SCO doesn't sell UNIX

[Brandon S. Allbery KB8JRR]

As quoted from <1990Nov29.205938.3671 at digibd.com> by rhealey at digibd.com (Rob Healey):
+---------------
| 	Ok, I'll bite. What IS a "real" UNIX? Minus the security
+---------------

That's half the problem right there.  Just as Chip said --- C2 *unrelaxable*
security breaks the semantics of nearly everything.  And I *do* mean
***UNRELAXABLE*** --- no matter what SCO tells you about "relaxed security",
you can't tell the kernel not to use luid's and therefore you can't "su"
except under certain circumstances (i.e. you can't "su news" unless you are
root or the SINGLE non-root account that is allowed to "su" to a maintenance
account).

+---------------
| 	SCO UNIX 3.2v2.0 seems pretty damn 3.2 to me, as much as
| 	any other "UNIX" system that claims 3.2. Isn't there a little
| 	problem with AT&T lawyers if you use "UNIX" in the name of your
| 	product and it isn't 3.2 or 4.x "certified"?
+---------------

SCO enjoys claiming adherence to zillions of standards with everything in
place to back that up, while managing to be non-standard nonetheless.

* uucp --- everyone else is running HoneyDanber or at least SVR2 UUCP, which
  gets 8-character UUCP names right.  SCO is still running V7 UUCP --- I admit
  they have HDB-ized it, but it *still* doesn't transfer anything when I
  "uucico -stelotech", I MUST say "uucico -stelotec" to make it work.  And yes,
  both the actual machine name and the Systems file entry are "telotech" WITH
  the "h".

* grep --- why should I have to remember that, ouyt of all the System V
  machines in the office, only the SCO Pseudnix machine uses "-y" to do case-
  ignored searches?  All the others use "-i".

There are more examples; I have a long list at work describing differences
between SCO Pseudnix and UNIX.

+---------------
|        I've done the first 3, now all you bashers who have obviously spent
|        more time on SCO UNIX 3.2v2 than me fill in the rest!
+---------------

None of those three are problems (modulo terminal hangs when an unsuspecting
person who's heard of job control does "stty susp '^Z'" from csh, runs
something, types "^Z" and hangs the tty).

The biggest problem I have encountered is maintenance.  SCO Pseudnix
maintenance is so different from UNIX maintenance that it must be classed as a
completely different entity.  Now, maybe you leave the maintenance to someone
else and stick to programming; if so, lucky you.  *I* get to do maintenance,
as well as programming.  And when another programmer started using the SCO
Pseudnix box, it took him all of five minutes to start running into security-
related hassles --- on a machine on which I did everything I could to relax
security within a half hour after getting it into the office.

++Brandon
-- 
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