Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards Path: utzoo!henry From: henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) Subject: Re: O'pain Software Foundation: (2) Why is it better than AT&T? Message-ID: <1988Jun6.010218.7753@utzoo.uucp> Organization: U of Toronto Zoology References: <24369@pyramid.pyramid.com> <355@mipseast.mips.COM>, <1017@sun.soe.clarkson.edu> Date: Mon, 6 Jun 88 01:02:18 GMT > AT&T+Sun AND the OSF are gathering the wagons into circles because they're > afraid of the GNUs. It is to laugh. Most of the people involved in setting up OSF wouldn't know a GNU if it bit them. > Think about what's going to happen when rms finishes the kernel? Yeah, all the potential users will look at, see all the unnecessary incompatible changes, say "ugh", and go back to Unix/OSFnix/whatever. > ... because of the restrictions > on derivatives of GNU, they will benefit from everyone else's work. Such of it as gets done, of course. Because of those same restrictions, many companies have decided that GNU is not worth working on. > Who do you think will provide better customer support? A company that > sells customer support, i.e. GNU Wizards, Inc.? Or a company that > sells Unix boxes i.e. AT&T+SUN+OSF? Considering the disparity of resources (and the increasing tendency of hardware manufacturers to lock customers into their own software by not documenting the hardware well enough for somebody else to port to it), clearly the latter. -- "For perfect safety... sit on a fence| Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology and watch the birds." --Wilbur Wright| {ihnp4,decvax,uunet!mnetor}!utzoo!henry