Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!bloom-beacon!dprg-330.GOVt.shearson.COM!fgreco
From: fgreco@dprg-330.GOVt.shearson.COM (Frank Greco)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: A tirade about inefficient software & systems
Message-ID: <9011232028.AA24515@islanders.>
Date: 23 Nov 90 20:28:37 GMT
Sender: daemon@athena.mit.edu (Mr Background)
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 41

> 
> >	The market has always decided *real* standards.  Has and always will.
> 
> True.  We heard a fascinating talk from a Sun person when
> OpenWindows1.0 came out about how they had finally acknowledged that
> the market did want X. :-)

So did many other Sun reps.  This was after X was artificially called
a standard by DEC/IBM (and to a degree HP).  And after many, many articles by
DEC people saying "X is de facto standard" over and over again, when a small 
minority was actually even using X.  It was a self-fulfilling prophecy.

> 
> >	The way that X (and OSF/Motif, and the X toolkit in general) was 
> >	foisted upon the computing community by DEC/IBM/HP pounding their
> 
> Funny, we've been running it on Suns all along (back in the good old
> days of X10)  So have lots of other people.
> 

Back in the old days of X10, there was a Miniscule amount of people using X.
That's understandable, X was in its formative years.
That's my whole point.  Why was it called a standard when only a tiny 
fraction of the computing community used it?  You cannot dictate
standards like this.  It may be a de facto standard now, but back
then, it wasn't.  Should we be also declaring Postgres an industry standard?
Should we declare VPL's DataGlove a standard user interface?
How about calling Speculative Execution a de facto standard for handling
superscalar opcode management?  Can we demand fractal data compression as
the industry standard for our Fax machines?.... you get the idea.

Besides...sigh..., the key word here is "foisted".  Foisted does
NOT mean invented....(you know how much email I got explaining
how X got "invented"!...sheesh!)

I am not denigrating the efforts of the MIT people at all.  I applaud their
tremendous efforts, it's the marketing style of the big 
(formerly-Unix-hating-but-now-Unix-loving) companies that I didn't like.


Frank G.