jtn@potomac.ads.com (John T. Nelson) (05/26/88)
Subject: Re: Open Software Foundation Newsgroups: comp.std.unix,comp.std.misc References: <191@longway.TIC.COM> I have mixed feelings about the Open Software Foundation. On the one hand I agree with AT&T when they state that the OSF has no track record in the open software/standards business. This is true. The founders of OSF consist of a handful of large computer companies whose experience is mostly in marketing hardware and proprietary software, not designing state-of-the-art operating systems, user interfaces and environments for the scientist/engineer. Now the OSF claims that they can pound together a standard which will appeal to both System V and Berkeley users. I fear that more than likely the OSF standard will bind user's to a single Unix standard and thus to a single proprietary product... namely IBM's AIX, and thus ensure IBM's position in the marketplace. Making the standard available to everyone does not qualify it as an "open" standard. There must be open and equal participation among ALL users of the system to make both technical and policy decisions when defining the standard. The OSF, if it is to live up to its advertised ideals, must recognize the diverse needs of developers, researchers and engineers who actually use the system and may prefer a system interface that is different from what the standard proposes. There must be diverse community participation. > Membership > > Foundation members will contribute ideas on both technical and policy > matters. They will be informed of foundation activities on a regular > basis and periodically polled on specific issues. Membership is open > to anyone. ... for a price... I note that individual/educational memberships to the OSF cost $5,000. Corporate memberships cost $25,000. Worse, simply being a member does not allow you to make decisions on ALL policy issues. Apparently the OSF founders only want partners who have a signicant financial stake in Unix. This means that the individuals who will be most affect by Unix (hackers, scientists) will be those most excluded from membership if they cannot find an institution to sponsor them. Even then it isn't clear how much of a voice they will have in defining the standard. > The foundation's software environment includes a set of application > programming interfaces to make it easier to write applications for a > variety of systems. The initial set of interfaces will support POSIX > and X/Open specifications, and will be extended to include areas such > as distributed computing, graphics, and user interfaces. Sounds pretty good so far though. > To provide a clear and easy migration path for application developers > and end users, the foundation's system will include features to > support current System V- and Berkeley-based UNIX applications. The > operating system will use core technology from a future version of > IBM's AIX(tm) as a development base. If the corner-stone of the OSF Unix standard is IBM's proprietary product then how flexible can the standard be to user needs? If the new standards require massive rewrites to the AIX kernal will IBM comply with the OSF's findings and completely rewrite their kernal? > Specifications supported by the foundation will be publicly available, > and a set of verification tests for all appropriate facilities will be > identified or created. The foundation will license its open system > software internationally. I would prefer to see an implementation maintained by an independent university or the user community at large, not by a handful of mega-marketing computer companies who have vested interests in products they have already developed. I would also like to see source code made available so that the system can be easily maintained and modified at each individual site. Much like Berkeley source code licences. On the other hand, I welcome the OSF as a positive effect on the market place. Adoption of standards that facilitate portability will stimulate a somewhat stagnant and confused computer software industry. Also, perhaps now Sun will get serious about their windowing systems (to name just one of my gripes about Sun computers). Sunview is a toy. NeWS is better and I think this will become a good product. I'm much more interested in seeing Sun develop an entierly new and integrated user interface... not just something that runs on top of the shell. Rather we should see a highly integrated window system/shell much like the Symbolics LISP machine's windowing environment. I realize this is difficult to implement in Unix thanks to Unix's rather backward way of thinking about the user interface, but hope springs eternal. -- John T. Nelson UUCP: sun!sundc!potomac!jtn Advanced Decision Systems Internet: jtn@potomac.ads.com 1500 Wilson Blvd #512; Arlington, VA 22209-2401 (703) 243-1611 I love music that sounds like a Conrail locomotive careening headlong into a truckload of Harpsichords.
jtn@potomac.ads.com (John T. Nelson) (05/27/88)
Subject: Re: Open Software Foundation Newsgroups: comp.std.unix,comp.std.misc References: <191@longway.TIC.COM> I have mixed feelings about the Open Software Foundation. On the one hand I agree with AT&T when they state that the OSF has no track record in the open software/standards business. This is true. The founders of OSF consist of a handful of large computer companies whose experience is mostly in marketing hardware and proprietary software, not designing state-of-the-art operating systems, user interfaces and environments for the scientist/engineer. Now the OSF claims that they can pound together a standard which will appeal to both System V and Berkeley users. I fear that more than likely the OSF standard will bind user's to a single Unix standard and thus to a single proprietary product... namely IBM's AIX, and thus ensure IBM's position in the marketplace. Making the standard available to everyone does not qualify it as an "open" standard. There must be open and equal participation among ALL users of the system to make both technical and policy decisions when defining the standard. The OSF, if it is to live up to its advertised ideals, must recognize the diverse needs of developers, researchers and engineers who actually use the system and may prefer a system interface that is different from what the standard proposes. There must be diverse community participation. > Membership > > Foundation members will contribute ideas on both technical and policy > matters. They will be informed of foundation activities on a regular > basis and periodically polled on specific issues. Membership is open > to anyone. ... for a price... I note that individual/educational memberships to the OSF cost $5,000. Corporate memberships cost $25,000. Worse, simply being a member does not allow you to make decisions on ALL policy issues. Apparently the OSF founders only want partners who have a signicant financial stake in Unix. This means that the individuals who will be most affect by Unix (hackers, scientists) will be those most excluded from membership if they cannot find an institution to sponsor them. Even then it isn't clear how much of a voice they will have in defining the standard. > The foundation's software environment includes a set of application > programming interfaces to make it easier to write applications for a > variety of systems. The initial set of interfaces will support POSIX > and X/Open specifications, and will be extended to include areas such > as distributed computing, graphics, and user interfaces. Sounds pretty good so far though. > To provide a clear and easy migration path for application developers > and end users, the foundation's system will include features to > support current System V- and Berkeley-based UNIX applications. The > operating system will use core technology from a future version of > IBM's AIX(tm) as a development base. If the corner-stone of the OSF Unix standard is IBM's proprietary product then how flexible can the standard be to user needs? If the new standards require massive rewrites to the AIX kernal will IBM comply with the OSF's findings and completely rewrite their kernal? > Specifications supported by the foundation will be publicly available, > and a set of verification tests for all appropriate facilities will be > identified or created. The foundation will license its open system > software internationally. I would prefer to see an implementation maintained by an independent university or the user community at large, not by a handful of mega-marketing computer companies who have vested interests in products they have already developed. I would also like to see source code made available so that the system can be easily maintained and modified at each individual site. Much like Berkeley source code licences. On the other hand, I welcome the OSF as a positive effect on the market place. Adoption of standards that facilitate portability will stimulate a somewhat stagnant and confused computer software industry. Also, perhaps now Sun will get serious about their windowing systems (to name just one of my gripes about Sun computers). Sunview is a toy. NeWS is better and I think this will become a good product. I'm much more interested in seeing Sun develop an entierly new and integrated user interface... not just something that runs on top of the shell. Rather we should see a highly integrated window system/shell much like the Symbolics LISP machine's windowing environment. I realize this is difficult to implement in Unix thanks to Unix's rather backward way of thinking about the user interface, but hope springs eternal. -- John T. Nelson UUCP: sun!sundc!potomac!jtn Advanced Decision Systems Internet: jtn@potomac.ads.com 1500 Wilson Blvd #512; Arlington, VA 22209-2401 (703) 243-1611 I love music that sounds like a Conrail locomotive careening headlong into a truckload of Harpsichords.
cl@datlog.co.uk (Charles Lambert) (06/03/88)
From the UK industry newspaper "Computer Weekly", June 2nd 1988, quoted
without permission....
DEC SEES NEW UNIX VERSION BY AUTUMN
by Terry Ernest-Jones
"A version of UNIX suuporting the first set of Open Software
Foundation standards has been promised by DEC for this autumn,
as AT&T pours scorn on its rival's prospects.
"It is ironic that DEC should be the first foundation member to
declare support of its standards, since DEC's Ultrix ... was
rejected by other members as the basis for the operating system.
Instead a future version of IBM's AIX was chosen.
"...AT&T's vice president of sales for data systems, Gordon Bridge,
says he doesn't expect to see any serious foundation products in
his lifetime. "It'll either cater for the lowest common denominator,
or its members willbe given options and you won't have a standard"
[Bridge said].
"Many see AT&T's heated attacks on the foundation as proof of the
threat it poses.
"AT&T's Unix partner, Sun Microsystems, takes a different view of
the foundation ... Sun's president, Scott McNealy, says "If we can
get the Unix world down to two operating systems - and we get half,
that's fine by me."ward@cfa.harvard.EDU (Steve Ward) (06/09/88)
In article <782@dlhpedg.co.uk>, cl@datlog.co.uk (Charles Lambert) writes: > From the UK industry newspaper "Computer Weekly", June 2nd 1988, quoted > without permission.... > > > DEC SEES NEW UNIX VERSION BY AUTUMN > by Terry Ernest-Jones > > "A version of UNIX suuporting the first set of Open Software > Foundation standards has been promised by DEC for this autumn, > as AT&T pours scorn on its rival's prospects. > > "It is ironic that DEC should be the first foundation member to > declare support of its standards, since DEC's Ultrix ... was > rejected by other members as the basis for the operating system. > Instead a future version of IBM's AIX was chosen. > If this is a quote from an AT&T source it is bizarre because DEC Ultrix is based on AT&T licensed Unix code (principally BSD 4.x) and therefore could not be used for an OSF Unix clone product since the whole point is to write a suitable Unix clone from scratch that has not one line of AT&T code and therefore requires no AT&T licensing. The IBM product is a clone, and fills the bill, at least as an OSF starting point. The only other non-AT&T choice was Apollo Aegis, I believe. Even Apollo has abandoned Aegis (now using a Sys V Unix I believe) as their Unix-like product. (Apollo may or may not be calling the product Aegis but they have moved away from their own clone code to AT&T code and will presumably move to the OSF clone code when it is ready). At any rate, the only viable non-AT&T (unix clone) code was the IBM AIX stuff.
rml@hpfcdc.HP.COM (Bob Lenk) (06/10/88)
> If this is a quote from an AT&T source it is bizarre because DEC Ultrix > is based on AT&T licensed Unix code (principally BSD 4.x) and therefore > could not be used for an OSF Unix clone product since the whole point is > to write a suitable Unix clone from scratch that has not one line of > AT&T code and therefore requires no AT&T licensing. The IBM product is > a clone, and fills the bill, at least as an OSF starting point. AIX, both current versions and the one to be used as a base for OSF implementations, uses at least enough AT&T code to be subject to AT&T licensing. Contrary to various postings, "the whole point" of OSF is not to avoid AT&T licensing. There are many things to consider in choosing an implementation base. Remember that AT&T and Sun also have announced plans to re-implement the UNIX(r) operating system. Bob Lenk {ihnp4, hplabs}!hpfcla!rml rml%hpfcla@hplabs.hp.com UNIX is a registered trademark of AT&T in the U.S. and other countries.
karl@sugar.UUCP (Karl Lehenbauer) (06/12/88)
I agree that the OSF will have a negative effect on Unix's acceptance by creating two Unixes when we were about to get down to having almost only one and by the expected 18 month lead time for the standards to show up. I think if they were serious, they would have said something like "The current working standard is System V Release 2" along with the announcment. Perhaps they still will. I would counsel any company seriously committed to Unix to be very careful before getting into bed with IBM and DEC on this issue. By the number of people they're hiring to work on this standard (hundreds), it's almost guaranteed to be late and of poor quality. (ref. Brooks, Frederick, _The Mythical Man Month_) As far as everyone getting a "say" in new Unix standards, I think the same thing is true. I'd rather put it in the hands of some benign dictators. We've seen this design-by-committee stuff fail too many times. Indeed, many attribute a lot of Unix's success to the fact that it was originally designed and built by a small group of very talented designers without much pressure to ship a product. When there are a lot of designers, for some reason, the results seem to always lack consistency and there is too much of a tendency to make deals, like "I'll vote for your new pet tumor if you'll vote for my new festering pustule." As for who the dictators would be, how about the creators of it, Ritchie, Kernighan, et al, with a few specific things in their charter like that it support multiprocessing, realtime and transaction processing? -- -- nuchat is down. Please use ..!bellcore!tness1!sugar!karl or -- ..!academ!uhnix1!sugar!karl for mail.
lum@brachiosaur.cis.ohio-state.edu (Lum Johnson) (06/15/88)
In article <2105@sugar.UUCP> karl@sugar.UUCP (Karl Lehenbauer) writes: >I would counsel any company seriously committed to Unix to be very >careful before getting into bed with IBM and DEC on this issue. Either one is bad enough, but both? We're talking serious dementia, under the label "value added".... :-) >... When there are a lot of designers, for some reason, the results >seem to always lack consistency and there is too much of a tendency >to make deals, like "I'll vote for your new pet tumor if you'll vote >for my new festering pustule." As for who the dictators would be, >how about the creators of it, Ritchie, Kernighan, et al, with a few >specific things in their charter ...? Agreed, but do Ritchie, Kernighan, et al, wish to be lobbied by people with pet tumors and festering pustules for their inclusion in the next edition? I should think they can make better use of their time than that, and that we could benefit more from their doing so. However, I would support having them above the dictators, making the decisions but not having to waste their time on enforcing them and fending off crufty hackery, feeping creaturism, and the latest great-leap-sideways. -=- -- Lum Johnson lum@osu-20.ircc.ohio-state.edu lum@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu "You got it kid -- the large print giveth and the small print taketh away." -------
craig@unicus.UUCP (Craig D. Hubley) (06/22/88)
>> >> >> DEC SEES NEW UNIX VERSION BY AUTUMN >> by Terry Ernest-Jones >> >> "A version of UNIX suuporting the first set of Open Software >> Foundation standards has been promised by DEC for this autumn, >> as AT&T pours scorn on its rival's prospects. >> >> "It is ironic that DEC should be the first foundation member to >> declare support of its standards, since DEC's Ultrix ... was >> rejected by other members as the basis for the operating system. >> Instead a future version of IBM's AIX was chosen. Now, as I understand it, the OSF standard is to be POSIX (IEEE Unix), by god, and IBM is committed to producing a POSIX-compliant AIX that the OSF will license on "reasonable, stable, terms", along with everything else that they plan to produce. I had assumd that nothing would be AIX-dependent, since POSIX was specified and the point of POSIX is to not be UNIX or AIX or ULTRIX. >If this is a quote from an AT&T source it is bizarre because DEC Ultrix >is based on AT&T licensed Unix code (principally BSD 4.x) and therefore >could not be used for an OSF Unix clone product since the whole point is >to write a suitable Unix clone from scratch that has not one line of >AT&T code and therefore requires no AT&T licensing. The IBM product is >a clone, and fills the bill, at least as an OSF starting point. The I thought that AIX was also a BSD port. (Damn it, where did I put those dusty old RT specs ?!?) >only other non-AT&T choice was Apollo Aegis, I believe. Even Apollo >has abandoned Aegis (now using a Sys V Unix I believe) as their >Unix-like product. (Apollo may or may not be calling the product Aegis >but they have moved away from their own clone code to AT&T code and >will presumably move to the OSF clone code when it is ready). I think the more interesting question is what *protocols* are going to be standardized on, not which implementation of POSIX is going to be used. Apollo may yet turn out to be a big winner because their NCS is far superior to the Sun and IBM equivalents. DEC wanted to go ISO in a big way, but was tied up by the fact that the standards simply aren't complete, and thus there is DECNET. NCS actually translates between SNA, NFS, DECNET, and any other protocol that runs on an Ethernet. It has a nifty language called NIDL in which RPC "stubs" are compiled, that look for services at runtime using a location broker, and doesn't get upset that there are several RPC types running on a single machine, or that it has to go to a backup service. Parts of NCS are already PD, and Apollo was pushing it as a standard. For political reasons (Apollo is the smallest of the seven companies, Apollo is effectively a vertical market company, Apollo will not also be the Unix implementor, NCS will work with everything equally well) it seems like a shoo-in. Likewise in the AT&T/Sun world, the silent partner Xerox has already contributed licensing to Open Look and Sys V release 4 will have XNS support. XNS is probably the second-best "universal" protocol presently implemented. It too has location brokers (called Clearinghouses) and a stub definition language (Courier, I believe), but doesn't work so well with all of these other systems. Since this smaller group of three companies can set their own standards, this is less of a problem. Compounding the XNS momentum is that Xerox's Viewpoint software will be, when ported to SPARC, the office automation system of choice, and it runs entirely under (over) XNS. Two-bit prediction: OSF produces POSIX version and supports NCS strongly, if only for political reasons. Although IBM's code will be decried as brain-dead, it will provide the accountability factor that all MIS managers need, and will replace System V as the "standard" Unix. Sun/Xerox coordinate themselves much more closely, and System V release 4 with XNS will become the "gourmet" system, replacing BSD as the "hacker's standard". AT&T will continue to create new "application binary interface" standards weekly until the phrase is as useless as "standard". By trying to keep Unix as their "strategic edge" and at the same time claiming that it is available to anyone, they will shoot themselves in the foot, as they did with the 3B series. Smaller vendors such as Apple, Commodore, and Atari (in that order) will release decent low-end Unix machines (Apple already did, Commodore has one in prototype that they are wrangling with AT&T over, Atari will keep claiming to have one until Unix is obsolete, at which point they will produce it happily: that's what Jack Tramiel did with CP/M for the 64 when he was running Commodore) and won't commit to one path or the other until the software is mature, but I expect them to go POSIX. So, all told, that's not so different from today's situation, except that micros will go Unix and all these silly protocols should be able to talk to each other. Of course, if any of these things doesn't happen, the above predictions are to be considered line noise. -- Craig Hubley craig@gpu.utcs.toronto.edu