O'pain Software Foundation: (2) Why is it better than AT&T?

[Carl S. Gutekunst]

Soapbox time, I'm getting irritated. [Don asbestos suit.]

Nearly all the postings seem to make two assumptions that I have trouble with:

- The presense of DEC, Apollo, and IBM in the Open Software Foundation has
  been widely accepted as proof that OSF is really only a plot to destroy
  UNIX and muddy the marketplace. This completely ignores the presense of
  Nixdorf, Siemens, and HP, all of which have made major commitments to UNIX.
  Nixdorf in particular has spent a tremendous amount of labor over the past
  few years converting their entire systems product line to UNIX. Both Nixdorf
  and Siemens struck strategic technical relationships with American pure-UNIX
  companies several years ago already (with Pyramid Technology and Sequent,
  respectively). These are hardly companies that want to see UNIX fail.

- WHO SAYS unifying UNIX is *that* important? I've argued from the start that
  the Sun/AT&T deal was a waste of precious programmer resources. OSF is just
  piled higher and deeper. UNIX is an appalling mediocre commercial operating
  system. There is a *lot* of really important work that needs to be done be-
  fore most commercial customers are going to trust *any* UNIX box replacing
  their IBM 3090 running VM. And it's *not* getting done, because the lion's
  share of programmer resources are being gobbled up by Sun, AT&T, and now OSF
  to diddle with pedagogical puzzles.

Anyone who thinks unified UNIX is *that* important should consider two things:

- How difficult is it *really* to port applications to the different UNIX
  variants? There are definitely a few pieces I wish they all had in common --
  for example, the V-Node filesystem, shared memory. But it doesn't take any
  major effort to get these to work. And even for really big commercial appli-
  cations engines (e.g., Sybase, Oracle, Unify, Informix) you'll have a much
  easier time going between System V and BSD than you will between UNIX and
  VMS.

- There are lots of different sized platforms running System V. There are lots
  of different sized platforms running Berkeley UNIX. Pick your application,
  then pick a system to run it. What's the problem? People upset because the
  application the runs on your 3B2 won't run on your ISI? For pity's sake, it
  won't run on your Amiga or your 3090 either; why are you so irritated that
  the UNIX systems differ a little, when you've tolerated big differences in
  your other systems for so long?

I'm not saying a unified UNIX isn't important. Some day, it will be a major
priority. But we have far too many other important things to do first. (I'll
be happy to offer a laundry list, if anyone's listening.)

These are my personal opinions, of course. I'm quite sure Pyramid has no use
for them. :-)

<csg>