Xref: utzoo rec.humor:15345 comp.os.vms:9204 comp.sys.dec:813
Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!seismo!sundc!hadron!jsdy
From: jsdy@hadron.UUCP (Joseph S. D. Yao)
Newsgroups: rec.humor,comp.os.vms,comp.sys.dec
Subject: Re: DEC Humor and OSF
Summary: It gets better.  Why aren't I laughing?
Keywords: (I post here because there is no rec.should.b.funny)
Message-ID: <790@hadron.UUCP>
Date: 6 Oct 88 16:16:08 GMT
References: <799@udiego.UUCP> <96@cwjcc.CWRU.Edu>
Reply-To: jsdy@hadron.UUCP (Joseph S. D. Yao)
Organization: Hadron, Inc., Fairfax, VA
Lines: 39

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

>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 ...
>						..  VMS, though it has its
>good points, is simply not as portable as a variant of Unix.

Unfortunately, the new version 3.0 of Ultrix is just as unportable as
VMS.  It requires language processors to compile it that are written
in "half a dozen languages" under VMS (DEC versions of PASCAL, BLISS,
C, FORTRAN, etc. - I wouldn't be surprised if PL/1 - and Macro-32).
Since all of these are not yet ported to the "equally supported"
Ultrix OS, they are compiled on a VMS system, binary-patched via an
automated version of what until recently was a manual patch list, and
then linked with Unix support libraries under Ultrix.

SOMEBODY hasn't learned good software engineering practices.  Or could
they be (unproven supposition follows) trying once more to lock users
into the DEC world???  I wish they hadn't hired those sales managers
from IBM!!!!!

In all fairness, the versions of Ultrix I've seen so far have had some
excellent ideas in them.  I've had to fix a lot in every one ... and
the distributed source code doesn't always compile into the
distributed binaries ... but excellent ideas, and sometimes good
implementations.

	Joe Yao		jsdy@hadron.COM (not yet domainised)
	hadron!jsdy@{uunet.UU.NET,dtix.ARPA,decuac.DEC.COM}
	arinc,att,avatar,blkcat,cos,decuac,dtix,\
	ecogong,empire,gong,grebyn,inco,insight, \!hadron!jsdy
	kcwc,lepton,netex,netxcom,phw5,rlgvax,	 /
	seismo,sms,smsdpg,sundc,uunet		/

[All of the foregoing is derived from a combination of observation and
 discussions, but remains my opinion only.  -jsdy- ]