Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site mips.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!cmcl2!seismo!harvard!talcott!panda!genrad!decvax!decwrl!Glacier!mips!mash From: mash@mips.UUCP (John Mashey) Newsgroups: net.micro.att,net.unix-wizards Subject: Re: Re: Re: instability in Berkeley versus AT&T releases Message-ID: <161@mips.UUCP> Date: Thu, 8-Aug-85 03:08:14 EDT Article-I.D.: mips.161 Posted: Thu Aug 8 03:08:14 1985 Date-Received: Mon, 12-Aug-85 00:30:45 EDT References: <2067@ucf-cs.UUCP> <363@cuae2.UUCP> <2423@sun.uucp> Organization: MIPS Computer Systems, Mountain View, CA Lines: 63 Xref: linus net.micro.att:453 net.unix-wizards:11467 > > > ...the S3 driver's backward compatibility with UNIX 2.0 is totally > > > useless to anybody outside the former Bell System. > > > > And since most real world UNICES are V7 derived, what does that say about > > Bell? > > It says that due to a mixture of technical and legal reasons they couldn't > a) throw away the 2.0 compatibility in S3 replacing it with V7 compatibility > or b) offer two versions of UNIX 3.0.1/S3. I can't remember any legal reasons. The technical reason was real simple: remember that UNIX/TS -> PWB 2.0 -> SIII ->SV was a convergence process to desperately try to get a UNIX that more people could agree on and avoid having to make weird extensions; terminal driver was a notorious area for such extensions; too many people doing non-research projects found they needed other things. Again, ANYONE WHO EXPECTS TO GET UPWARD-COMPATIBLE RELEASES FROM SOMETHING LABELED RESEARCH does not understand research. Research versions of things and production, guaranteed-upward-compatible things are different animals [not better or worse, just different]. > > As for your claim that "most real world UNICES are V7 derived", I don't > believe it. Period. Most commercial vendors are offering S3 or S5-based > systems. Several 4.2 vendors are now offering 4.2BSDs that have some degree > of S5 compatibility. Some of them are even clever enough to offer 4.2 > functionality and S5 compatibility to the same programs as opposed to > walling the two systems off in separate worlds. I suspect this will happen > more in the future. I wish someone could quote numbers here; "most real world UNICES are V7 derived" is certainly true, since XENIX, V and 4.2 are all V7-derived. In the more specific sense of "V7, rather than III", this is probably true [numbers, somebody?] because I suspect there are a lot of V7-derived XENIX systems still out there [by sheer numbers of CPUs]. By number of users, who knows? > > I think enough has been said - more than enough, since most of the postings > on this subject have been broadsides fired in religious wars rather than > accurate discussions of the places where {V7,4.2BSD,S5} do well and where > they do poorly. If anybody else wants to wage holy war over why their > favorite version of UNIX is the "only true UNIX", could they please move the > discussion to net.flame or net.religion.software? Yes!! It is often more prudent to ask why a (dumb) decision was made than to flame upon its stupidity; sometimes environments and tradeoffs are different and you learn something. Some of the "X is better than Y" arguments are really "[in my situation] X is better than Y [and I don't have much experience with other kinds of situations] and therefore people who use Y must be communist mutants from space [or worse!] Here's a test case: how many people think UNIX is better than IBM's OS/MVS? .... If you answered: -What do you want to use it for? 10 points - good answer. -What's MVS? 5 points for honesty. -UNIX is better, of course - MVS is UGLYYYYY. - 0 points [because what you get to do is a 10 Gigabyte database with required response times that and needs a 3084.] Don't laugh; I've known people who tried to put projects like that on UNIX; not too many worked. Much insight can come from tradeoff analysis; sometimes by looking at differences we learn what the real general cases are and make progress by synthesizing better mechanisms that cover more cases; little progress is made in religious wars. -- -john mashey UUCP: {decvax,ucbvax,ihnp4}!decwrl!mips!mash DDD: 415-960-1200 USPS: MIPS Computer Systems, 1330 Charleston Rd, Mtn View, CA 94043