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

[Roger B.A. Klorese]

In article <24369 at pyramid.pyramid.com> sas at pyrps5.pyramid.com (Scott Schoenthal) writes:
>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).

This is tremendously naive.

"Open" here means equally available for input and for delivery to all
vendors who participate in the group.  This does not imply "free".  Free
software is fine, but *supported* software is more important, and outside
the hacker community, sales and service cannot be uncoupled in the majority
of situations.  The user community is better served by a full-cost operating
system which is compatible among platforms and offers support than by a
hunk of wizard code that can be run on any box, but offers no single point of 
control and support for the hardware-software combination.
-- 
Roger B.A. Klorese                           MIPS Computer Systems, Inc.
{ames,decwrl,prls,pyramid}!mips!rogerk  25 Burlington Mall Rd, Suite 300
rogerk at mips.COM                                     Burlington, MA 01803
I don't think we're in toto any more, Kansas...          +1 617 270-0613