instability in Berkeley versus AT&T releases (absurdly long)

[Larry Campbell]

> The lack of file system quotas probably reflects AT&T's openly-expressed
> view (which I agree with) that except in special situations, if you think
> you need disk quotas then you really need more disks instead.  Situations
> involving hostile users, e.g. undergrads, are obviously an exception --
> note that this was the original motive for the 4.2 implementation of
> quotas -- but how many businesses have that problem?

Hostile users aren't the only good reason to have quotas.  What about
buggy software that gets into an infinite loop writing to a file?
It's pretty annoying that such a bug can essentially crash (i.e., make
useless) a timesharing system.

> As many people have pointed out, unbundling (a) is a botch, and (b) is
> necessary if you are selling Unix boxes with small disks.  Not everybody
> has Eagles to put it all on...

I thought unbundling was done mainly to reduce the entry-level price
of a Unix license.  After all, you could always ship everything and let
the user decide which pieces to devote disk space to.  (And I agree --
unbundling is a botch.)

> -- 
> 				Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
> 				{allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!henry

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