OSF: PLEA FOR PEACE AND REALITY

[John Mashey]

In article <846 at fig.bbn.com> rsalz at bbn.com (Rich Salz) writes:
>Last time I posted something about OSF, I closed with an offer to forward
>along any facts or rumors people heard that they didn't want associated
>with their name.  This article is a summary -- I no longer have the mail I
>got.

>It was kind of interesting, being net.gossip-columnist.  Almost everything
>I quote below I heard from at least two different sources, and I tend to
>believe it all.  I don't advise you to do that, tho:  just treat this as
>possibly-accurate rumor.  There are some facts at the end....
Good caveat, important.

>The idea for OSF came about when someone (Mashey?) tossed off the idea
>during a Usenix discussion in a hallway.
Wrong, and not me.
The idea was first brought up in the original Hamilton Group meeting
I attended January 7, as one of the possible, but definitely not
preferred alternatives.  I don't remember who brought it up;
it wasn't me; in any case, everyone agreed it was one of the alternatives.
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Needless to say, I've been following this discussion with interest;
the comments below aren't particularly tied to the last posting,
but to the whole discussion that's been going on.

Now, here are some *real* facts:

1) A whole lot of of what's been published in the press, and a great
deal of what's been posted in this newsgroup is .....flat-out wrong.
Hearing something from two sources doesn't make it right.
2) Some of what's been published/posted *is* accurate.
3) On some of the speculations, I don't have the data.

I know *I* don't have all the data, particularly when it comes to
assessing the *true* motivations of people involved in all of this.
I've been amazed at the low signal-to-noise ratio in this discussion,
even lower than many others on the net.  An awful lot of things have
been posted without any data to back them up, and are, in fact, clearly
wrong.  How do I know?
	a) I attended the original Hamilton Group meeting, plus the
	meeting before the Cassoni meeting, plus the Cassoni meeting.
	b) I attended the AT&T sessions at Uniforum, plus some informal
	Hamilton Group meetings, plus some absolutely amazing side meetings
	with various and sundry people from many of the companies
	involved (including long talks with AT&T and Sun folks, not just
	the Hamilton crew).
	c) I have copies of SVR2 and SVR3 licenses, as well as proposed
	ABI contracts, so I know what they look like.
	d) I have a lot of vugraphs from various presentations,
	many of which aren't findable at your local newstand.
	e) I talk to industry analysts.
	f) I have a lot of friends in many of the relevant companies,
	on all sides of this mess.
	g) I have access to a lot of information about what's happening
	on the sales/marketing sides of things, i.e., we have prospects/
	customers who tell us what other people are telling them, not when
	they're talking to the press, but when they're out there trying to
	sell.  Sometimes this information is not known, even to many people
	within those companies.
All of this doesn't make me an expert, but it's more than average.

Now, of course, I'm limited by a) knowing a lot of the facts, and b) knowing
much of the juiciest stuff is ..... confidential.

OK, now for a plea:

PLEASE try to calm this discussion down, and avoid the old telephone-tag
effect of passing pseudo-information around.

1) There are reasonable people in all of the companies involved.
Companies don't speak with unified voices.  To say "IBM thinks", or
"DEC thinks", or "Sun thinks" is nonsense.  For example, if you think
that everyone in DEC hates UNIX, let me remind you to look at the
PREFACE of the 4.xBSD manuals and see how often DEC folks get thanked for help.
If you think that some of the Sun/AT&T market maneuverings were ungood,
and that they're all bad guys for that, I'll tell you that there are many
reasonable people in both companies trying to do good things,
and they either privately disagree with some of the things that
have been done, or don't even know about them.  If you think that IBM is
the bad guy, recall that IBM wasn't even involved in the first rounds
of Hamilton discussions.  I'm not privy to the reasons that AIX was
picked as the base; however, I'm told there is one unique attribute of
AIX that influenced this, but has absolutely nothing to do with
anybody wanting to confuse the industry.

2) I cannot speak for the motivations of everybody who helped form OSF,
and I wasn't involved in any case.
I do know that at least some of the participants felt there was no other
alternative, and I do know that at least some of them thought it was
the last resort.  There are many legitimate viewpoints on this one,
and which one you pick depends on the data you have.  Some of the most
important data happens to be confidential (like from the various sources
above).

3) This whole thing is a brouhaha that probably didn't need to happen.
However, I think it's less of an issue than it's made out to be.
Let us not forget that any of this takes time to make happen.
People will keep shipping and buying UNIX boxes.
Much 3rd-party software, quite intelligently, depends mostly on things
that were there in Edition 7.   Nothing that anybody is going to do is
suddenly going to clobber all that software out there.  Everybody is
going to be POSIX-compliant, and do most of X/Open, and probably run
a lot of BSD code.  No time since Ken & Dennis started letting other
people mess with UNIX has there ever been ONE UNIX, and to be honest,
that's good; that's what let UNIX evolve and stay alive across such
a diversity of environments.  At any time, consider the UNIX feature set:

	|----stuff people agree on---|....extensions...|
A few years later, it looks like:
	|----more stuff people agree on----------|....more extensions....|
and a few years later, the same thing happens again,
i.e., over time, people agree on more things, but near the edge,
there are always differences.  UNIX's strength has been the ability to
continually incorporate good ideas from diverse communities of smart people.
Most software usually uses "stuff people agree on" and is careful with the
rest.  The important thing is not getting to 1 version (it will NEVER happen),
but in:
	a) Extending the part people do agree on.
	b) Avoiding silly differences.
Remember, customers want;
	a) Portability
	b) To get what they want, when they want it, and not wait N years.
	(Another reason why there will never be 1 UNIX ).

Well enough.  Again, I second Guy Harris' earlier plea for calmness and
avoidence of idle speculations.  Let us not be any more inflammatory
than necessary, and let us try hard to promote facts in place of factoids.
-- 
-john mashey	DISCLAIMER: <generic disclaimer, I speak for me only, etc>
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