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From: spaf@gatech.UUCP (Gene Spafford)
Newsgroups: net.flame
Subject: Re: May be offensive to UNIX Users - PLEASE READ
Message-ID: <8974@gatech.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 16-Jul-84 09:35:30 EDT
Article-I.D.: gatech.8974
Posted: Mon Jul 16 09:35:30 1984
Date-Received: Wed, 18-Jul-84 06:26:35 EDT
References: <978@ihuxi.UUCP>
Organization: The Clouds Project, School of ICS, Georgia Tech
Lines: 42

That's right -- Dalton's, Waldenbooks, and the similar stores don't
care VMS documentation because it's all in the VMS manual.  So why
should they stock documentation that already exists?  Especially when
they'd have to deliver each copy by truck after sale.  Besides, there
isn't much market for VMS documentation. VMS only runs on one family of
machines, and a significant percentage of the users of those machines
don't want it.  Meanwhile,  versions of Unix run on (at last count)
over 70 different manufacturers' machines (not all those
implementations are bug free, however), and more on the way.  Ever
heard of a 68000 VMS port?

Look, let's knock off this UNIX vs. VMS crap.  People who use Unix will
probably defend it to death and no amount of wasted time and effort on
the net will even begin to convince them otherwise.  And people who
defend VMS are probably forced to or they'll lose their jobs (or else
it has been prescribed as shock therapy), so you can't argue them down,
either. 

It's philosophical in nature, and therefore this should be moved to
net.philosophy instead of wasting valuable flame space.  I mean, it is
like governments.  Unix as an OS is small and doesn't provide much in
the way of fancy services to users; it only provides the bare
essentials necessary for use.  Neither does it impose many
constraints.  If the users have the savy and the drive to build their
own services, then fine.  Users can choose to obtain those services
from the others who took the time to build them.  Systems like VMS
provide everything for the user, if only you can wade through the
paperwork to figure out what you need to do.  They're big and provide
everything the user might ever want -- but you have no choice.  Other
parallels can be drawn; see SIGOPS Review, Vol 14, #2 p28 for further
info.

I bet jrl loves VMS....

Save the arithmetic IF!
-- 
Off the Wall of Gene Spafford
The Clouds Project, School of ICS, Georgia Tech, Atlanta GA 30332
Phone:	(404) 894-6169, (404) 894-6170 [messages]
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