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From: mcculley@alien.enet.dec.com
Newsgroups: comp.unix.ultrix
Subject: Re: Is DEC giving up Ultrix?
Message-ID: <22609@shlump.lkg.dec.com>
Date: 10 May 91 21:04:07 GMT
Sender: newsdaemon@shlump.lkg.dec.com
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation
Lines: 32


In article <1991May07.194920.17461@decuac.dec.com>, mjr@hussar.dco.dec.com (Marcus J. Ranum) writes...
>katcher@netcom.netcom.COM (Jeff Katcher) writes:
>>I have been considering purchasing a new DECstation 5000/120, but am holding
>>back due to the stories in the trade rags about DEC handing over Ultrix to
>>SCO.  What is the truth?
> 
>	As you also probably know from the trade rags, DEC is planning on
>slowly and smoothly transitioning the ULTRIX kernel base to OSF/1, which
>is a modified mach based kernel. This is the operating system that was
>recently released as an advanced developer's kit from DEC, and is the
>basic OSF offering. As part of the ACE initiative, DEC is going to be
>giving the MIPS reference port of OSF/1 to SCO, who will market it for the
>ACE platforms. 
> [...]	This doesn't mean that we are pitching ULTRIX - we were planning
>to transition ULTRIX to an OSF/1 base anyhow - so our strategy stays the
>same there - we're not out of the operating system business, since we'll
>still (presumably) be writing device drivers and whatnot.

from another point of view, I sure as heck hope we aren't out of the o/s
business, that might mean I'd be out of a job!  It would certainly mean
that there was a fair bit of money and time wasted staffing up and
transitioning some engineers into ULTRIX development at the same time that
there's folks being laid off as part of our corporate downsizing.  I think it's
pretty sure that we'd all be put out to pasture if the corporation was getting
out of the ULTRIX development business!

I can speak from personal firsthand knowledge that there are now more folks
working on ULTRIX and OSF/1 put together than there were when that story hit
the trade rags, and there'll be more in the (near) future...

-lbm