OSF, and why it is a side issue

[Henry Spencer]

Having posted some articles which might be interpreted as saying "OSF is
a good thing", I should clarify my position a bit.  Especially since I
think there is a big, important issue that everyone is missing.

In abstract, I think OSF is a fine idea.  AT&T and Sun badly need some
competition:  they have been thinking and acting like a monopoly, with a
divine right to dictate standards to the rest of the world.  AT&T has
been doing this for a long time, of course, but nobody got too unhappy
about that because AT&T's attempts to become a competitor in the computer
business were so clearly a joke.  For all practical purposes, AT&T was in
the software business, and by and large treated all the hardware vendors
with equal contempt.  Not an ideal situation, but tolerable.  Their recent
actions, and in particular their alliance with a big, dangerous competitor
in the hardware business, have changed the situation radically.  It does
not really matter whether AT&T really intended to be open-handed and just
botched the job; appearance is as important as reality in such things,
and AT&T made no attempt to give an appearance of impartiality.

In practice, I have grave doubts about OSF.  The list of founding members
does not exactly build confidence in its ability to do a good job on Unix.
All the more so when one hears about plans to use major items of software
from said members, much of which is wretched sludge.  Yet worse are clear
indications (well, they seem clear to me) that OSF is going to be an army-
of-ants operation run by committee; this is the very antithesis of the
sort of organization that would produce clean, high-quality software.

And this brings me to the heart of my current unhappiness.  Because to
someone interested in clean, high-quality software, there isn't a whole
lot of difference visible between "AT&Sun" and OSF.  The former is openly
committed to supporting the union of all wishlists rather than being
selective.  The latter almost certainly will go the same way; it could
avoid this only if it were run by a few strong-minded people with the
courage, technical strength, and stubbornness to resist the promise-the-
customer-everything attitude of the marketing bozos... and as near as I
can tell, it's not.

Consider the merged Unix of the AT&Sun group.  It will support two sets
of system calls, System V and BSD/Sunnix.  It will support two different
network file systems.  It will support everybody's wishlist of network
protocols, including the OSI ones that haven't even been invented yet.
This was what provoked my remark at the Dallas Usenix:  "the people who
talk about closing the gap between different Unixes aren't talking about
narrowing the gap, but about filling it in."

Here we pause for a word from our sponsors:  "...the kernel should make
as few real decisions as possible.  This does not mean to allow the user
a million options to do the same thing.  Rather, it means to allow only
one way to do one thing, but have that way be the least-common divisor
of all the options that might have been provided." (Ken Thompson, 1978)

Remember those words?  A long time since you've seen anyone acting on
that principle, isn't it?  Do you really expect AT&Sun or OSF to do so?

The people who talk about "setting the future direction of Unix" have
already abandoned the basic philosophy that made Unix successful.  Mostly
they're proud of it, too.  It's all downhill from here.  Anyone want to
bet on how long it will be before the size of the Unix documentation
exceeds that of the OS/370 documentation?  OS/370 has a head start, but
Unix is gaining fast as everyone enthusiastically adds features to it.
The system whose reputation was built on simple, powerful elegance has
already lost those virtues.

OSF could reverse this.  Make the technical director someone along the lines
I mentioned above:  high technical qualifications, a loud voice, no fear,
firm commitment to independence and portability, and fierce dislike for 
unnecessary complexity.  Have him pick a small team of very good people,
and set up defences to keep the marketdroids and the mismanagers off their
backs.  Give them the resources, and the time, needed to do the job right,
rather than having to accept existing botches in the interests of expediency.
The result probably wouldn't be 100.0% compatible with current systems, but
porting to it shouldn't pose difficulties greater than those we live with
today.  And it would be far superior as a base for future development, even
with the constraints imposed by having to be pretty much Unix-compatible.
Unix has accumulated a lot of warts over the last decade; there is plenty
of room for simplification and unification without introducing massive
compatibility problems.  A small team couldn't address all the problems
of porting to 57 different machines, talking to every conceivable network,
and so on.  But hard work and insight could produce sufficiently clean and
flexible interfaces that these chores could be entrusted to more orthodox
development processes without risking devastating results.

OSF could do this.  But *will* it?  I'd be very surprised.  And that's why
I think OSF is a side issue.  It may well make a positive contribution by
shaking some of the smug arrogance out of AT&Sun.  But it won't solve the
real problem:  the steady degeneration of a clean, powerful system into a
huge, complex, warty mess.  That would take a minor miracle.  Both AT&Sun
and OSF are physically capable of producing one.  But neither will.
-- 
"For perfect safety... sit on a fence|  Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
and watch the birds." --Wilbur Wright| {ihnp4,decvax,uunet!mnetor}!utzoo!henry