Marketing Unix

[Eugene Miya]

[][]

AARGH!  It happened again.

I am trying to educate (inform) people about UNIX.  'Selling' U*X within
an organization must be as difficult at retail sales.  In trying to put
together an informative document, I used the "six qualities" from
the original UNIX paper by Ken and Dennis.  You know: hierarchical file
system, asynchronous processes.....  I tried it on several interested people
and I got questions back like:

"What's an hierarchical file system? What good is that?  Why not have it like
xyz system?"

"Why do I need asynchronous processes?  Doesn't that waste cycles?
[Or a similar line like: doesn't UNIX have batch? Doesn't interactive
waste cycles?]" (Invariably these same people come back later saying
"Is there same way, I don't have to wait for this thing to get done?....."

....

It is easy to answer these questions face to face, or at least over a phone.
The challenge is to do this on paper, in organizations that don't have
access to systems already.  You can certainly pose these questions in advance,
but we come up with rationalizations for advantages..."The hierarchy
allows you to group files into projects....You don't need to fill up you
screen with an `ls`, and so on."  

One problem seems to be that many people in large organizations have
vastly different ways of conceptualizing computing: IBMers say DATASETS
others say "files." Another problem is the non interactive nature of
written words.  A third problem is that many companies offer their
inhouse OS (e.g., RSX or VMS) which might compete with their own U*X ["These
computer makers know their hardware, don't you think they would write
the best OS for their machines?"].  Any ideas on educating the
public in general writing?

Lastly, I wish to say that in the FALL 83 COMPCON procs. a session was
held comparing micro OSs.  I think they looked at CP/M, MS/DOS,
and UNIX.  Clearly, the "cryptic" command naming took the greatest
flack.  We typically say, that the OS is not the command language
or the name of the commands, IT is the "functionality."  This
is obviously got to change because it represents the one greatest
weakness to 'sellng' U*X.

--eugene miya
  NASA Ames Res. Ctr.