david@elroy.Jpl.Nasa.Gov (David Robinson) (12/15/87)
In article <10843@brl-adm.ARPA>, bzs@bu-cs.bu.EDU (Barry Shein) writes: > > Doug Gwyn writes > >Let's not reopen the old silly "my system is better than yours" debate. > >Or at least, let's use better logic. > > Or even better, let's keep pointing out that the debate is over, Sun > and AT&T will be merging and delivering one system in the near future. > Any such system comparisons between 4.x and SysV will become a thing > of the past and anyone hung up on such concepts will be a dinosaur. > > Hallelulah. > > -Barry Shein, Boston University I agree that a merged Unix is better than two. But it makes me wonder about how the Sun competition is going to feel. As you may recall AT&T with the release of SYSVR3 required that any licensee that sells any part of SYSVR3 with their product must be fully SVID compliant. This has been challenged and AT&T has yeilded to a number of "special" cases but is still a sore point for many vendors. If they do this same type of licensing with the Sun/AT&T Unix (SYS-VI?) it could effectively kill its chances of success. People like Apollo might not take kindly to supporting Sun functionality! -- David Robinson elroy!david@csvax.caltech.edu ARPA david@elroy.jpl.nasa.gov ARPA {cit-vax,ames}!elroy!david UUCP Disclaimer: No one listens to me anyway!
bzs@bu-cs.bu.EDU (Barry Shein) (12/16/87)
>People like Apollo might not take kindly to supporting Sun >functionality! > > >-- > David Robinson elroy!david@csvax.caltech.edu ARPA [nothing I say below refers specifically to Apollo, it was just whom the poster chose to use as an example] Such vendors would have to realize that the advantages can far outweigh the disadvantages. One of the biggest advantages will be that the software vendors selling the applications (eg. databases) should find it much easier to list your hardware systems as supported. I think any salesperson would confirm that the lack of some application package is what loses the big sales in the workstation and other markets (oh, they don't sell the FOO database software on your system, gee, I'm sorry, we can't live without that...) Product differentiation based upon incompatibility rather than innovation is a fool's path to hegemony. This of course does not exclude super-setting, particularly when aimed at extending the standard in concrete ways (eg. adding a parallel scheduler for systems with such hardware.) Basically it just commonizes the base as much as SYSV and BSD did in the past (except now there would be one instead of two, and it will be extended to reflect current trends such as window systems and networking in a sufficiently standard manner to allow software developers to target the interface and know it will work on many systems.) Apollo et al compete with AT&T right now (well, no comment) on the hardware front, really no difference in the end, just broader standards to work from. -Barry Shein, Boston University