Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!mailrus!cornell!rochester!udel!burdvax!ubbpc!wgh
From: wgh@ubbpc.UUCP (William G. Hutchison)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran
Subject: Proprietary lock-in of customers (was: Why have FORTRAN 8x at all?)
Summary: Wang HP DG IBM DEC ...
Message-ID: <397@ubbpc.UUCP>
Date: 10 Nov 88 20:43:09 GMT
References: <388@ubbpc.UUCP> <44400030@hcx2>
Organization: UNISYS CS, Blue Bell, PA
Lines: 31

In article <44400030@hcx2>, bill@hcx2.SSD.HARRIS.COM writes:
> >  Remember the Conspiracy Theory of vendor-customer relations [ :-) ]
> > Vendors do not implement non-standard extensions to their products
> > to BENEFIT customers, but to trap them into writing
> > non-portable code, thereby to keep them from converting their programs
> > to some other vendor's systems.
> This "Theory" may have been true of some vendor(s) at one time, but I
> think it is safe to say it is total bunk now. 
> Are vendors against standardization?  NO WAY!  The non-portability
> issue works against us (at least now) far more often than it works to
> our advantage.

 I am not familiar with Harris, so I am not challenging your statements
regarding Harris.

 However, I establish my case with the following dare:

 Can you show me a cost-effective way to port from proprietary operating
systems of Wang, Hewlett-Packard, Data General (AOS), IBM(OS), DEC(VMS) ...
to standard UNIX (Unix System V release 3) ?
 I submit that those vendors, and many others, have a strong interest in
keeping their customers stuck with their proprietary operating systems, and
that their support for Open Systems is grudging at best.

 These opinions are not necessarily those of my employer (Unisys Corp.), but
then again, you never know.
-- 
Bill Hutchison, DP Consultant	rutgers!cbmvax!burdvax!ubbpc!wgh
Unisys UNIX Portation Center	"What one fool can do, another can!"
P.O. Box 500, M.S. B121		Ancient Simian Proverb, quoted by
Blue Bell, PA 19424		Sylvanus P. Thompson, in _Calculus Made Easy_