ULTRIX futures?

[John Quarterman]

In article <188 at copper.UUCP>:
>When AT&T was first starting to sell Unix commercially, and the
>diverging path from 4bsd was noticed, the prevailing sentiment
>was that 4bsd and SysV would probably/hopefully/inevitably
>converge.

Many of us called for some sort of convergence, but I never
met anybody who believed that the two branches would meld
indistinguishably.  BSD does research systems.  ATTIS does
commercial ones.  The goals are not the same and the systems
will never be identical.

By the way, the PWB/USG/USDL/System III/System V stream diverged
from the V6/V7/Research/V8 stream long before Berkeley got into it.
I doubt Version 8 and System V will ever be identical, either.

>I don't remember the exact reasoning, but it had to do
>with the perception that both sides would be trying to
>incorporate each other's good new features anyway, and that to
>diverge would be suicidal.  I guess it sounds a little foolish,
>today, given that the prevailing sentiment in the latest
>discussion is that the two are on a terminally diverging path.

Both systems have been incorporating features from each other
for quite some time.  Vi, termcap, mailx, many device drivers,
and lots of other stuff in System V came from Berkeley.
One of the main reasons that System V is a more viable alternative
to 4.2BSD than System III was to 4.1BSD) is the number of things
AT&T picked up from Berkeley.

<Don't bother to flame me about which is an alternative for which, Doug.>

The current forms of open(2), fcntl(2), and getopt(3) in 4.3BSD
came from System V.  Of course, Berkeley has had a bigger problem
in incorporating AT&T stuff than the reverse because many of their
licensees can't afford AT&T System V source licenses, which means
that Berkeley can't incorporate System V source code into their systems.

Both incorporate Version 8 features, too.  I hear that System V Release 3.0
will include streams.  The Berkeley people have said on a number of
occasions that they intend to reimplement streams in some future 4.nBSD.

Some of us today are hoping that the P1003 standard will become
the standard programming interface on both System V and 4BSD
(and other systems) while allowing unresolvable differences
to remain.

Meanwhile, Doug Gwyn's System V-on-4.2BSD package and Pyramid's
universe idea have gone a long way towards reducing many of the
conflicts between the systems.  Though not far enough, it's true.

Nonetheless, the bottom line is that research systems and
commercial systems have different goals and will never be identical.
-- 
John Quarterman, UUCP:  {gatech,harvard,ihnp4,pyramid,seismo}!ut-sally!im4u!jsq
ARPA Internet and CSNET:  jsq at im4u.UTEXAS.EDU, jsq at sally.UTEXAS.EDU