From: utzoo!decvax!decwrl!sun!megatest!fortune!hpda!hplabs!hao!seismo!rlgvax!guy
Newsgroups: net.micro.68k
Title: Re: Someone is using UNOS
Article-I.D.: rlgvax.355
Posted: Sat Apr 30 13:34:04 1983
Received: Mon May  2 04:50:58 1983
References: rocksvax.332 brunix.2594

>From what some CRDS people said, their system calls don't return the error
status in an external int called "errno", and the error numbers are different
anyway.  Furthermore, they decided that nobody uses groups anyway, so there's
no GIDs anywhere.

According to somebody from Microsoft who played with one of their systems,
their shell isn't UNIX compatible either.

And these guys are advertising themselves NOW as being UNIX-compatible.  Well,
I wish people who decide that they're smarter than Ken and Dennis and the
entire USG all put together would AT LEAST build their systems so that things
that used to work on UNIX work on their wonderful new all-singing-all-dancing
system (or if they're offering an "enhanced" version of UNIX, at least
"enhance" it so that stuff that used to work still works).  If you end up
working with more than one type of machine, you very quickly get tired of
the sort of anarchy that often prevails with UNIX implementations.  When
the /usr/group Standards Committee comes out with its standard (yes, I know
it's taken a long time; I'm a member of the committee, and it just takes a
long time to thrash out all the issues, especially with ~20 people), maybe
some of this will clear up.

There are representatives from CRDS on the committee, so there's hope for
UNOS yet.  Also, finally, there are representatives from Bell Labs, and the
latest note says that Bill Joy is now on the committee; most of the major
UNIX OEM's are also represented.  It seems broadly-based enough that the
standard (and future extensions) will, with any luck, provide what most
people need.

I may submit an article to net.news.group suggesting a newsgroup for
discussing the /usr/group (or whatever it's being called today) standard
and other standards, either for UNIX and UNIX-like systems or standards
in general.

				Guy Harris
				RLG Corporation
				{seismo,mcnc,we13,brl-bmd}!rlgvax!guy