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From: mats@dual.UUCP (Mats Wichmann)
Newsgroups: net.arch,net.followup,net.micro
Subject: Re: AT&T vs. the toolkit approach
Message-ID: <615@dual.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 27-Jun-84 02:32:44 EDT
Article-I.D.: dual.615
Posted: Wed Jun 27 02:32:44 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 22-Jun-84 06:56:28 EDT
References: <283@stcvax.UUCP> <861@tekchips.UUCP> <511@islenet.UUCP> <2175@mit-eddie.UUCP>
Organization: Dual Systems, Berkeley, CA
Lines: 32

[ Botch away, guys - the rest of us love it ]

Unbundling means that software vendors have to write software that will
run on a minimal configuration. This is not bad news, necessarily. One
of the places where BSD UNIX has traditionally gotten performance
improvements is in converting standard shell scripts, which depend on
executing lots of programs, to C programs that do the work themselves.
Rob Pike may be digging himself a grave so he can go turn over in it,
but the market is not seriously going to demand that the UNIX modular
concept be preserved over getting better performance. Remember, what
*REALLY* sells a machine is solutions, not potential.

Much worse is being close-mouthed over machine specs. The days of the
lockin are on the wane (not to say they won't come back later, though).
One of the reasons IBM made such a killing with the PC was their very
intelligent realization that they could expect better performing software
by letting the details out the the world, rather than trying to do
everything themselves, as they always had done in the past. If they
were to change this policy for their micro systems, they would only
do it if they were *DAMN* sure that they could provide all the quality
software needed all by their little selves, not becuase of AT&T's success/
failure. AT&T, on the other hand, is probably figuring that the wonderful
UNIX System will provide a means for developing software without releasing
hardware details. Seems to me if they let out the hardware details,
someone would write a word processor (for example) that ran exceptionally
well on a 3B, and thus provide more of a lock-in.

Time will tell who is right.

	    Mats Wichmann
	    Dual Systems Corp.
	    ...{ucbvax,amd70,ihnp4,cbosgd,decwrl,fortune}!dual!mats