O'pain Software Foundation: (3) relationship to GNU & openness

[Bruce G. Barnett]

In article <3c3fdf1b.4bee at apollo.uucp> gallen at gallen.UUCP (Gary Allen) writes:

>	Put yourself in our place, what would you have done?

The OSF is a gamble. 

	If it works, we will have two or more different Unicii.
	Different specifications for different features.

	If it doesn't, the people developing OSF will have to do twice
	as much work when adding extensions. Because they will have to
	implement two sets of extensions (networking, window systems,
	lightweight processes, dynamic linking, network file system,
	security, toolkits, real-time, redundancy, sys-admin, mapped
	files, 	etc.)


If the gamble works, we lose.
If the gamble doesn't work, they lose and we lose.

It might be one thing if they were extending Unix into an areas where
AT&T wasn't going. But they seem to be extending OSF Un*x into
the same areas but going into a different direction. And I believe
in most cases they will have their extensions done AFTER AT&T releases
the similar extension/feature.

I predict that the members of OSF, noted for their stubbornness, will
ignore the incompatible AT&T extensions until their customers demand them.
Then they will have to provide compatibility for the 'Pure' Unix.

Net result: A lot of wasted effort to provide two ways to accomplish
the same feature.

If I were a member of OSF, I would try to find out about the future
extensions and make my extensions as similar to SysV.Next as possible.
And if *MY* requirements weren't being met, I would start screaming at
AT&T NOW. (And some companies *ARE* doing this *NOW*).

If I were a user of an OSF unix, I would start asking my vendor
for AT&T compatibility. But I wouldn't hold my breath.
-- 
	Bruce G. Barnett 	<barnett at ge-crd.ARPA> <barnett at steinmetz.UUCP>
				uunet!steinmetz!barnett