Xref: utzoo comp.sys.amiga:74283 alt.religion.computers:2198 Path: utzoo!utgpu!cs.utexas.edu!sdd.hp.com!news.cs.indiana.edu!msi.umn.edu!noc.MR.NET!gacvx2.gac.edu!gacvx2.gac.edu!scott From: scott@mcs-server.gac.edu (Scott Hess) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga,alt.religion.computers Subject: Re: A3000UX competition Message-ID: Date: 12 Dec 90 23:28:02 GMT References: <86470@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> <12003@hubcap.clemson.edu> <36449@cup.portal.com> <1990Dec2.153612.28555@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> <36488@cup.portal.com> <1990Dec11.164431.819@jarvis.csri.toronto.edu> <16482@cbmvax.commodore.com> Organization: Gustavus Adolphus College Lines: 78 Nntp-Posting-Host: mcs-server.gac.edu In-reply-to: martin@cbmvax.commodore.com's message of 12 Dec 90 16:18:43 GMTLines: 78 In article <16482@cbmvax.commodore.com> martin@cbmvax.commodore.com (Martin Hunt) writes: Generally, only large companies or universities have system administrators who are able to fix bugs in the Unix kernel. Does this mean that small and medium size companies cannot use Unix? No. But small and medium sized companies (and small and medium sized schools, for that matter) oftern have people who are perfectly capable of applying patches that someone elsewhere wrote. It's not like everyone across the country who owns Unix source must find their own method of fixing each and every bug . . . Do Sun, DEC and SGI ship software with critical bugs and fail to fix them? Would you buy an OS that was so buggy that the sources were included so you could fix it yourself? No wonder the business world has been avoiding Unix. Many of the bugs are not "critical", but are simply misfeatures. It's not critical that your stty work nicely, or that your getty automagically determines the line speed, it's just alot nicer. >A secondary issue is to be able >to adapt the system to important local requirements, such as a special >'nice' value for processes you want to run only when the system is >utterly idle, mass creation of (student) accounts from canned data, a >passwd command that refuses to let you use stupid passwords and lets >instructors change student passwords, a new working SMD disk driver, >or a rdump that understands using a remote account besides "root", or >similar things (all these examples are real ones from around the >University of Toronto). A tertiary issue is the ability to make >disparate systems look and feel the same (by such methods as modifying >SGI's stty to understand a number of BSDoid options -- things like >this are surprisingly important to local users). If you need OS source code to do this, then you bought the wrong OS. ??? I don't get it. Can you do this with VMS, or something? Out of the box? I've never heard of an OS which covered every single possibility of user-configurability without distributing source. >| One reason that I see for AT&T's recent high source license fees was to >| restrict random hacks to "responsible" port teams for platform-specific >| features as required, and to assure that SVR4 would have the same "look and >| feel" no matter what vendor's UNIX one chose to use. > > Uh huh. I suppose "broken" and "nonfunctional" everywhere is one >defenition of "consistent look and feel". It's just not a particularly >useful one. Perhaps the problem is that Berkeley admitted that BSD was broken and AT&T refused to admit their Unix was broken? Whichever, distributing sources is a good thing in an academic environment, but a very bad idea if you are trying to capture the business market. Why, can't businesses find a use? I'd think the opposite would be true - many businesses can afford to bring someone in to add features if they have to, even small ones. There is currently a consulting firm which will come in and get GNU stuff running on your machines, and add things you need, for a fee, of course. This is how it should work - rather than begging the company to come fix your stuff, you should be able to do it on your own. That cures many problems (for instance, if ATT is not all that interested in a version of vi with built-in robots and rogue.) I'm not really arguing that all software should have source included, or anything. Sure, that would be really nice, but I don't believe in it enough that I distribute my stuff with source (I gotta make a living, after all). But I can see many reasons why _I_ would want source to my Unix, not the least of them being the ability to find out what's really going on in there, rather than realying on a scanty, and probably buggy, manual to tell me . . . -- scott hess scott@gac.edu Independent NeXT Developer GAC Undergrad "Tried anarchy, once. Found it had too many constraints . . ." "Buy `Sweat 'n wit '2 Live Crew'`, a new weight loss program by Richard Simmons . . ."