Licensing Issues Aren't DEC's Fault

[francus at pernod.dec.com]

Reply-to: francus at pernod.dec.com

In article 15027 at shemp (Casey Leedom) writes
>I hate to harp, but the point is telling: 4.3BSD has been out for 
> over two years now; WHEN IS ULTRIX GOING TO UPGRADE?

Casey, I would have responded to the above before, but had to wait until
Ultrix 3.0 was announced. It has the 4.3 BSD upgrades including BIND and 
Van Jacobsen TCP/IP. In addition there are now as many engineers in Ultrix 
Engineering as in VMS engineering. DEC has decided to have a World Class
Ultrix and has been hiring in order to reach that goal. 3.0 has sped up 
Assymetric Multiprocessing (ASMP) and added CI/HSC support. In other 
words DEC is not just sitting around but is constantly improving Ultrix.
Bundled in with Ultrix is DECwindows (based on X windows) which provides
a consistent user interface on Ultrix and VMS machines. A user can run 
an application on an Ultrix machine, and have the server be a VMS machine,
and vice versa.

A few more points:
Since DECwindows is a library built on top of X.11, it leaves the user
the option of writing X.11 applications or DECwindows applications. 
Thus DEC is commited to X as an open standard.

In addition, Ultrix v3.0 is the first fully Posix compliant operating system.  
It is also SVID compliant at the system call and subroutine level, that
is "SVID release II, volume I".  DEC is committed to tracking Posix, and to
the extent that it does not directly conflict, simultaneously tracking
System V.

>DEC could also learn something from Sun on
>software support (as well Sun could learn a lot from DEC in hardware
>support).

>From what I understand, SUN has a relatively small Software Support
organization and charges a lot for a software support contract to
discourage people from buying software support.  Since, I work in
Corporate Software Services for Ultrix, I can tell you that DEC is
actively (very actively) training their support organizations in Ultrix;
in fact that is part of my groups job.

> The low performance and incredibly high prices are embarrassing.
>
>  I've heard rumors from a number of sources that these are all concerns
>within DEC, but there seems to be some difficulty in getting off the dime.

I wish I could say something about the above, but I obviously can't deny
or confirm rumors.  Also, the 3000 and 6000 series are fast minis that I
believe compare nicely with other vendors. I don't have benchmarks in
front of me so I can't provide figures. Anyone have figures that do not
come from any vendor??

>Don't get me wrong please, I'm taking issue with DEC from a purely
>technical basis.  I have nothing personal against DEC and I would in fact
>welcome them back to the field of real contenders.  It's to my advantage
>as a customer to have as many companies as possible producing good
>products.
>

I'm really glad that we've been able to keep this discussion at a very
civilized, informative level.

Yoseff

Disclaimer: I work for DEC. However, the opinions expressed above are
solely my own and should in no way be construed as official DEC policy.