O'pain Software Foundation: (really Apollo OS)

[Bruce Speyer]

In article <55368 at sun.uucp> guy at gorodish.Sun.COM (Guy Harris) writes:
>...
>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, ...

If what you mean by "... 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 that Apollo obviously must
solidly support UNIX as their primary OS platform since they don't have the
clout to push an Apollo-only AEGIS solution onto a customer - then you are
correct.  Unix is the key to Apollo surviving and thriving and that simple fact
is very well understood.  Marketing ploy subsitutes won't work.

The latest release of the software puts AEGIS into a maintainance mode.  The
three supported environments BSD4.3, SYS5.3, and Aegis all use the same
kernel, shared global libraries, file system, naming system, and network.  What
this translates to is that many features that are normally associated with one
of these environments is actually available in all three.  So the AEGIS user may
see future enhancements but it will only be through UNIX improvements. 

Furthermore, where AEGIS and UNIX conflict it is now the AEGIS OS and user that
loses rather than the other way around.  For example: case sensitive, allocate
free space upon malloc, pathname syntax discrepencies, etc.

I hope these arguments help to demonstrate how marketing pressure has given
Apollo no option but to make UNIX number one.  We have no choice.  Whether or
not Apollo internally prefers UNIX or AEGIS is a dead issue.  Its UNIX or no
Apollo.  We (at least r&d) are throwing ourselves into UNIX with wild abandon.

  .. Disclamer: I'm an engineer, not in PR, not management, not privy to OSF,
     take it or leave it - its my opinion alone.

Bruce Speyer          CAE engineer
Apollo Computer       Chelmsford, MA.
speyer at apollo.uucp    {decvax,yale,umix}!apollo!speyer