Osman_Ahmad_at_CTC@RELAY.PROTEON.COM (04/05/91)
This discussion on running Domain on the new HP boxes is a bit
of Deja Vu for me. About seven or eight years ago, all of the
same concerns and same outrage was heard from various users of
Digital Equipment Corporation's DECSystem-20 user base when DEC
announced that they will discontinue development efforts on the
promised high-end Jupiter system.
There were a lot of things that were remarkable about the
DEC-20, especially the TOPS-20 operating system. The users
loved it and diehards distributed VAX-Buster T-shirts at
annual DECUS meetings. But, the DEC-20 did not fit DEC's vision
despite the fact that their largest customers were very angry
about the decision and DEC lost a lot of business to Big Blue.
Today, DECsystems and TOPS-20 are of historical interest only.
I am afraid that in a few years Domain OS will go the same way.
At this point, it is very important for ADUS or this newsgroup
to collect our thoughts about the most important elements of
Domain/OS and present them to HP and OSF so that they can be
incorporated in a future open system.
HP should form a group within HP/Apollo to assist current Domain
users to migrate to OSF, provide tools, fill in the gaps, and
serve as an internal voice for Domain users within HP. DCE is
not enough.
ADUS will have to regroup somewhat to address the needs of this
constituency. There MUST be some way to prioritize needs and
feed this to HP and get some hard commitments from them. I
think we have to accept the demise of Domain OS and look to the
future.
I final sad note: Much of what was good about TOPS-20 has been
forgotten, perhaps to reemerge as an innovation ten years from
hence. Emacs-style command recognition, a superb class
scheduler, a lean and mean OS that could support 50 users on 4mB
of memory, a built in archiving system, a batch-processing
system, project based accounting, a bullet-proof file system,
and so on. We owe it to ourselves to preserve what is good
about Domain.
/Osman
Osman_Ahmad_at_CTC@relay.proteon.com