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From: jqj@gvax.cs.cornell.edu (J Q Johnson)
Newsgroups: net.unix-wizards
Subject: Re: merging 4BSD and SysV utilities
Message-ID: <459@gvax.cs.cornell.edu>
Date: Wed, 6-Aug-86 15:41:13 EDT
Article-I.D.: gvax.459
Posted: Wed Aug  6 15:41:13 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 9-Aug-86 03:35:22 EDT
References: <2711@brl-smoke.ARPA>
Reply-To: jqj@gvax.cs.cornell.edu (J Q Johnson)
Organization: Cornell Univ. CS Dept, Ithaca NY
Lines: 29


Doug Gwyn argues:
>  There is no good
>reason not to combine versions for nearly all the regular UNIX
>command utilities.  Usually this is a matter of finding the least
>buggy version and then folding in the extra options from the other
>version.  The only remaining problem is then to get AT&T and UCB to
>"buy back" the improved merged version so that this work doesn't
>have to be repeated by everyone into the indefinite future.

Although I agree in principal with Doug, I think he's underestimating
the difficulty of the endeavor.  This is, for example, exactly what
Gould tried to do in their early versions of 4.2BSD.  They gave up
and have gone back to a straight 4.3BSD version, mostly because of
customer complaints.  Sure the Sys V tr is much nicer than the 4.xBSD
version of that utility, but it's incompatible, and using it breaks
many 4.xBSD shell scripts.  It is a LOT of work to find all such
induced bugs and fix them.  Implementing two Universes probably cost
Pyramid an order of magnitude less person time than a really good merger
would have.

Now, if you aren't trying to market a complete system then the cost
calculation is different.  It is more cost effective to lobby with your
least favorite vendor to adopt the "better" version of any one utility.

Unfortunately, UCB seems no longer to be in the business -- I'll be
surprised when 4.4BSD is released!  So you have to sell not to just AT&T
and UCB, but to AT&T, SUN, DEC, and IBM, plus Gould, Pyramid, Apollo,
ad nauseum.