Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!ucsd!ucbvax!hplabs!hpda!hpcuhb!hpindda!hardin
From: hardin@hpindda.HP.COM (John Hardin)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Re: UNIX vs BS/2, DDJ article
Message-ID: <4330119@hpindda.HP.COM>
Date: 19 Dec 88 18:07:30 GMT
References: <205@imspw6.UUCP>
Organization: HP Information Networks, Cupertino, CA
Lines: 29

>                            ... the idea of allowing DEC, HP, Perkin Elmer,
>IBM etc. to each continue selling their own little proprietary OSs for minis
>is simply no longer acceptable to the US government as of right now, and will
>obviously not be acceptable to most corporations either.
> 
>Ted Holden
>----------

I'd like to reply to this, but first let me make it clear that although I 
work for HP, I am not representing them here and any opinions I post here
are my own.  Now that that's out of the way...

Obviously your addition of the word "little" above shows a disdain of the
other operating systems you mention.  While I agree with your prediction of
the role of Unix in the next few years, I can also see why there continue
to be propietary OSs.  One reason is the inefficiencies of Unix.  I am no
Unix kernel expert, so I don't pretend to know why, but I have seen that
a propietary OS can support many more time-sharing users than Unix when
both are run on the same hardware.  Perhaps it's the granualarity of locks
available or the extra disk accesses to support the multi-level directory
structure.  Often this extra overhead is more cost for more features, but
these extra features are usually of most use to software developers, not
the accounting department in a commerial environment.  Hopefully, we are
entering an age when the efficient use of the human is of more importance
than the efficient use of the machine, but in the meantime Unix may not
be the best answer for everyone.

John Hardin
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