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From: jlg@cochiti.lanl.gov (Jim Giles)
Newsgroups: comp.os.misc
Subject: Re: UNIX vs. the world (again) (was: Compilation listing from Sun ...)
Message-ID: <25855@lanl.gov>
Date: 17 Jun 91 19:28:23 GMT
References: <1991Jun15.143436.5574@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu> <25791@lanl.gov> <1991Jun16.184815.17898@kithrup.COM>
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In article <1991Jun16.184815.17898@kithrup.COM>, sef@kithrup.COM (Sean Eric Fagan) writes:
|> [...]
|> As for unix being free:  when you bought a vax, you bought a license for
|> VMS.  It's kinda silly to argue that unix is free, considering that unix had
|> to be ported, while vms was already there for the cost of the machine.

My comment was that UNIX was _free_ and _open_.  Further, I gave another
criterion later - it was available without a lag for development time.
The "and" in the phrase "_free_ and _open_" is a conjunction, not a 
disjuction.  VMS didn't satisfy that criterion.  In fact, for schools,
the _open_ criterion was the most important one.

And, when VAXen came out, sure UNIX had to be ported, but most schools 
continued to use (and buy) PDP-11s until after that port had been 
completed.  So, as for "already there", that's what it was for _most_ 
schools who eventually bought VAXen.

We'd all be better off now if the schools had mostly decided to develop
their own systems peicemeal - by now some system with real _quality_
would probably have shaken out of the competition between such separate
developments.  One of the recognized pitfalls of designing things for
human use is the problem of standardizing to soon.*  That's what happened
with operating systems.

*"The Psychology of Everyday Things"; Norman, Donald A.; Basic Books;
1988.  I recommend it.  Of course, nearly everything in UNIX violates
the principles espoused by this book.

J. Giles