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From: rmilner@zia.aoc.nrao.edu (Ruth Milner)
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: vendor consortiums (consortia?)
Message-ID: <1991Jun5.010723.14579@zia.aoc.nrao.edu>
Date: 5 Jun 91 01:07:23 GMT
Sender: rmilner@zia.aoc.nrao.edu (Ruth Milner)
Distribution: na
Organization: National Radio Astronomy Observatory, Socorro NM
Lines: 25

Here's a nice general topic for discussion.

It occurred to me the other day that there was a UNIX consortium, made up of
various computer vendors, which was founded either shortly before or shortly
after the OSF. I vaguely recall (but this may be cynical hindsight :-) ), that
right after the first one was formed, everyone who hadn't joined it rushed out
and founded the second one. What was that other consortium, and why don't I
hear anything about it any more? Has it simply changed its name or something?
(Did I just dream it up? I was out of things for several months between jobs, 
maybe it disbanded then).

Does anyone else feel as skeptical as I do about all these groups of companies 
getting together to co-operate on things? Will it really all work out nicely, 
or will we just trade in the BSD/SysV dichotomy for SVR4/OSF? It's nice to see 
them collaborating on benchmarks, to keep each other honest, but I can't help 
thinking that the notion of everyone truly winding up with the same UNIX blend 
is just pie in the sky. And then there's the IEEE, the OSI, and ANSI sticking 
their noses in, too ... 

Who was it who said "the nice thing about standards is that there are so many
of them"?
-- 
Ruth Milner
Systems Manager                     NRAO/VLA                  Socorro NM
Computing Division Head      rmilner@zia.aoc.nrao.edu