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

[William E. Davidsen Jr]

In article <24369 at pyramid.pyramid.com> sas at pyrps5.pyramid.com (Scott Schoenthal) writes:

| But, it is proprietary.  Customers have to sign licenses.  Customers have to
| pay money.  Customers have to perform certain obligations (e.g., passing
| SVVS).  Is this not 'proprietary'?

  The only reason SRV has been as portable as it has is that there is a
reasonable validation suite, and you must meet it. It is not perfect,
but to the user it gives a fighting chance that system will support a
product.  Ada used to be that way, but now that there is no longer a
requirement to pass the validation suite, I see some real crap compilers
called Ada.

  Does it hurt the other vendors to have to deliver a working product?
Obviously they think so, they put up $90 mil to be able to do what they
want with they version of UNIX, making it probably that there will be
100 flavors of OSFix, AIX, or whatever. This will provide a nice set of
proprietary o/s to keep the vendor happy.

  Will we see a "better" filesystem from one? A "better" shell from
another? A "replacement" for curses which isn't call for call
compatible? If the OSF version really goes anywhere, I'd bet on it.

-- 
	bill davidsen		(wedu at ge-crd.arpa)
  {uunet | philabs | seismo}!steinmetz!crdos1!davidsen
"Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward" -me