Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!oberon!cit-vax!elroy!spl1!laidbak!obdient!blair
From: blair@obdient.UUCP (Doug Blair)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.microport
Subject: Re: Compiler woes
Message-ID: <489@obdient.UUCP>
Date: 9 Apr 88 03:38:47 GMT
References: <452@micropen>
Organization: Obedient Software Corp, Wheaton, IL
Lines: 58
Keywords: Microport 286 386 PCC
Summary: Agreed!

In article <452@micropen>, dave@micropen (David F. Carlson) writes:
> 
> Although many new users seem to think flaming Microport is great sport, let's
> try to improve things rather than just slash at them.  Back up reports of 
> bugs with facts and observations not idle gossip about buggy this or that.
> 

Agreed, heartily!

Let's face it: most of us bought the SysV/386 from Microport because:

	1) It was REAL UNIX, not Xenix
	2) It was cheaper than SCO
	3) It was available sooner

And for a couple of us:

	4) Those adoreable SysV/386 headbands

We all know UNIX is a constantly evolving system; we all know the
80386 is the current state of the art processor (Please, no flames
on this! Those in comp.unix.microport have already made that choice :-));
and we all know microport was able to deliver the product (well,
enough to get us running last summer) in timely fashion. In order
to secure a place in the market they had to push things a bit -
it was probably a choice between shipping something that had a
few workarounds or open (but documented and admitted) problems
in it and letting SCO run them out of existance.  

Now it begins to look like SCO/Microsoft is going to have to
change their product to conform more to System V standards. Uport
won't, so which company made the smarter move?

We're talking about an *enormous* batch of software - I've got
> 20 high density floppies from uport and it's just flat
unreasonable to expect that every single byte on them is
perfect in a product that's been out < 6 months.  Gawd, there
are enough other newsgroups around full of bug reports on the
other ports of unix (whups... "UNIX") to remind us that there
is *no* bug free unix anywhere - even in flavors that have
been on the market for a decade.

If you've got a problem with uport, fine. I *expect* to have
problems, just the same as I *expect* to have problems with
a new car, new spouse or new mailman.  I also *expect* that
the people who made the car or trained the mailman (Well, OK.
The Spouse may require extensive debugging) will take care
of it.  It is reasonable to expect that microport will do the
same. Common sense and common courtesy dictate that they get
a fair chance.

Doug Blair

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