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

[Guy Harris]

> BTW, I object to the various speculation (on the part of several people)
> on the topic of the "ulterior motives" of DEC and IBM.  (No one cares
> about Apollo's ulterior motives, I guess :-)  "They really just want
> to wreak havoc", it is said.  Aren't AT&T and Sun subject to ulterior
> motives?  "Get them hooked on a standard *we* define and that *they're*
> contractually obligated to support and then add some whacko feature that
> kills some piece of added value our major competitor has managed to eek
> out".  Geez.  Talk about white hats and black hats!

Naah, let's not talk about white hats and black hats.  If you choose your set
of beliefs carefully, you can put the aforementioned hats on any heads you want
to.

Claiming that AT&T and Sun are really trying to come up with a standard that
they can control just so that they can screw their competitors is no less
objectionable than is claiming that DEC and IBM are really trying to muddy the
waters so that *they* can either keep UNIX from eating into other OSes that
they support.

I agree that that a lot of the speculation about the motives of the OSF members
is random noise.

The same can, however, be said about a lot of the speculation about the motives
of AT&T and Sun.

Again, I ask: can we please keep the speculation and random
DEC/Sun/IBM/AT&T/... bashing down to a dull roar, please?  I realize this is
USENET, where idle uninformed speculation and vendor-bashing is a fine art, but
could we try to make an exception, just this once?