Path: utzoo!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcsun!ukc!stl!robobar!ronald From: ronald@robobar.co.uk (Ronald S H Khoo) Newsgroups: comp.unix.sysv386 Subject: Re: Unlimited software warranties Message-ID: <1991Mar17.110550.2548@robobar.co.uk> Date: 17 Mar 91 11:05:50 GMT References: <1991Mar13.021244.2538@ico.isc.com> <1991Mar14.023417.17464@kithrup.COM> Organization: Robobar Ltd., Perivale, Middx., ENGLAND. Lines: 48 sef@kithrup.COM (Sean Eric Fagan) writes: > peter@ficc.ferranti.com (Peter da Silva) writes: > >Show me where it's being sold. How do I vote with my pocketbook if there > >are no names on the ballot? > > SCO XENIX. Everyone wanted to go to SysVr3.2; SCO didn't create the market, > you know. Despite XENIX being very stable, small, and fast, people wanted > "real" UNIX. Because of the features, partially, and partially because of > the name. But I think that SCO XENIX gives evidence that in this particular market, the "Classic Coke" formula doesn't work 100%, *but* there is a definite call for it. The problem is that computer hardware doesn't stand still. For example, SCO Xenix 2.3.2GT (the only version actually in production and on sale from them) doesn't boot on some IDE machines, so they had to engineer a fix (xnx259). There are other older examples, like the fact that 2.2.1 falsely detected the existence of FPUs in some machines that were produced *after* the software was released. This made running awk (and hence /etc/custom) slightly difficult, as that release did not have the ignorefpu kernel switch. ``fixed in the next release''. What else can you do ? You can't stop hardware people adding features and making changes any more than you can stop software people producing patches to their code. And in the case of hardware, you can't tell them to ship the equivalent of "copies of last year's distribution floppies" :-) On the other hand, people *DO* want Classic coke, which is why SCO is now coming up with 2.3.4 of their Xenix a year after the product was killed :-) If ISC take up Peter's challenge of providing Unix Classic, they will have to realise that it will take more than zero development work, to get hardware workarounds out, etc. And they should definitely ship it with the u-area bug fixed :-). But I would agree that it's a worth while thing to do, and it should be aimed at the budget market, i.e. cheap. IE: "watch my mips, no new features" as it were, but hardware support work must go on. Sigh. I suppose that means that the $150 unix doesn't quite make it :-( True "Classic Coke" would require a hardware freeze as well as a software one. It is something that would make my employer's life much easier, for one. Maybe it's worth someone's while to license redistribution of some Unix or other at a stable release that works with their hardware, and promise to ship that hardware for ever with that version of Unix ? That would work, assuming that the economics would work out. That question I have no answer to. Maybe someone should commission a market survey and do the sums. But that's not a comp.* issue :-) -- Ronald Khoo +44 81 991 1142 (O) +44 71 229 7741 (H)