att & osf

[D.Rorke]

Gary Allen responds to a poster who voiced concern over the motives of
some of the members of OSF:

> You can correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't every single member of OSF
> have a UNIX license, and doesn't every one of them sell UNIX in addition
> to other products? And isn't it a fact that the 2 companies that you
> single out are 2 of the major UNIX suppliers?

This misses the point.  Yes they all have (as far as I know) some sort
of UNIX-like product in their product lines.  I suspect that some of
them carry it just in case their customers ask for it.  The point is,
open systems are a major threat to some of the members of OSF.
Consider the following scenario:  Open systems really catch on in the
industry, including useful industry standard interfaces.
Various vendors build and market hardware that supports
the industry standard operating system environment.  Hardware is
priced competitively due to the open market (customers can shop
around for hardware based on price-performance).  Now the biggie -
applications developers turn out serious, industrial strength
DP applications that run in the standard environment (like payroll
and accounting and inventory control applications).
Now a data processing manager is faced with a choice (in some cases
for the first time). He can continue to pay
10 zillion dollars a month to lease the hardware and software
to maintain the environment he has been running since the dawn of
time, or he can move to an open environment, end his marriage to
a single hardware vendor, and take advantage of new hardware 
technology at an enormous savings.  Sure it's painful and expensive
to move to the new environment but it only has to be done once
and the long term savings more than justify the cost.
This is a scenario that IBM in particular has to be concerned
about.  They have profited tremendously in the past from the
fact that many of their customers have been locked into an
IBM environment.  This is why it is a little difficult for some
of us to believe that intelligent, responsible IBM executives
sincerely want open systems to flourish.
> 
> Proprietary systems? Yeah, they all also sell OS's of their own creation,
> JUST AS PROPRIETARY AS YOURS, or don't you know what the word means?
> In case you don't, I'll quote from Webster (the second definition):
> 
>    1. of, or relating to, or characteristic of a proprietor <~rights>;
>    2. used, made, or marketed by one having the exclusive legal
>       right <a ~ process>;
>    3. privately owned and managed and run as a profit-making organization
>       <a ~ clinic>
> 
> Now which definition is it that makes UNIX non-proprietary? I'm sure
> we'd all like to know, since that'd mean we don't have to pay AT&T
> any license fees.
> 
> And surely you must know that AT&T considers it to be proprietary, or
> perhaps you've never seen (hope I don't get sued for this):
> 
> /*	THIS IS UNPUBLISHED PROPRIETARY SOURCE CODE OF AT&T	*/
> /*	The copyright notice above does not evidence any   	*/
> /*	actual or intended publication of such source code.	*/
> 
> Perhaps you mean portable instead of proprietary?

Yes, System V source code is proprietary in that those wishing to
sell products based on it must pay a licensing fee.
Generally when people talk about proprietary systems however they 
are talking about systems that are offered primarily by a
single vendor and are either not licensed to 3rd parties or are
so non-portable that they will never run on any other vendor's
hardware.  In this sense UNIX is a non-proprietary system.
> 
> And by the way, all of these Bad Companies (apologies to John
> Paul Rodgers) have every right to sell other products in competition
> with your company's, or must I also define capitalism for you as
> well? Or perhaps some AT&T folk have the attitude that they're
> still guaranteed market, profits, and success?

Of course they have a right to compete.  In general competition
is good for the marketplace.  Unfortunately the untimely
appearance of OSF is likely to be bad for the marketplace and
the industry.  It is bad for the customers in the sense that
it adds further confusion to a market that was beginning to
converge on standards (i.e. the emergence of the POSIX standard
and the convergence of Xenix, BSD and System V).
OSF will tend to fragment the UNIX market and slow its growth
which is bad not only for customers but for other vendors with
a real stake in the UNIX market (including some of the members of OSF).
I really believe that those members of OSF that have a real stake in
the success of open systems (like Apollo) would have been better off
if they had stuck with existing/emerging standards and OSF had
never been formed.

> 
> Gary Allen
> Apollo Computer
> Chelmsford, MA
> {decvax,yale,umix,mit-eddie}!apollo!gallen
> 
> Oh yeah, the opinions herein expressed aren't worth 2 bits and aren't
> condoned by anyone that really counts.

You said it, not me.


Dave Rorke
AT&T Bell Laboratories
Summit, NJ
attunix!der