att & osf

[Scott MacQuarrie]

In article <1988Aug2.171126.17906 at utzoo.uucp>, henry at utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) writes:
> 
> Well, let us not credit AT&T with too much altruism.  They were forbidden
> to sell Unix, yes, but they were also required to share their technology
> with others, since development of said technology was done with money
> derived from a regulated monopoly.  They weren't *allowed* to just leave
> it on the shelf, if I understand the legalities correctly.
As I understand it, we were not forced to share any of our developed 
technologies prior to 1984. We were simply not allowed to make a profit
from them because we were a monopoly. That's why Sony purchased the rights to
the transistor for $25K (but not the exclusive rights).

> 
> >When the UNIX market balkinized and UNIX begen to become incompatible with
> >versions of itself. AT&T developed the System V Interface Definition at its
> >own expense, in order to provide a standard for UNIX. This now enables vendors
> >to make their versions of UNIX compatible with each other...
> 
> Again, altruism is not the word for it.  Do remember that there have already
> been two releases of the SVID, and nobody seriously believes there won't be
> more.  What this enables vendors to do is to constantly scramble to keep up
> with AT&T's definition of What Unix Is This Week.  Said definition being
> based, of course, on what AT&T is already delivering.  It should be no

There have not been two versions of the SVID, there have been volumes added
to the SVID to cover developments in various areas, particularly networking.
This is the result of development efforts on our part to provide further
networking and communication ability between machines and to remove the
need for applications to be concerned about the netwroking problems.
> 
> 
> >... show me another vendor which has worked as hard   
> >to provide a truly hardware independent operating system to allow customers
> >to feely decide what hardware they need to solve their problems...
> 
> Provided, of course, that they end up choosing AT&T hardware.  Come now;
> this is really laying it on a bit too thick.  There are many things AT&T
> could have done to make hardware independence easier, and they have done
> very few of them. 
System V Unix runs on a variety of equipment which is not manufactured with
or by AT&T. Your arguement that SYSV or SYSV-compatible operating systems only
run on AT&T equipment is simply wrong.

 The only reason it hasn't been worse is that AT&T has
> done such an inept job of making and selling its own computers, meaning
> that they haven't been a serious competitor.  This is why various hardware
> manufacturers sounded Red Alert when AT&T and Sun got together to decide
> Unix's future.

No one denies that AT&T has had problems entering the computer marketplace.
On the otherhand, if you consider that AT&T has undergone the largest
reorganization of any corporation in history and the tremendous cultural
changes involved in moving from functioning in a monopoly to surviving
in a competitive marketplace, we haven't done that poorly. In doing so,
we have also maintained the position of the largest manufacturer of 
phone equipment in the world and possess, by far, the largest share
of the long distance market in the US. 

The "Red Alert" as you so quaintly put it, was the result of UNIX
becoming a serious contender in the computer market and the company
with the most knowledge of it (us) beginning a business relationship
with a corporation which has displayed a sharp and aggressive ability
in that market.

AT&T has in the past, and will in the future, work towards creating a
UNIX standard which will allow the system to grow to its full potential.
Your comments implying a strategy to control the market or to create a
proprietary operating system would be humorous, except for the concern
that someone might actually take you serious.

You obviously possess an unfortunate anti-AT&T attitude which is 
suprising since one of the things which AT&T Canada has started doing
is to provide a backbone usenet feed into Canada, at currently our own
expense. We have not adopted the attitude of the US machines and supply
a complete feed to many machine, including yours. My, how greedy of us :-)

Thanks for your time,
Scott MacQuarrie
AT&T Canada Inc.
uunet!attcan!scott