Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1a 12/4/83; site rlgvax.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!hou3c!hocda!houxm!houxz!vax135!floyd!cmcl2!seismo!rlgvax!guy From: guy@rlgvax.UUCP (Guy Harris) Newsgroups: net.micro Subject: Re: AT&T and the 3B2 (in defense of partitioning) Message-ID: <2005@rlgvax.UUCP> Date: Sat, 9-Jun-84 04:43:33 EDT Article-I.D.: rlgvax.2005 Posted: Sat Jun 9 04:43:33 1984 Date-Received: Sun, 10-Jun-84 01:07:12 EDT References: <1986@rlgvax.UUCP> <4295@edai.UUCP> Organization: CCI Office Systems Group, Reston, VA Lines: 66 > Given that the text formatters have been split off into a separate > package, I foresee a boom in "roff" lookalikes powerful enough to format > new manual pages. Standardisation was great while it lasted. (Have > AT&T noticed that TEX82 is public domain?...) Depends on the market. I suspect the typical UNIX user five years from now (who will probably, *noli voli*, not look like us) may never see "UNIX" *per se*. They'll probably talk to the computer through a tightly- sealed application interface, or possibly through a "desktop" shell *a la* Xerox PARC's systems, Lisa, Mac, etc.. They may never even *see* the UNIX manual. Look at it this way; yes, you can buy shop manuals for your car, and all the specialized tools you need to work on it. Most people don't. And if it's a company car, almost nobody does. > Guy Harris says let the market decide. But there is no reason at > all to expect the market to converge on a rational approach. There are > quite a few places over here planning to switch from 4.1 to System V.2 > when/if V.2 sees the light of day; (It already has, at least on this side of the big pond.) > not because they know it to be technically superior (or indeed because > they've been able to find out anything much about it; I was at a meeting > where a manufacturer's representative told us that we didn't want 4.?bsd > because V.2 had everything we wanted, and then answered most specific > questions by saying he hadn't the faintest idea and wouldn't have until AT&T > let his company have the documentation) but simply because of the magic of > the AT&T name. The market will go in whatever direction minimises present > fear, not future regret. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing. Just ask the current owners of DECSystem-10s and DECSystem-20s (not the universities, the commercial customers) how they feel about the flyer they took, now that DEC's canned the top-of-the-20-line Jupiter project. Technological superiority isn't everything. Iron isn't the only thing that costs money. A case *can* be made for picking up S5R2 instead of 4.1BSD; if S5R2 had paging, it'd be a very strong case. Most "straightforward" software can be made to run under any "V7 derivative" (meaning just about anything except 4.2BSD, and even there the differences aren't *too* bad as long as you know they're there), but not all packages *will* be made to run under all such flavors of UNIX. Furthermore, a lot of customers will buy S5R2 for the support, although that may change now that DEC's offering Ultrix-32. > Yours in waiting for GNU. I'll believe in GNU when I see a copy, and I'll believe it succeeds when the number of GNU sites greatly exceeds the number of UNIX sites. Not before. Lauren Weinstein discussed rather cogently the risks of a system with the "freedom to hack" proposed for GNU, and the likelihood of the proliferation of incompatible versions of the beast, a while ago. I say "let the marketplace decide" because I think a lot of us are arguing from the point of view of a UNIX hacker with an emotional attachment to the system we grew up with. Well, it's not that system any more. Yes, it may not be sold under the same terms as we've gotten used to. As I said before, "that's capitalism". No moral judgement intended. AT&T isn't selling UNIX for the goodwill anymore; they're in it for the long green. If you want to engage in behavior modification, you'll have to understand their reward and punishment system, and reward them by buing their product or punish them by not buying it. Moral suasion won't do it unless you can back it up with something to make their bean-counters sit up and take notice. Guy Harris {seismo,ihnp4,allegra}!rlgvax!guy