IBM's influence on OSF (Re: AT&T Joining OSF)

[Michael "Ford" Ditto]

Mini-flame ahead, IBM lovers hit 'n' now!

In article <670025 at hpclscu.HP.COM> shankar at hpclscu.HP.COM (Shankar Unni) writes:

 [ Someone else writes that with IBM's backing, "OSF will not have to worry
   about sales budget, software quality, etc." ]

>How do you think IBM sells anything?  Product quality is usually priority 
>number 1 (like the Ford commercial :-)) at most of the big players in the
>business.

Yes, we all know this based on past experience.  Remember the IBM PC
(naww, hardly ever see them anymore :-)?  IBM entered into a field it
had no experience in, took some off-the-shelf parts using 5-year-old
technology, bought an operating system from a company mainly selling
BASIC interpreters, called it a product, threw some marketing budget
at it, and look what happened.

And do you think IBM has any reason to do anything differently when
it comes to a "side issue" like SOFTWARE?

Look, I'm normally not an IBM-basher ("Down with IBM-PC's", but IBM
itself is OK).  But the point here is that IBM doesn't NEED to worry
about the design of an operating system; it probably wont even
BENEFIT from any design advantages or popularity that the OSF product
might posess.  IBM's decision to be part of OSF was NOT out of a
philanthropic wish for improvement of Unix software.

On the other hand, IBM is high up on my list of companies that
contribute to the "state of the art" of high technology.  IBM
pours millions of dollars into abstract and obscure research
projects which may or may not show promise of being "profitable".
Look at Mandelbrot's work with fractals, for example.  If IBM
wanted to, it could help OSF produce a better standard than
exists today.

In summary, I think IBM's association with OSF is "interesting".
Whether it is "good" or "bad" remains to be seen, and it could
have a drastic effect (one way or the other) on the future of
Unix software.  What scares me about IBM's "size" is not that it
is "powerful", but that if OSF completely screws up all hope of
standardization and enhancement of Unix, IBM won't even notice.
If IBM did notice, they probably wouldn't be too upset about it.

"Unix" is a trademark of AT&T; I used it above primarily in a
generic sense meaning any present or future Unix-like programming
systems.
-- 
					-=] Ford [=-

	.		.		(In Real Life: Mike Ditto)
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