O'pain Software Foundation: (2) Why is it better than AT&T?

[guy at gorodish.UUCP]

> Somehow this strikes me as naive...OSF strikes me as the trojan horse
> that is waiting to be brought into the city walls...every single sponser
> is selling a rival proprietary system...

Well, of the major names associated with OSF:

	IBM sells a variety of IBM-specific OSes as well as two Microsoft OSes;
	however, on at least one of their machines (the RT PC), UNIX is (as far
	as I know) the only OS.  I don't think MVS sells as a UNIX competitor;
	I don't see all that mainframe software being converted to UNIX
	tomorrow, so I don't think MVS has anything to fear from UNIX in the
	near term.

	DEC does sell VMS as well as selling ULTRIX.

	Apollo does sell DOMAIN/OS, which includes an Aegis environment.

	HP sells MPE on the Spectra (before anybody complains, note that
	"spectra" is the plural of "spectrum"); *however*, I don't think they
	sell it at all in *competition* with UNIX.  HP seems pretty solidly
	committed to UNIX, even if you don't consider the others solidly
	committed to UNIX.

The various other names (I'm not sure which of them qualify as "sponsors")
include several that have been pushing UNIX:  Honeywell-Bull, NCR, etc..

Even for the majors that do sell non-UNIX OSes in competition with UNIX, I see
no indication that any of them are, as corporations, solidly opposed to UNIX.
I suspect there are camps within IBM and DEC, at least, that would like UNIX to
go away (I think Apollo, whose own OS may not be as able to stand on its own as
VMS or some of IBM's can, is less likely to have such camps); however, I
suspect that there are also camps within IBM and DEC that would like their
companies to get a significant share of the UNIX market.