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

[Jim Hutchison]

<3c3a336e.13422 at apollo.uucp> mishkin at apollo.UUCP (Nathaniel Mishkin) writes:
>BTW, I object to the various speculation (on the part of several people)
>on the topic of the "ulterior motives" of DEC and IBM.  (No one cares
>about Apollo's ulterior motives, I guess :-)  "They really just want
>to wreak havoc", it is said.  Aren't AT&T and Sun subject to ulterior
>motives?  "Get them hooked on a standard *we* define and that *they're*
>contractually obligated to support and then add some whacko feature that
>kills some piece of added value our major competitor has managed to eek
>out".  Geez.  Talk about white hats and black hats!

Speculation?  Who just made a funny shaped pc box so that they could cut
out other vendor's add-in boards?  IB-something?  What 3 letter company
is relatively famous for sitting on the meaning of error codes generated
by its personal computers self-test?  IB-somthing-else?  Please!

DEC, large volumes of documentation which tell you how to break into the
system. :-)  After having VMS/Bliss locked up in $$$ for so many years,
how are we supposed to believe that they have a need to change their tune?

Why OFS?  What is wrong with an ANSI/IEEE/ACM/OSI/...  standards commitee?
Not that I am overly fond of commitees, but a little iterative specification
couldn't hurt.  Start with POSIX, and revise it as appropriate, as we learn
what it most appropriate.

I have enjoyed Apollo computers, the network root concept is very very nice.
I have not worked with your Unix-oid which ran under Domain in several years.
How POSIX acceptable is your OS? 

>...  Geez.  Talk about white hats and black hats!

Gosh, I'm naive.  Good will has gone the way of the passenger pigeon.
Why not set up an interaction.  Yes, make it mutually profitable for
you and them to remain compatible.  Admittedly this goes contrary to
some notions of commerce, so I'll just learn Japanese.  If we get stuck
in such a destructive loop, we shall in fact be their "farmland" soon enough.

sigh.  This discussion is really depressing.
    Jim Hutchison   		UUCP:	{dcdwest,ucbvax}!cs!net1!hutch
		    		ARPA:	Hutch at net1.ucsd.edu
Disclaimer:  The cat agreed that it would be o.k. to say these things.