Dual Universes

[Richard M. Mathews]

rbj at uunet.UU.NET (Root Boy Jim) writes:

>Given this state of affairs (pre POSIX) how do y'all feel
>about the relative merits of dual universes vs merged systems?

The survival of Unix depends on portability.  The marketplace perceives
portability (rightly or not) as being the biggest advantage of Unix,
so portability must be a major concern of Unix system developers.  New
systems with new features will always come up.  If we do not periodically
push everything back together, the set of Unix systems will diverge to
the point of uselessness.

The split between BSD and AT&T is becoming less significant with
merged systems such as AIX and SVR4.  On the other hand, new splits
(OSF versus UI?) will pop up.  The universe model will fall apart
when it turns into a huge menu system:
	choose one from each column
	BSD	OSF	X	FOO
	AT&T	UI	Y	BAR
	POSIX
Let's merge BSD and SysV now, resolve the conflicts, then start over
inventing new features to create the next generation of splitting.
At least that split will have started from just one place.

On AIX there are only a few commands left (nm and tr are the only ones
which come to mind) which are not completely merged.  It is wonderful
to not have to remember whether each particular feature I use comes from
this system or that one.  I don't have to worry about which universe I'm
in right now -- I know that each feature I want is always there.  I can
just type "stty crt -ixany", and I know it will work.

Richard M. Mathews			D efend
richard at locus.com			 E stonian-Latvian-Lithuanian
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