supporting software

[lauren at RAND-UNIX.ARPA]

Considering how much people seem to like hassling AT&T in this
group, what I'm about to say will be unpopular, but even so...

[I was going to make this long and detailed, but I'll give you 
a break and make it short...]

I think AT&T is doing the right thing by discouraging, as strongly
as possible, the continued use of the older systems, which are
not supported and have no reasonable growth paths.  AT&T is trying
to act like a responsible software business now that they're allowed to,
and that includes not selling old software, missing many features
that people now expect and with old bugs as well.

By only selling what they are geared up to support, they are positioning
themselves in the same manner that we would expect from any
responsible company.  If I were them, I might not even be willing to
send out those old V7 tapes, just to avoid confusion.  Those old systems
are NOT products today, while System V is.  I don't blame them in the least
for not wanting to keep licensing umpteen different systems with 
who knows how many additions and changes.

AT&T is in a massive fight (so to speak) with IBM and other
companies over software, much of which is incredibly primitive compared
to Unix.  Even those other companies generally only
sell what they can support, including upgrades, fixes, and more
mundane customer support.  By making System V *the* product, AT&T
has a reasonable chance of providing organized feature and capacity
growth paths.  Having spent many years trying to merge stuff
from V5, V6, V7, PWB, UNIX/32 and several other systems, each time
cursing at variations between the systems, I can well
appreciate their desire to finally straighten out the mess and allow
a more orderly evolution.

Many companies wouldn't make old, unsupported software available
at ANY price, period.  And they'd frequently be fully justified in
refusing to distribute that old [dead end] code anymore.

No doubt nobody else will agree with my view publicly,
but having spent over 10 years working with Unix (starting with
Versions 5 and 6 [not to be confused with System V]), I feel that I'm
in a position to have a reasonable backround from which to speak.

Today, software that cannot be reasonably supported should not be
distributed at all, in my opinion.  We are no longer just playing
with toys.  [One reporter's opinion, as George Putnam used to say...]

(I'll be away from the terminal for awhile, so don't be surprised
if I don't respond to the flames this message will no doubt generate.)

--Lauren--