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From: antony@lbl-csam.arpa (Antony A. Courtney)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Next computer (Re: CISC Silent Spring)
Message-ID: <4801@helios.ee.lbl.gov>
Date: 8 Feb 90 00:52:15 GMT
References: <8859@portia.Stanford.EDU> <20571@watdragon.waterloo.edu> <49956@sgi.sgi.com> <4791@helios.ee.lbl.gov> <8dmK02o886EM01@amdahl.uts.amdahl.com>
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Reply-To: antony@lbl-csam.arpa (Antony A. Courtney)
Organization: Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, Berkeley
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In article <8dmK02o886EM01@amdahl.uts.amdahl.com> terry@amdahl.uts.amdahl.com (Lewis T. Flynn) writes:
>In article <4791@helios.ee.lbl.gov> antony@lbl-csam.arpa (Antony A. Courtney) writes:
>
>[some interesting points about computer systems evolution]
>
>>is also what made UNIX so spiffy.  Researchers wrote Multics.  It sucked.  But
>>people learned an awful lot about what should and shouldn't be in an OS and
>>how to implement OSs.  Then people scrapped it and wrote UNIX based on things
>
>I couldn't let this pass. Multics may not have been a commercial success, but
>it hardly sucked. Its main problem may have been that Honeywell (who inherited
>it when they bought the GE computer division) was never more than lukewarm
>about it and tried to kill it umpteen times over the years. They seem to have
>finally succeeded. but as late as '87 or so there were still over a hundred
>systems running it. Only something with a great deal to offer could generate
>such loyalty to orphan software (and hardware, if I remember correctly).
>

You and several other people posted messages with a similar tone. 

My appologies if I offended any old-time Multics users out there.  

When posting the message, I was a bit hesitant in saying flatly that "Multics
sucks".  I had hoped people would see my point and just ignore that little out
of context statement.

I have, I will admit, never used Multics.  Whether or not it sucked TECHNICALLY
SPEAKING is not really relevant to the point I was trying to make.  The point I
was ateempting to make was that Multics, for WHATEVER REASONS(and several of
you argue marketing), was not a succesful operating system.  The point of my
posting was that people learned from Multics and then started over.  On a
similar token, I argued in the same posting that the Apple Lisa "sucked".  In
actuality, it had some very good design principles.  And it was the first
commercial machine to use windows and a mouse.  But for whatever reasons, it
was not succesful.  So engineers took what they learned and started over.  My
point is just that it is important and valuable to learn something from one
venture into a new research field, abandon those efforts, and redesign using
what has been learned.  Whether or not Multics was technically sound is neither
here nor there in this discussion.

		antony
--
*******************************************************************************
Antony A. Courtney				antony@lbl.gov
Advanced Development Group			ucbvax!lbl-csam.arpa!antony
Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory			AACourtney@lbl.gov