wgh@ubbpc.UUCP (William G. Hutchison) (11/11/88)
In article <44400030@hcx2>, bill@hcx2.SSD.HARRIS.COM writes: > > Remember the Conspiracy Theory of vendor-customer relations [ :-) ] > > Vendors do not implement non-standard extensions to their products > > to BENEFIT customers, but to trap them into writing > > non-portable code, thereby to keep them from converting their programs > > to some other vendor's systems. > This "Theory" may have been true of some vendor(s) at one time, but I > think it is safe to say it is total bunk now. > Are vendors against standardization? NO WAY! The non-portability > issue works against us (at least now) far more often than it works to > our advantage. I am not familiar with Harris, so I am not challenging your statements regarding Harris. However, I establish my case with the following dare: Can you show me a cost-effective way to port from proprietary operating systems of Wang, Hewlett-Packard, Data General (AOS), IBM(OS), DEC(VMS) ... to standard UNIX (Unix System V release 3) ? I submit that those vendors, and many others, have a strong interest in keeping their customers stuck with their proprietary operating systems, and that their support for Open Systems is grudging at best. These opinions are not necessarily those of my employer (Unisys Corp.), but then again, you never know. -- Bill Hutchison, DP Consultant rutgers!cbmvax!burdvax!ubbpc!wgh Unisys UNIX Portation Center "What one fool can do, another can!" P.O. Box 500, M.S. B121 Ancient Simian Proverb, quoted by Blue Bell, PA 19424 Sylvanus P. Thompson, in _Calculus Made Easy_
link@sag4.ssl.berkeley.edu (Richard Link) (11/11/88)
In article <397@ubbpc.UUCP> wgh@ubbpc.UUCP (William G. Hutchison) writes: > > Can you show me a cost-effective way to port from proprietary operating >systems of Wang, Hewlett-Packard, Data General (AOS), IBM(OS), DEC(VMS) ... >to standard UNIX (Unix System V release 3) ? No, but I can show you how to get from VMS to a SUN effortlessly. It's a preprocessor called f77cvt supplied by SUN to steal DEC customers. And it works! I compiled 110 subroutines today into a library; only 8 did not compile the first attempt, due to a "feature" of f77cvt which causes problems by insisting on sticking an END into code fragments to be INCLUDEd. Once I got the library built, I then compiled some of my more substantial programs. The only problems encountered were where I used the VMS system clock, a trivial problem. f77cvt takes VMS.FOR files and converts them to sun.f files. The sun.f code is quite ugly - indentations are all left justified back to column 7, and messages are written all over the file. However, IT WORKS! After compiling & linking, I simply delete the sun.f file and keep the original VMS version. I think that the vendor "lock-in" problem is just as much the fault of UNIX system vendors as it is the vendors of proprietary operating systems. SUN has shown forcefully that it intends to attract DEC customers. If other UNIX vendors put some effort into easing software migration problems, as SUN has, there would not be a lock-in problem. Dr. Richard Link Space Sciences Laboratory University of California, Berkeley Disclaimer: I am not connected with SUN, and I like VMS better anyway. So there!
urjlew@ecsvax.uncecs.edu (Rostyk Lewyckyj) (11/12/88)
Mr. William G. Hutchison <wgh@ubbpc.uucp> of UNYSIS is trying to argue
that the difficulty everyone has in converting to the DEC system is
indicative that all these companies have somehow nonstandard versions
of Fortran. However Since all these dificulties are with DEC rather
than with each other, perhaps, just perhaps, it is DEC which is non
standard.
Or is it that DEC is the industry standard by definition :-)
Actually at the system interfacing level probably all systems are
different from each other. After all there are many things that a
program uses and in how it behaves that are not covered by anything
in the standard. E.g. error handling, access to system facilities.
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Reply-To: Rostyslaw Jarema Lewyckyj
urjlew@ecsvax.UUCP , urjlew@tucc.bitnet
or urjlew@tucc.tucc.edu (ARPA,SURA,NSF etc. internet)
tel. (919)-962-9107urjlew@ecsvax.uncecs.edu (Rostyk Lewyckyj) (11/12/88)
In article <5814@ecsvax.uncecs.edu>, urjlew@ecsvax.uncecs.edu (Rostyk Lewyckyj) writes:
%
% Mr. William G. Hutchison <wgh@ubbpc.uucp> of UNYSIS is trying to argue
% that the difficulty everyone has in converting to the DEC system is
% indicative that all these companies have somehow nonstandard versions
% of Fortran. However Since all these dificulties are with DEC rather
% than with each other, perhaps, just perhaps, it is DEC which is non
% standard.
Sorry in the above article I should have said UNIX not DEC.
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Reply-To: Rostyslaw Jarema Lewyckyj
urjlew@ecsvax.UUCP , urjlew@tucc.bitnet
or urjlew@tucc.tucc.edu (ARPA,SURA,NSF etc. internet)
tel. (919)-962-9107