Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!bbn!rochester!kodak!elmgate!ram From: ram@elmgate.UUCP (Randy Martens) Newsgroups: comp.misc Subject: GNU Ramblings, Unix thoughts. Message-ID: <850@elmgate.UUCP> Date: 5 Jan 88 17:22:11 GMT References: <153@mozart.UUCP> <1351@sugar.UUCP> Reply-To: ram@elmgate.UUCP (Randy Martens) Organization: Eastman Kodak Company, Rochester, NY Lines: 133 Keywords: Gnu Unix Operating Systems Compatibility Support Summary: What's Gnu with you ? Well folks, it's time for me to insert my 2 pfennigs worth into this discussion. For your reference, I have been programming for ten years, much of it in 'C', and much of it on UNIX or UNIX-like systems. I think GNU is a wonderful idea. It will be an excellent system for educators and for educational institutions, it will serve a a marvelous tool for students to learn about programming and operating systems, and it will be a real boon to the home users who want a decent UNIX-like system to work with. Personally, I really enjoy working with UNIX (on alternate days I despise UNIX, but that's only when i am in "debugging" mode). I would love a copy of GNU that would run on say, an Amiga or a Mac. It would be a great environment to play in. From a professional standpoint, I wouldn't touch GNU with a 10 metre LAN cable. Why ? Let me explain by way of example. I recently bought a new car. I paid $12K of my own hard earned money for this car, a Pymouth Reliant. Within two months of my taking possession of the car, it began to develop some severe but very intermittant performance problems. I returned to the dealer, and the car was checked over. They could not find the source of the difficulty, but decided to repair and tune to see if they could isolate the problem. No luck. Two weeks later I was back again. This cycle repeated itself several times. During this period, I wish to say, that the dealership made every effort to accomodate me (ie, loaner cars, etc). They acknowledged that there was a problem, and that they could not find it. At one point, the manager of the dealership proposed that if they couldn't fix it this time, that they would take the car back, and give me a new one. As luck would have it, they found the problem this time. It was a very subtle sort of bug, involving the interaction of many components of the powertrain. The reason that they were able to find the problem - documentation. You see, there are literally thousands of Reliants on the road. A small percentage of them developed this particular problem. All these cars turned out to have certain features in common. Therfore, the engineers at the corporate level were able to isolate the cause of the problem, and issue what amounted to a "patch" to the dealerships and they were finally to fix the problem once and for all. A year later, the bug seems to have gone away for good. In case you haven't guessed, the problem turned out to be a bug in the software for the Engine Control Computer. The point of the example is this - I purchased what amounted to a standard system - one supported by a large company. Because of this level of support, standardization, and documentation, as well as the means to disseminate data to the suppliers and users, my investment was protected. I still have a good, usable car. Now, lets look at GNU : - It will not be backed by any company. Admittedly, some companies do not do a good job of supporting their users, especially in the software arena. If a company is to survive and prosper, it must give good service, no matter if it is selling software, shoe polish, or cars. And giving good service costs money. Which means the company must make money. Which means it CANNOT possibly function on the basis of giving it's product away. Companies that provide good service will get repeat business, and develop customer loyalty. My experience with my car was not happy, and I certainly wish that it had not developed in the first place, but you can be sure that the next time i am in need of a car, the first place I will go is to that Plymouth dealership ! On the other hand, becuase of some very negative experiences several years ago, I will never buy or use a Digitial Reasearch Co. product ever again. - There will be no standard version. The method of distribution basically guarantees this. And some versions will likely be wildly incompatible with others. The automotive analogy applies again. When buying a car, one has factory supplied choices: model, color, engine, stereo, power widgets, etc. These are all tested and guaranteed by the factory. If my air-conditioner breaks, the dealership will fix it. There are also factory approved modifications supplied by third party vendors, such as performance products. These have also been tested by the factory and the vendor, and are guaranteed to work with my car's configuration. A good example of this would be an after-market turbocharger. Third, there are options that do not seriously affect the vehicle, such as aftermarket stereos - which are still guaranteed by the manufacturer of the stereo. Therfore, there are a lot of different configurations available, to suit my needs. All of these standard and modified versions are akin to a software house supplying optional features with it's systems, allowing approved third party vendors to write tools for their systems, and lastly my going out and buying a copy of "Zork" for my machine. The worst that can happen in the last case, is that I trash my copy of Zork, and get a new one from Infocom. But the important point is this : ALL OF THESE ARE SUPPORTED SYSTEMS !! Gnu will have so many customized versions floating about, that it will be nigh impossible to tell if a given feature or tool will work with my system correctly. And, no, I don't wan't to have to debug my operating system every time I add a new feature. I'd never get any real work done. - The real killer is that if my version does something unpleasent to say an important database, I am on my own. And the loss of data, or the loss of use of a computer system can cost you MUCH MORE that the price of a new system. The support has got to be there, and has got to be ironclad. And yes, I will gladly pay for such support, either by buying a software licence, or by paying support fees. Mr. Stallman says that companies will step in to provide support for GNU. I don't see this happening. And even if some company markets "Fred's Gnu - with support services", the I am in the same position as if I had bought any other operating system, and Gnu's advantages have been erased. - Lastly, I will generally not care if I get the system sources for a piece of code or not. If it works as advertised, and is supported, the damn thing can be written in Bulgarian for all I care. If I am developing tools for an opsys, then I had better have sources, and they better be standardized, or my efforts will be wasted. And if I need to, I will gladly pay reasonable source fees. Yes, I know alot of companies have unreasonable licensing/source fee/site fee policies. But this is changing rapidly. I find that now I can deal only with the good companies, like Borland, who have reasonable policies. And the companies that don't, lose out. Well, thats my ramble on the subject of GNU and operating systems in general. My apologies if this is a bit long, but I wanted to make my point clear : - From a professional standpoint, as someone who makes their living working with computers, I cannot afford to use anything except tested, supported, standardized products. Period. Anything else is foolish. - From a personal standpoint, I look forward to hacking around with GNU, if for no other reason that to learn from it. And that, I think, will be it's greatest value. I will gladly respond to any comment by e-mail or on the net as appropriate. send comments or flames to the addresses below. 'nuff said. -- }} identity } Randy Martens ( rochester!kodak!elmgate!ram ) }} quote } "Reality - What a Concept!" - R.Williams }} disclaimer } The preceeding represents only my random babbling, }} } and certainly reflects no one else's opinions. Fnord.