att & osf

[John Mashey]

In article <1140 at nusdhub.UUCP> rwhite at nusdhub.UUCP (Robert C. White Jr.) writes:
....
>What this means is that you will be seeing UNIX/370 from IBM,
>and DEC/NIX from Digital equip. corp.  (Probably not exact 
>product names, I just made them up) and the like form every
>member of OSF.  It spesifically *DOES NOT* mean that each
>member will be using the same source code at all, nor does it
>mean that the individual members are in any way required to
>adhere to this aledged standard....

Of course.
But so what?  Amidst all of the hoopla and gyrations, whether of the
ATT/Sun ilk, or of guessing what OSF will do, let us remember:

1) No system vendor that stays in existence ignores upward compatibility
from what they've got.  That doesn't necesarily mean they stay upward
compatible forever, but they sure think about transition plans,
compatibility libraries, etc.  They don't surprise people with flash
cuts.  They probably have commitments to customers for features,
fixes, etc that may well have been in 1987, and may or may not yet
be delivered; if so, they probably don't tell their customers to
forget those commitments while the world stabilizes.

2) When somebody ports the first UNIX on a new product, they take
the latest they get from somebody else, add the pieces from other
variants, and off they go.

3) When another release comes to them, they do NOT instantly junk everything
they've got, but do a lot of diffing and merging [in one direction or
another], and it may well take multiple releases to get there.

4) While all of this settles out, vendors must continue to build, ship,
and support their systems, or their customers will (properly)
zing them.

5) As a result, I doubt that any existing vendor will magically switch over
either SVR4 or to OSFix  the instant they appear, and THERE IS NO
RATION REASON to expect them to do so.  It is reasonable that these
rounds of convergence cause people to add in standard ways of doing
some of the newer things and support them, and maybe get common code for
some pieces of things, and maybe start new hardware ports from the code,
and maybe agree on a larger set of commonality.  But no one will
instantly switch.

6) While all this is going on, the 3rd-party software vendors will
(properly) continue to write to the least-common denominator until
it becomes clear what's going on.  Of course, this means, in effect,
that many programs will, for several more years, count on litle more than
the (10-year old) 7th Edition! :-)
-- 
-john mashey	DISCLAIMER: <generic disclaimer, I speak for me only, etc>
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