O'pain Software Foundation: (1) problems with AT&T

[William E. Davidsen Jr]

In mishkin at apollo.UUCP (Nathaniel Mishkin) writes:

| And I'm sure all the Sun & AT&T salesman will add to their pitch "And
| by the way, before you make your purchasing decision, you really should
| wait 6 months for our competitors to come out with exactly what we offer
| right now".

  Honestly, are there that many people who insist on having a new
machine the moment a new version of the o/s is available? If a group is
running Suns, or Apollo, or PC/RT, will they change just to get
something a few months earlier?

  It looks to me as though currently AT&T has had the source code
earlier than anyone else, and that obviously has not let them dominate
the hardware market. In fact they barely survive in the range above PCs,
and the unix-pc, which would have been a killer at the right price, just
plain didn't sell.

  I think it would be justified to (a) have AT&T release a "work in
progress" source when something reasonably works, (b) give the final
version as a set of deltas, so that customized code could be upgraded,
and (c) hold release of the SRVR4 until 3 months after the code was
frozen to give other vendors a chance to be in the right timeframe.

  Of course they would have to feed back any enhancements and bug fixes
to AT&T, as Sun says they have agreed (as in make it work better, not
giving up totally new features) rather than call bug fixes "proprietary
enhancements."

  Then AT&T perhaps could agree to allow systems to be labeled "SRVR4"
if they met SVVS, "POSIX conforming" if they satisfied posix (if and
when), and something like "UNIX-based" if there was AT&T code.

  As a user I don't want to have something labeled SRVR4 if it won't
run my programs, while not forbidding any sub/supersets as long as I am
warned that they may not run my programs. There is a need for a
validation suite for BSD as well, as anyone who runs programs in a
multi-vendor BSD environment knows.

  Of course NONE of the big players has the user in mind, except as a
source of revenue. If they can do something for the user while not
hurting sales, or helping a competitor, they will for good will, but
don't expect them to say "it's only money."

  As a user I see SysV and BSD running on parallel courses. The idea of
a merged UNIX is a great one, and in the long run will be better for the
vendors, too. Would Apollo like to stop supporting two flavors of UNIX
on their systems? And how do they feel about supporting a third version
if OSF doesn't knock UNIX out of the market.

  AT&T said somewhere (or was quoted as saying) that at some time they
might turn UNIX over to a marketing group, vendor independent. Perhaps
some of the best people could be stationed on such an organization, mush
as Sun and AT&T are sharing people and code now.

  Finally I think that OSF is a clear effort to infringe on the repution
of FSF, and that it should be promptly renamed or sued.

-- 
	bill davidsen		(wedu at ge-crd.arpa)
  {uunet | philabs | seismo}!steinmetz!crdos1!davidsen
"Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward" -me