Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!bellcore!rutgers!gatech!hubcap!ncrcae!ncr-sd!hp-sdd!hplabs!hpda!hpcuhb!hp-sde!hpfcdc!donn From: donn@hpfcdc.HP.COM (Donn Terry) Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards Subject: Re: motives for AT&T, etc (was re: att & osf) Message-ID: <5980027@hpfcdc.HP.COM> Date: 12 Aug 88 16:01:16 GMT References: <12755@mimsy.UUCP> Organization: HP Ft. Collins, Co. Lines: 68 There has been a series of postings on this topic all with the theme that "somebody has to make UNIX(TM) 'right'". The "somebody" isn't a single *vendor*, nor is it the standards bodies, but rather the marketplace. The existence of standards (such as POSIX) makes it reasonably possible for buyers to specify what they want in a vendor independent fashion. (Just like nuts and bolts.) They then can choose based on price, additional features, whim, or whatever else they like between the systems meeting that standard. More importantly, if the standard isn't what they want, they can tighten up the specification. They can also add to it, or even change it. In doing so they take a risk of having no vendor meet the specification, or a higher price, or delays, but it's the buyer's risk, and if its valuable enough to him, he'll take it. A purchaser like the Federal Government (in the form of a FIPS) has done exactly that with the POSIX FIPS. It's tighter than IEEE's POSIX standard, and the size of that market will draw most vendors to comply with the FIPS (and thus with IEEE's version). You want compliance to a standard: you'll have it within probably a year from most vendors, and it was done by free-market means, not via contractual enforcement or other coercion. (A vendor doesn't have to comply with the FIPS; it just might want to however; the income is nice.) A proprietary specification could, theoretically, have had the same effect. The several attempts I know of have not had that effect. One of the reasons is that because they weren't created by an open process and weren't (perceived of(!!)) as reasonably independent of the owner's whim, and thus competitors weren't that interested in follwing the specification, possibly to their own disadvantage. More importantly, those specifications do not appear to me to be technically attractive enough to overcome this problem. Had they been, they might have succeeded in spite of the above problem. In the case of OSF: there is a baseline specification that they will deliver (read the literature). It's not really well defined yet, but that should happen. If that specification matches buyer's needs, what OSF has will sell. If it doesn't, OSF goes out of business. In this case, the direct buyers are the vendors of systems. If OSF's specificaitons meet the vendors' customers' needs, the vendors will buy it and pass it thru, adding what's missing for their particular customer base. If not, the vendors will solve the problem some other way. The folks at OSF aren't stupid, and they realize this. To the extent that existing specifications match the marketplace, they'll adopt them. The best way, in my opinion, to assure the success of the proprietary standards (to the demise of today's leading open standard, the UNIX System) is to try to legislate the "right" answer, rather than letting the customers decide in a free market what they want. Please don't delude yourself into thinking that somehow, magically, you know what the customers want. You, at best, understand *what you heard* from those customers you talked to. That may be a factor, but I've seen many a product be of more value to an unintended marketplace than for the target market for which it was designed. (I think UNIX's target market was originally amateur astronomers, at least according to one story I heard.) Donn Terry HP Ft. Collins My comments represent only my own opinions, that of my employer or anyone else.