OSF, and why it is a side issue

[John Mashey]

In article <5668 at columbia.edu> dupuy at columbia.edu (Alexander Dupuy) writes:


>Just as the first major divergence of Unix (BSD vs. USG) is finally nearing
>it's resolution in the SunOS/SysV merge, we are about to see a new divergence,
>between the merged "Enhanced System V" and what ever the OSF plans to call
>their Un*x variant.  At some point in the future (perhaps in 10-15 years or so)
>these two will be resolved into a merged Unix, and a new variant will diverge,
>and start a new cycle.

1) It's hard to categorize "major divergences", except in retrospect, when
they're coming back together.  UNIX is always diverging/converging.
Here are a couple examples:
2) There was at least one major divergence inside Bell Labs in the mid-70s:
the convergence was getting USG + PWB + (others) back together, synchronized
around Edition 7, and the UNIX/TS 1.0, PWB/UNIX 2.0, System III, 4.0,
and System V stream. (Of course, this was at the same time as Lab 127 was
off doing Edition 8 & later...:-)
3) I'd suggest that XENIX divergence was another major one.
4) The BSD/System V split is at least the 3rd; note that many vendors
already offer merged versions, so the split is not as bad as it might be.
5) The mutation/selection cycle is more like 6-8 years, although it's
fuzzy, because it's clear that it's starting to happen long before it's 
finished.

None of this is new: the battles inside BTL amongst UNIX variants
(+ MERT, too) were pretty fierce, and for all of the same reasons:
	a) Take UNIX because it's at least close to what you need.
	b) Modify it because it is'nt 100% what you really need.
	c) Lobby like crazy to get your goodies accepted as part of the
	next standard version, so YOU don't have to continually retrofit
	your necessary changes into every new version, and so you don't
	get somebody else getting their [similar, but not as good as yours]
	feature in there, causing you to have to change...
The fundamentals of this game haven't changed much in 10+ years,
just the size of the playing field and the number of players :-)
-- 
-john mashey	DISCLAIMER: <generic disclaimer, I speak for me only, etc>
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