Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!steinmetz!vdsvax!barnett From: barnett@vdsvax.steinmetz.ge.com (Bruce G. Barnett) Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards Subject: Re: O'pain Software Foundation: (3) relationship to GNU & openness Message-ID: <4457@vdsvax.steinmetz.ge.com> Date: 25 May 88 14:20:41 GMT References: <5412@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> <3166@pdn.UUCP> <3c2a41f6.13422@apollo.uucp> <4630@hoptoad.uucp> <3c3fdf1b.4bee@apollo.uucp> Reply-To: barnett@steinmetz.ge.com (Bruce G. Barnett) Organization: General Electric CRD, Schenectady, NY Lines: 43 In article <3c3fdf1b.4bee@apollo.uucp> gallen@gallen.UUCP (Gary Allen) writes: > Put yourself in our place, what would you have done? The OSF is a gamble. If it works, we will have two or more different Unicii. Different specifications for different features. If it doesn't, the people developing OSF will have to do twice as much work when adding extensions. Because they will have to implement two sets of extensions (networking, window systems, lightweight processes, dynamic linking, network file system, security, toolkits, real-time, redundancy, sys-admin, mapped files, etc.) If the gamble works, we lose. If the gamble doesn't work, they lose and we lose. It might be one thing if they were extending Unix into an areas where AT&T wasn't going. But they seem to be extending OSF Un*x into the same areas but going into a different direction. And I believe in most cases they will have their extensions done AFTER AT&T releases the similar extension/feature. I predict that the members of OSF, noted for their stubbornness, will ignore the incompatible AT&T extensions until their customers demand them. Then they will have to provide compatibility for the 'Pure' Unix. Net result: A lot of wasted effort to provide two ways to accomplish the same feature. If I were a member of OSF, I would try to find out about the future extensions and make my extensions as similar to SysV.Next as possible. And if *MY* requirements weren't being met, I would start screaming at AT&T NOW. (And some companies *ARE* doing this *NOW*). If I were a user of an OSF unix, I would start asking my vendor for AT&T compatibility. But I wouldn't hold my breath. -- Bruce G. Barnett uunet!steinmetz!barnett