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

[Scott Schoenthal]

After some thought, I've decided to add my (rather long-winded) two cents.

I think that the recent statements by <mishkin at apollo.UUCP> display a
naive loyalty to his company's viewpoint.

>Perhaps.  At least the new devil is not a competitor.  At least it's starting
>off with a different model of operation about software licensing.  Sure,
>the OSF could turn out to be Godzilla of the software world, but I don't
>expect it to be.  The fur is already showing on AT&T though...

>It's a direction, not an instantaneous event.  I believe the sponsors
>have said "We can't keep going on this way, let's find a new way".

I think that if IBM, DEC, et al., were truly interested in delivering an open
implementation of Mumblix (or whatever their derivative of Un*x is to be
called), the money would have been best spent in funding an independent effort
(e.g., FSF or a university).  I have no doubt that OSF will do what is
best for the OSF members.  That's fine.  It's their money.  Just as, has
been recently implied, AT&T and Sun will do what is best for themselves.
Please don't represent OSF as a white knight riding in from the East (or
wherever).

Although I mostly agree with comments made by <gnu at hoptoad.UUCP>, I have a
problem with his views on AT&T:

> AT&T and Sun have made an effort to make it possible to
> run the same applications software on hundreds of manufacturer's machines.
> If the OSF companies ship systems that, while compatible with Posix,
> have lots of extraneous differences from Unix, portable applications will 
> be hard to find, and there will remain a market for applications that
> run on VMS, MVS, Domain, and other proprietary systems.

My current impression (admittedly somewhat uninformed) is that the ABI
standard (I assume this is what John is referring to) is a crock.  Given
the recent explosion of micro-processor designs which have come out in the
last year, the notion of an ABI seems to me to be useless.

The current System V release is based upon the 3b2 architecture.  My
understanding is that future releases will be based upon the SPARC
architecture.  In this sense,  no effort has been made by AT&T/Sun to
"make it possible to run the same applications software on hundreds of
manufacturer's machines."

It will be interesting to see what machine the OSF people choose to use as
their architecture base.  PC/RT, perhaps? :-)

> If/when OSF ships a product, their next move is to start claiming that
> Sun and AT&T, who pushed the whole midrange computer market market wide
> open(*), are pushing "proprietary" software.  You read it here first, folks.

But, it is proprietary.  Customers have to sign licenses.  Customers have to
pay money.  Customers have to perform certain obligations (e.g., passing
SVVS).  Is this not 'proprietary'?

Finally, my gut feeling is that 5 years from now we'll all have a good
laugh over this while professing that each of us knew that "X" was the
way to go in 1988 where "X" corresponds to whatever the Un*x world looks like
in 1993.

sas		"I speak for myself only."
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Scott Schoenthal   			sas at pyrps5.pyramid.com
Pyramid Technology Corp.		{sun,hplabs,decwrl}!pyramid!sas