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From: tracy@hcradm.UUCP (Tracy Tims)
Newsgroups: net.micro
Subject: Re:  Unix and the future
Message-ID: <1856@hcradm.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 11-Apr-85 10:44:56 EST
Article-I.D.: hcradm.1856
Posted: Thu Apr 11 10:44:56 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 12-Apr-85 04:32:39 EST
References: <9814@brl-tgr.ARPA>
Organization: Human Computing Resources Corp
Lines: 27

> You seem to be telling us that because UNIX is a good product
> it's difficult for the competition to get a look in.
>
> Odd; that's how I thought the system was *supposed* to work.

From the perspective of previous operating systems, UNIX is "good enough".
That is, it ports quickly, can support an number of useful applications,
and lends itself well to program development.  It is fairly clean and small.

I think it's clear that we could design an operating system (flavour
unspecified) that would potentially be better than UNIX at all the things
we think UNIX is so good at.

The problem is that UNIX may be "good enough" that too few people will be
able to see beyond it, and these too few people will not have enough
leverage to cause the creation of a new (portable/popular) system for
a while yet.  (This last statement is intended in a general economic sense).
UNIX will also be tenacious because the amount of "portable" software
written for it and the number of different machines it runs on will give
it lots of inertia.

Personally, I think UNIX sucks.  It just sucks less than most of the other
stuff out there.

                              Tracy Tims    ihnp4!utzoo!hcr!hcradm!tracy
   Human Computing Resources Corporation         utcsri!hcr!hcradm!tracy
 Toronto, Ontario, Canada.  416 922-1937          dciem!hcr!hcradm!tracy