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From: kvc@nrcvax.UUCP (Kevin Carosso)
Newsgroups: rec.humor,comp.os.vms,comp.sys.dec
Subject: Re: DEC Humor and OSF
Keywords: (I post here because there is no rec.should.b.funny)
Message-ID: <1567@nrcvax.UUCP>
Date: 3 Oct 88 00:24:07 GMT
References: <799@udiego.UUCP> <96@cwjcc.CWRU.Edu>
Reply-To: kvc@minnie.UUCP (Kevin Carosso)
Organization: Network Research Corp.  Oxnard, CA
Lines: 36

In article <96@cwjcc.CWRU.Edu> chet@pirate.CWRU.EDU (Chet Ramey) writes:
>
>>From the 26 Sept. 1988 `Digital Review' (used w/o permission)
>
>>CANNES, France -- VMS is more compliant with the spcifications of
>>the Open Software Foundation (OSF) than any other operating system
>>available today, DEC President Ken Olsen said on the second day of 
>>the DECworld show, held here.
>
>
>And VMS, with it's peculiar mixture of Bliss and VAX assembly language, is
>supposed to port with very little pain to all the machines that the OSF
>wants to offer support for? (At least, I would assume, those of the 
>sponsoring corporations.)  C'mon, Ken!  Get real!  VMS, though it has its
>good points, is simply not as portable as a variant of Unix.

You are missing the point completely.  OSF does not describe an operating
system which is to be ported to various hardware flavors.  OSF describes
a set of standard interfaces which applications use to work with the
operating system under which they are running.  Whether that operating
system be VMS or UNIX or XYZ or whatever makes no difference to OSF or
-- and this IS the point -- to the application.

Anyone can create the OSF interface layer for whatever OS they choose.
DEC will do so for VMS and K.O. says it'll be easy.  I don't think that's
something we can judge.  If you are a hardware vendor and you want an
OSF compliant interface to your operating system and you don't already
have an operating system, then you'd be a fool to port an OSF compliant
VMS to your machine.  You're much much more likely to port a UNIX variant
along with some portable OSF interface that goes with it.  DEC already has
VMS, they don't give a damn about porting an operating system, they don't
have to, they just need to provide the OSF interface layer.

        /Kevin Carosso                     kvc@nrc.com
         Network Research Co.              kvc@ymir.bitnet
                                           kvc@nrcvax.uucp