O'pain Software Foundation: (3) relationship to GNU & openness

[Gary Allen]

In article <4630 at hoptoad.uucp> gnu at hoptoad.uucp (John Gilmore) writes:
>I see too much resemblance between "Open Software Foundation"
>and "Free Software Foundation".  Given its constituency, the only
>thing I expect to be "open" about it is its mouth.  While Apollo
>might have learned how to survive in an open systems market (I'm
>keeping an open mind about that :-), IBM and DEC hate it like poison.
>The name is just a marketing gimmick, like the "Citizens for Decency,
>Justice, and the American Way" type political committees.
>
>If the Free Software Foundation feels that its name has been unfairly
>infringed upon, I would be glad to back it in a lawsuit, and I suspect
>that other GNU users would rally to its support.
>.....
>They want to keep this software under corporate control.  They will be
>"open" with each other, not with their customers.  The whole brouhaha
>is a standard "FUD" (fear, uncertainty, doubt)-generating marketing
>operation.  AT&T and Sun have made an effort to make it possible to
>run the same applications software on hundreds of manufacturer's machines.
>.....
>run on VMS, MVS, Domain, and other proprietary systems.  If Sun and
>AT&T succeed, an applications company will be able to cover the whole
>market by writing an application once, and the resulting depth and breadth
>of applications will obsolete applications that run only on the
>proprietary systems, thereby obsoleting the proprietary OS's.  IBM,
>DEC, HP, and Apollo have a lot to gain by making Sun and AT&T fail at this.
>
>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...
>
>	John Gilmore
>......

First of all, its unlikely that 7 (ok, 6 1/2) of the worlds giant corporations
are sufficiently freaked out by GNU that they are out to steal FSF's thunder.
C'mon, how about a reality break?

If reality is not your bag (it isn't always mine either), feel free to strike
fear into the heart of 60 billion/year IBM, 12 billion/year DEC, ......
Lawsuits? You're talking about the people who invented the word.

The HUGE majority of application software DOES run on proprietary OS's, or
are you unaware that VMS outsells UNIX on VAXen 15 or so to 1? Are you
unaware that MS-DOS (PC-DOS if you prefer) is proprietary, the most common OS
on earth, the most portable, and probably also the worst? While I like FSF
and the idea of GNU (probably from all the drugs I did in the'60s), I again
suggest a reality pill.

The whole market? REALITY dude, REALITY. These 7 companies ARE the vast majority
of the market. Obsolete IBM, DEC, HP, etc. On second thought, DRUGS dude DRUGS!

Just in case you haven't heard Apollo's position before, I'll try to summarize
it, but you get the standard disclaimer, I don't represent Apollo.
The deal is this. UNIX is not and never was an "Open System". You bought it
(usually indirectly) from AT&T. AT&T put what they wanted in it, left out what
they wanted, just like DEC, IBM, Apollo, etc. Open?  When was the last time you
had anything to say about what UNIX is/isn't? And, if you think that the Sun/AT&T
UNIX will not favor particular machine architectures such as SPARC and 3Bx, then
I'd like to talk to you about some bridges that I have for sale. The idea that
Sun and AT&T are in it for karma and the rest of us are just in it for the money
is pretty bizzare.

Each of the companies involved in OSF have particular needs/focus that must be
addressed by any PORTABLE OS, which is really what you're after isn't it? For
instance, whose notion of ISAM files will be used in UNIX? I don't know, do you?
Perhaps AT&T will get around to it as THEY need it. Otherwise, we have to provide
interim solutions that our customers will use until there is some sort of
"standard". Then, our customers will have to rewrite their applications to match.
Hardly portable.

Finally, Sun is our major competitor (or is it lost on you that we have an installed
base of >60,000 workstations). It is simply unfair of our Licensor [is that really a
word?] to put our major competitor in such a position. The day that Sys5.Next hits
the streets, it will be available on Sun hardware. We at Apollo will have to go to
the lab with it for a few months (you know, porting, QA, etc). That's hardly "open".
We were told point blank by AT&T that that was going to be the way it is. They
refused to make any concessions (even though we pay the same license fees)
vis-a-vis the time-to-market problem. Our options were:
	A) Sit in the back of the bus
	B) Get off the UNIX bus
	C) Start a new bus company.

Put yourself in our place, what would you have done?  And by the way, FSF was never
considered, thought about, infringed upon, or even mentioned. The name came from
"the suits" who can barely pronounce the word "software" (you know the type, they
use words like "focus", "thrust", and "calendar intensive").

Sorry about the flame,
Gary Allen
Apollo Computer
Chelmsford Ma

Even I am not responsible for my opinions. I learned this from Reagan.