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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
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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