amys@sco.COM (Amy Snader) (11/13/87)
There's just so much BS out of Microport I can stand, even though I make no claim to having an impartial opinion... In article <4423@well.UUCP> wolf@well.UUCP (Dwight Leu) writes: >Microport's people have been pioneering real UNIX technology on the >Intel architecture longer than anyone else in industry. Note the words: Microport's people, not Microport. Some people who worked on the DRI porting team now work for Microport. That's a very small percentage of a small company. >We did the >first UNIX port to the IBM AT architecture, as well as the first port to >the 386 AT hardware. > When the AT port was completed hardly matters, because it was never released by DRI or Intel. By the time this port became un-shelved, evolved into Microport's product and was released by Microport, there were a number of other UNIX and UNIX-derived products in the AT marketplace. As for the 386 AT, who was first is a matter of debate. SCO shipped Xenix before Microport shipped V/386. By two whole days, I think. However you look at it, the two release dates were so close as to be silly. > -dwight- > > Dwight H. Leu ihnp4!amdcad!uport!dwight > V.P. Engineering well!wolf > Microport microsoft!sco!ucscc!uport!dwight > 408-438-8649 > >"Will your XENIX application run next year when Microsoft drops XENIX and > switches to UNIX? Not even Microsoft guarantees it." Such invective! Dwight should know better. First "misunderstanding": that Microsoft is "dropping XENIX and switching to UNIX". Microsoft isn't dropping anything: they are merging the two products. What the merged product is called is irrelevant: it was as much born out of XENIX as anything. As evidence of this, note that AT&T is paying royalties to Microsoft for the use of the XENIX technology in the merged product. Second "misunderstanding": the implication that XENIX applications won't run after the merge. I haven't seen a formal statement out of MS, which is what you probably mean by "guarantee." I haven't seen any statement out of MS claiming compatibility with any other sort of current binary. This is meaningless invective. What is true is that being able to run older applications has always been a key attribute of XENIX. XENIX 386 can not only run XENIX 286 and XENIX 86 binaries, it can generate them. The philosophy of not breaking applications has been pervasive in XENIX from the very beginning, when we were careful not to break Altos applications. Obviously, a product that is the next generation of XENIX will put a high value on preserving the compatibility that has always been XENIX. Since Microsoft is doing the merge, I'd expect that if they were forced to break either XENIX binaries or Coff binaries, they'd do the latter, both because there's more XENIX binaries out there and as a matter of remaining true to your own. I speak solely for myself, not for SCO. Followups should probably go either to comp.unix.xenix or the Microport group, if it ever gets established. --amy {ihnp4,microsof,amdcad}!sco!abs
kevin@iisat.UUCP (11/17/87)
In article <384@sco>, amys@sco.COM (Amy Snader) writes: > In article <4423@well.UUCP> wolf@well.UUCP (Dwight Leu) writes: > > >"Will your XENIX application run next year when Microsoft drops XENIX and > > switches to UNIX? Not even Microsoft guarantees it." > > Such invective! > Dwight should know better. First "misunderstanding": that Microsoft > is "dropping XENIX and switching to UNIX". Microsoft isn't dropping > anything: they are merging the two products. What the merged > product is called is irrelevant: it was as much born out of XENIX > as anything. As evidence of this, note that AT&T is > paying royalties to Microsoft for the use of the XENIX technology > in the merged product. > > Second "misunderstanding": the implication > that XENIX applications won't run after the merge. > [ paragraph describing Xenix between compatibility between 8086,80826,80386 ] > > Since Microsoft is doing the merge, I'd expect that if they > were forced to break either XENIX binaries or Coff binaries, they'd > do the latter, both because there's more XENIX binaries out > there and as a matter of remaining true to your own. > > --amy > {ihnp4,microsof,amdcad}!sco!abs This reference is from Unix/Xenix World, May 1987, p.13 About the Microsoft announcement : "Programs written for the present Unix System V or for Xenix System V are to run on the combined system *without* modifications." [ the emphasis on without is mine ] This next reference is from Unix/Xenix World, June 1987, p.110 Again, about the Microsoft/AT&T announcement : "will allow applications already developed... on any version of Xenix to run without recompilation on this new official port called Unix V.3/386" [ and to be fair ] "... according to Microport, its recently announced version of Unix V.3/386 will not have Xenix compatibility until early 1988." In other words, everything is coming together so that it doesn't matter WHERE the programs originated from. My understanding of the present situation is that the binaries from both present Unix and Xenix will be able to run without modifications on the new combined Unix. -- Kevin Davies International Information Service (IIS) UUCP: {uunet,utai,watmath}!dalcs!iisat!kevin ----------------------------------------