Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!ncar!oddjob!mimsy!chris From: chris@mimsy.UUCP (Chris Torek) Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards Subject: Re: att & osf Message-ID: <12988@mimsy.UUCP> Date: 13 Aug 88 15:33:38 GMT References: <4964@killer.DALLAS.TX.US> <3395@vpk4.UUCP> <2857@ttrdc.UUCP> Organization: U of Maryland, Dept. of Computer Science, Coll. Pk., MD 20742 Lines: 49 [The following was by Scott MacQuarrie, quoted by Henry Spencer] >> ... show me another vendor which has worked as hard to provide >> a truly hardware independent operating system to allow customers >> to [freely] decide what hardware they need to solve their problems... In article <2857@ttrdc.UUCP> levy@ttrdc.UUCP (Daniel R. Levy) writes: >And MacQuarrie makes a damned good point there too. You gripe and bellyache >about the UNIX operating system. OK, you don't like it, come up with another >operating system, NOT a UNIX system workalike, that will port to a gazillion >other machines even half as well. The UNIX operating system (and its structure >and philosophy, which non-AT&T UNIX system workalikes, such as what the OSF >wants to build, now use without one word of acknowledgment to AT&T or objection >by AT&T--"my how greedy of us") came to exist because of AT&T. The problem with this argument is that Unix came into existence because of the One Bell System, the same One Bell System that no longer exists. The AT&T that now controls (by licensing) Unix is *not* the same corporation that produced it! It merely has the same name. Henry apparently believes---and I agree with him---that the new AT&T cannot be assumed to be exactly like the old, and that any actions taken by the old AT&T are not to be construed to the new AT&T's credit, nor vice versa. In particular, the old `portable' Unix (i.e., V7) was produced by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Doug McIlroy, John Mashey, Joe Ossanna, et alia; the new `portable?' Unix (i.e., SysV) is by hundreds of programmers of varying ability, and it shows it in a noticeable *lack* of portability in some of the new programs. Rick Adams posted a wonderful example, where someone wrote strcmp(ptr, "f(") == 0 instead of ptr == NULL It works on the 3B.... >MacQuarrie is talking about the big picture, about what AT&T has >created and nurtured into being. [Henry Spencer has] narrowly focused >on current problems with System V, and viewed his statement through >those glasses, ironic considering that you talk later on about "taking >the long view." Since the AT&T that `created and nurtured' Unix is really research!everyone, and the AT&T that produced System V Release 3 is not, this seems like a reasonable position to me. -- In-Real-Life: Chris Torek, Univ of MD Comp Sci Dept (+1 301 454 7163) Domain: chris@mimsy.umd.edu Path: uunet!mimsy!chris