More of Ultrix-UNIX SOURCEWARS!

[Armando P. Stettner]

	Path: decwrl!decvax!genrad!panda!talcott!wjh12!maynard!campbell
	From: maynard!campbell (Larry Campbell)
	Newsgroups: net.unix-wizards
	Subject: Re: Re: Ultrix and 4.2 and der Mouse
	Message-Id: <195 at maynard.UUCP>
	Date: 8 Dec 85 06:43:24 GMT
	References: <1554 at decwrl.UUCP> <1441 at cornell.UUCP> <722 at decuac.UUCP>
	Organization: The Boston Software Works Inc., Maynard, MA
	Lines: 20
	Apparently-To: aps
	
	> ...But, and this is what I think Armando was getting at, if you
	> have no use for any of that, if you do all your own support, if
	> your goal is to make massive changes to the kernel (essentially
	> voiding the warrantee) then you might do better to go with a
	> non-commercial product.  No commercial OS product that I know
	> of is set up to allow the customer to make changes to it and
	> still be supported by the company.
	> -- 
	> Fred @ DEC Ultrix Applications Center    decvax!decuac!avolio
	
	Well, maybe this is ancient history, and the product is nearing
	the end of its life, but TOPS-10, DEC's timesharing system for
	its largest machines (PDP-10s) was ALWAYS shipped in source
	form.  There was no binary-only distribution.  And the stuff
	was supported too (although if you wanted a bug report taken
	seriously, you had to be able to reproduce it on a vanilla
	system).
	-- 
	Larry Campbell
	The Boston Software Works, Inc.
	120 Fulton Street
	Boston MA 02109

	ARPA: maynard.UUCP:campbell at harvard.ARPA
	UUCP: {harvard,cbosgd}!wjh12!maynard!campbell

Larry,
One of the key phrases in your paragraph is "although if you wanted a
bug report taken seriously, you had to be able to reproduce it on a
vanilla system".  Such is the case with Ultrix *and* VMS.  If you get
the sources to those systems and fiddle with them, any bugs you report
will have to be demonstrable on a vanilla system.  Simple.  I can't
imagine anybody doing support of any large software "product" (or
hardware for that matter) and allow themselves to chase their tail
because of something the customer did.  It just makes sense to want to
start debugging from a known point.

As to TOPS-10 being shipped with source and "no binary-only distribution:
well, we did not have to succumb to the restrictions upon the use of
TOPS-10 by AT&T.

	aps.