and concentrated their own efforts on adding 
value for their particular machines and applications.

Oh, well, it looks like we're gonna be stuck with the SysV versus 4BSD schism
all over again.  *Sigh*
--
 Matt Landau	       Let not a man glory in this: that he loves his country.
 mlandau at bbn.com        Let him glory rather in this: that he loves his kind.