Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cornell!uw-beaver!blake!Tomobiki-Cho!mrc
From: mrc@Tomobiki-Cho.acs.washington.edu (Mark Crispin)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: Lack of feedback
Message-ID: <908@blake.acs.washington.edu>
Date: 18 Feb 89 03:19:47 GMT
References: <4526@umd5.umd.edu> <71925UH2@PSUVM>
Sender: news@blake.acs.washington.edu
Organization: Mendou Zaibatsu, Tomobiki-Cho, Butsumetsu-Shi
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In article <71925UH2@PSUVM> UH2@PSUVM.BITNET (Lee Sailer) writes:
>Do you think that Computer Scientists who want to experiment with
>changes to the operating system are the target market?

Your point is valid.  Small organizations, particularly those that use only
NeXT computers, probably are not interested in sources and are wondering
what all the shouting is about.  It isn't coming from Computer Scientists,
who tend to be disinterested in experimenting with changes to commercial
operating systems.  It isn't coming from wild-eyed hackers either (in spite
of the tone of some of the messages on this topic!).

Most of these people are individuals responsible for maintaining a
computing environment which includes, but is not limited to, NeXT machines.
Often, they are in a central organization responsible for providing system
support to "the Spanish Department, Journalism Department, etc."  They have
to fit NeXT machines in with all the other machines; possibly to the point
of having binaries from the same set of sources of a particular set of
programs run on all machines.

It's a difficult job, since nearly every vendor has its own customizations
to Unix, and it's much harder if sources are unavailable.  Generally, they
are less interested in local customizations than they are in making all the
different vendor's customizations work together.

In other words, even though the ability to modify system software via
sources may reduce homogenity between NeXT systems at different
organizations, it may increase homogenity between computers within a large
organization!

I hope this helps you understand the predicament.  Please excuse the (at
times) strongly expressed opinions; people get this way when faced with
obstacles that make their job tougher.