Disturbing News re. DEC and UNIX

[James R. Webb]

Disturbing news?  I know this is not the place for the religious war
between the System V and Berkeley factions, but I think DEC is moving
in the right direction in "supporting" System V on the VAX line.  A
clarification here, by supporting, I mean that they have purchased
the source license from ATT and modified the code to allow it to be
used with their processors.  For example, one of the machines I 
administer is an 8600 that runs System V Rel. 2.  When we bought the
machine it came with a cpio tape of source files that DEC had changed
in the standard release of SVR2.  DEC supports these changes to the
operating system.  They support the UDA50 for System V Releases 1 and
2 in the same fashion, they supply an update tape.  The rational behind
this is that, if they sent out an entire distribution, then they would be
selling UNIX, and would have to charge the $43,000 source licence cost,
as ATT would be loosing sales then.   This is the only support I know
of as to DEC's policy on System V.  I have heard that they are not
supporting 4.3BSD on the 8600 because it would be in direct competition
with Ultrix, so I doubt very much that they are abandoning Ultrix...
I highly doubt that they will bring out a System V Ultrix either, for
there really is no reason for them to do so, for they charge MANY $$$
just for they update tapes to System V now...


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James R. Webb						ihnp4!opus!jrw