att & osf

[Scott MacQuarrie]

> 
> >From: bzs at bu-cs.BU.EDU (Barry Shein)
> >From: kluft at hpcupt1.HP.COM (Ian Kluft)
> >>rogers at ofc.Columbia.NCR.COM (H. L. Rogers) writes:
> >>> Does AT&T membership give respectability to the OSF crowd?
> >>
> >>Actually, it was AT&T and Sun who were lacking in respectability after
> >>trying to steal the whole market for themselves.
> >
> >"Steal" is a very strange choice of words to apply to the owner (AT&T).
> 
> Strange "owner".
> 
> They didn't want anything to do with it's creation or even support
> until a lot of different people were enthralled with it.
> 
> 
> It is only the greed of the corporate environment that makes ATT want to
> have anything to do with UNIX(Although they are not alone in this philosophy).
> 
> Signed Don
> "One who only has 2 cents worth to give."

Please note I am not responding for AT&T, just my own opinion. I simply 
felt that such unmitigated nonsense needed to be dealt with.

AT&T, due to legal restrictions, was not allowed to sell or make a profit
from UNIX for almost its entire early existance. Rather then leave it on a
shelf until it faded away, AT&T GAVE it away to educational entities for
the price of a tape. How many corporations have you seen do that? This
is the source we're talking about here, not binary.

When was the last time you saw a major computer vendor give source to any
of its products to anyone! When divestiture occurred and AT&T was finally
allowed to make money from all the inventions Bell labs comes up with, 
AT&T still provides source licenses to anyone who wants one. For educational
entites, there is even a reduced price to allow them afford. Have you ever
seen a source license for MVS? DOS? VMS? at any price? My, how greedy of
us.

When the UNIX market balkinized and UNIX begen to become incompatible with
versions of itself. AT&T developed the System V Interface Definition at its
own expense, in order to provide a standard for UNIX. This now enables vendors
to make their versions of UNIX compatible with each other. Now customers
are not trapped with dealing with one vendor (even ourselves). My, how
greedy of us.

When AT&T signed an agreement with Microsoft to allow binary compatibilty
between Xenix and UNIX on 386 based products. This means that all the 
Xenix Application developers and Vendors can now move into the System V
Area. My, how greedy of us.

When AT&T changed the source license agreement for System V 3.x to state
that no vendor could use the source code to create a UNIX which was not
compatible with the SVID, this meant that no vendor could use our product
to create a proprietary operating system which was incompatible with other
version of System V 3.x. My, how greedy of us.

As you can see I find your statement offensive in the extreme. AT&T is not
perfect by any means, but show me another vendor which has worked as hard   
to provide a truly hardware independent operating system to allow customers
to feely decide what hardware they need to solve their problems. The same
philosophy which allows you to phone anywhere in the world without having
to worry about what hardware is being used is now in the process of being
applied to the computer industry. MY, how greedy of us.

My advice to you and others is to make sure your brain is in gear before
your mouth (or fingers) are engaged.

Thank you for your time,

Scott MacQuarrie
Senior Technical Consultant
AT&T Canada Inc.
{uunet, utzoo}!attcan!scott

The opinions expressed are my own and the reason I work where I do.