Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!killer!texbell!sugar!ficc!uunet!mcvax!cernvax!ethz!solaris!wyle
From: wyle@solaris.UUCP (Mitchell Wyle)
Newsgroups: news.misc
Subject: Re: Request opinions on bringing non-unix machines onto the net
Keywords: Pick
Message-ID: <487@solaris.UUCP>
Date: 25 Oct 88 18:02:34 GMT
References: <29@aimed.UUCP> <5179@medusa.cs.purdue.edu>
Reply-To: wyle@ethz.UUCP (Mitchell Wyle)
Organization: SOT Sun Cluster, ETH Zuerich
Lines: 30

In article <5179@medusa.cs.purdue.edu> spaf@cs.purdue.edu (Gene Spafford) says:
>...EXCEPT, you better be sure that your uucp implementation on
>the PICK machines can be shown not to include any UNIX source
>code nor be derived from UNIX source code.  Otherwise, you may
>find some AT&T lawyers in ill-humor visiting you and talking

Pick (Richard Pick's operating system) barely supports a weird
assembler, and is programmed mostly in Data-Basic, which is a mish-mash
of Basic, Pascal, and PL/1 with database extensions.  It supports a
kind of shell-script language variously called "TCL," "English," or
"Proc," depending on your implementation and vendor.

I personally (having coded in the Pick world for 10 years) would love
to have them join our ranks.  There is no C language, so I think we can
assume no code was stolen.  (Ultimate might have released a C compiler
since I left the Pick universe, so I may be wrong here.)

Pick is a kind of 4GL database environment similar to Dbase, but much
much more powerful.  It beats Unix (and most database products) hands
down for pure database stuff, but it's a bit weak for general purpose
computing.

Bring 'em aboard!  Call up PUMA (Pick User's society) and get the
software circulated!  I'd love to send e-mail to my old buddies and
customers!
-- 
-Mitchell F. Wyle            wyle@ethz.uucp
Institut fuer Informatik     wyle%ifi.ethz.ch@relay.cs.net
ETH Zentrum                  
8092 Zuerich, Switzerland    +41 1 256-5237