Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site stcvax.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!vaxine!wjh12!genrad!decvax!ittvax!dcdwest!sdcsvax!sdcrdcf!hplabs!hao!stcvax!crp From: crp@stcvax.UUCP Newsgroups: net.arch,net.followup,net.micro Subject: Re: AT&T and the 3B*2 Message-ID: <283@stcvax.UUCP> Date: Wed, 6-Jun-84 16:27:54 EDT Article-I.D.: stcvax.283 Posted: Wed Jun 6 16:27:54 1984 Date-Received: Sat, 9-Jun-84 00:11:42 EDT References: <692@cp1.UUCP> <483@spuxll.UUCP>, <669@ut-ngp.UUCP>, <426@drutx.UUCP> Organization: Storage Technology Corp. Louisville, CO Lines: 30 Xref: 243 685 1722 One additional concern created by "partitioning" the universe of common UNIX commands and utilities is "what packages does MY product need to run"? That is, will people trying to write commercial packages for a UNIX system depend only on the core package utilities -- or will they specify that they use one of the wonderful "tools" that isn't in the core package. This isn't going to be convenient for anybody unless their are "standard" definitions of what the UNIX "packages" are. I would hope that people will make use of utilities like awk when appropriate, but I suppose that they will want their product to be completely independent and run fast (so it can't be a shell script). I suspect that the bulk of the computer users knocking around are not interested in piping together little utilities to do something useful for themselves. The "toolkit" aspect of UNIX is going to be completely lost in most of the environments it executes in. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, because the "toolkit" aspect of UNIX was created because we developers use "tools" heavily and we often want to do unexpected things that can be cobbled together out of some general purpose parts. Further, we are up to cobbling. The business user wants some particular set of things, probably doesn't want to think too hard about doing other unexpected stuff, and isn't interested in becoming a computer tool cobbler. It is just a different world out there. (so lets stay here!). -- Charlie Price {hao ihnp4 decvax philabs sdcrdcf}!stcvax!crp (303) 673-5698 USnail: Storage Technology Corp - MD 3T / Louisville, CO / 80028