SunOS on 386

[Kemp at DOCKMASTER.NCSC.MIL]

Ted Powell writes:
 > AT&T's SVR4 (it is said) will be upwards compatible with both SVR3.2
 > and SunOS.

This is not true.  AT&T's SVR4 will combine features of SVR3, BSD 4.x,
and Xenix, and SunOS is based on BSD.  But, there is a significant
amount of value added in SunOS that will not be in SVR4.

The big stink that led to the formation of OSF was the fear that somehow
Sun would get info from AT&T that would give it a lead in OS
development.  In fact, because of the effort required to ensure upwards
compatibility for existing SunOS applications, Sun will not be among the
first vendors to ship an OS compliant with SVR4.

Rather than trying to get "SunOS on a 386", we should be trying to write
code to the SVR4 spec.  That way it will run on any machine with an SVR4
API, including 386 boxes and, eventually, Suns.

   Dave Kemp <Kemp at dockmaster.ncsc.mil>