Help us defend against VMS!

[Kenneth Ng]

>From:         Dave Sill <dsill at nswc-oas.arpa>
>Hah.  The only thing the VMS manuals have over the man pages is bulk.
>I find them exceedingly verbose.  If I want to read a novel, by golly
>I'll read a novel, but when I want to use a command, I want the facts.

Unfortunately I am not yet fluent enough in VMS to comment on their
manuals.  Personally I'd rather have to wade through a lot of verbose
junk to find the information I need, presuming of course that I do
indeed find what I need.  What I detest is documentation that lacks
something that I need.  What I find lack in the Unix manuals is
a complete listing of the error messages and what they mean.  Also
lacking are all the variations.  If I had the source code, I could
use that, unfortunately I do not have such access.  Examples are:
what does error code 12 in make mean?  I can't find any such mention
in the man page.  Also, the man page for read on timed reads do not
indicate that the timed read will only work after the first character
is typed.  Yes I know that it is on the System 5 interface specs,
but it should also be duplicated on the man page.  Or at least a
footnote suggesting looking into the Sys 5 interface specs.

>But really, there is one difference between VMS and Unix that is so
>overwhelmingly important that it just can't be overemphasized, so
>I'll repeat it: VMS is proprietary, Unix is not.  At any time, DEC can
>make any arbitrary decisions it wants to about the future of VMS.
>They could decide tomorrow to stop supporting it (of course they may
>have support contracts that they have to honor).  What would happen if
>DEC went bankrupt?  Or was bought out (however unlikely)?
>
>But nothing like this could happen to Unix.  Unix is far bigger than
>any of the vendors supporting it.  Yes even AT&T has limited power to
>change UNIX's destiny.

A several years ago, Telenet and Uninet were two seperate companies
offering x.25 packet service.  We had them both here to access a
computer conferencing system called EIES.  Back then it was great
because when one network went down, we could still be accessed through
the other.  We could also talk the reps into adding features and
fixing bugs.   Especially when we told them that the competition
had those features or lacked those bugs.  Now what does this have
to do with Unix?  A couple of years ago Telenet and Uninet merged,
or one bought the other, I forgot.  Since then, service has been
gone downhill, since when one network went down the other went
with it.  And the new changes we suggested I believe have all been
ignored.  Therefore when I hear that Sun and AT&T are getting together,
on one hand I say "It's about time", but I still remember what happened
with the other merger.  And reading that Apollo and other companies
are worried about lockouts causes me even more concern.

>So why put all your eggs in one basket and let somebody else hold it?
Your eggs may be in many baskets, but is one hand picking up all
the baskets?

--
Kenneth Ng: ken at orion.bitnet ken at argus.uucp ken at mars.uucp
            ken at orion.njit.edu on bitnet, but not on arpanet.