Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!eecae!netnews.upenn.edu!rutgers!bellcore!texbell!uhnix1!sugar!ficc!karl
From: karl@ficc.uu.net (karl lehenbauer)
Newsgroups: comp.os.misc
Subject: Re: Unix bigotry
Summary: asdf
Message-ID: <3101@ficc.uu.net>
Date: 15 Feb 89 15:54:42 GMT
References: <117@spectra.COM> <692@cvbnet2.UUCP>
Organization: Ferranti International Controls
Lines: 42

From article <117@spectra.COM>, by pace@spectra.COM (William B. Pace):
> Those who think that Unix is a 'clean' OS have never looked at AOS code.
> THAT's a clean system.  Unix, bless it's tin soul, is NOT a clean OS, despite
> what Unix boosters want to say.  ...
 
OK, it's great and squeaky clean (I guess).  Does it run on an incredibly wide
range of incompatible hardware from a gamut of different manafacturers, as
Unix (bless its tin soul) does?  

Although the various Unix bashers each have their own ideas of what's better,
none of them provide the vendor and architecture independence of Unix.
If you run AOS, VMS, NOS, CMS, TSO, Multics, MS-DOS, OS/2, etc, *you are
locked in* to a vendor and a product line.  If you have a lot of money and
don't care to pay a high premium for hardware and software, that's fine.
Even the U.S. government (cf. $5 billion AFCAC Unix deal, GAO endorsement,
AFIPS Unix standard, etc) no longer has these sentiments.

What will VMS proponents tell prospective buyers now that it costs several
hundred thousand dollars for a VMS-capable machine having the equivalent 
computational performance of a Unix-based DECstation 3100?

NOS as an alternative to Unix?  Ha.  Consider that NOS only runs on expensive
mainframes.  Consider also that CDC's highest performance machines, the
ETA series, are available with Unix System V.  Can't you get a native Unix
for the Cray, now, too?

The writing is on the wall, gentlepeople.  You can sit in your corner with
technology that's incompatible from what almost everyone else has, and
maybe do wonderful things.  Your technology may even be superior in some
ways.  But you take a big hit in that there aren't a lot of other people
generating software for your machine -- you'll have to do a lot of it 
yourselves, meaning a lot of stuff you'd like won't get written, plus
economies of scale may be such that a database package costs $100K instead 
of $1K.  Savvy customers, especially those burned by the high cost of
converting software from one incompatible software and hardware architecture
to another are find, are going to Unix in droves, and while everyone has
their pet peeves about Unix (including me), I think it is a reasonable 
platform for future development and do not see any architecture-independent 
operating system capable of challenging it at this time.
-- 
-- uunet!ficc!karl	"An expression of deep worry and concern failed to
-- karl@ficc.uu.net	 cross either of Zaphod's faces."  -- Hitchiker's Guide