Future of SCO UNIX

[Karl Lehenbauer]

In article <35 at unigold.UUCP> lance at unigold.UUCP (Lance Ellinghouse) writes:
>What I could see SCO doing is creating seperate environments
>that run under Mach that are Xenix and UNIX emulators.

Since even V.3 has Xenix 286 and 386 binary compatibility, what's the point?
V.4 even has BSD compatibility -- you later mention running a BSD emulator too.

Mach can do all the things you're gushing over partly because it doesn't do any
more than those things.  You seem to want to use it as sort of an operating
system switcher, which it could do.  IBM did something similar called VM.  It
provides simulated hardware to run multiple operating systems rather than 
the set of software services Mach provides.  Something of a performance hit
there.  They used to have something like it on the RT, I think it was called
the virtual resource manager.  A friend of mine got paid good contract wages 
to take it *out* of AIX -- too slow.

The utility of Mach in my opinion, and Mach is not the only such software being
worked on, is that it provides a uniform interprocess communication method
for the three current types of multiprocessors:  tightly coupled processors
with some private memory and some shared memory, tightly coupled processors
where all memory is shared, and loosely coupled (networked) systems, also that
it offers a model for new or seriously modified operating systems that
increases concurrency and decreases, er, monolithicity.  But whether it's
there or not, except in broad terms, is invisible to the end-user.

>...run Mach native code with BSD 4.3 code with any other
>code you want sitting right next to it...
>...have a Xenix Environment, UNIX V3.2 environment, and maybe
>even UNIX V4.0...

>You could even have the C2/B1/B2/D security services as modules
>that you could CHOOSE from. If you want C2, you have it. ...

Sorry, I think you're being naive with this stuff.  You seem to be treating
all this as SMOP, Simply a Matter of Programming, which to some degree it is,
but you might consider that it's more like SMAGDOP, Simply a Matter Of A
Great Deal of Programming, and somebody's gonna have to want to pay for it.
This stuff isn't easy -- it's really, really hard.

>I may be crazy, but I think if they go with OSF/1 and
>Mach (which is what it SEEMS like they are moving towards)
>you will see a MUCH faster and better system than anyone
>has seen sofar!

Prove it.  Or at least give us more to go on than your feelings.
-- 
-- uunet!sugar!ficc!karl (wk),   "Any excuse will serve a tyrant."  -- Aesop
   uunet!sugar!karl (hm)