10 Unix Ever since Unix got popular in the 1980s, there has been an ongoing effort on the part of the Unix vendors to “standardize” the operating system. Although it often seems that this effort plays itself out in press releases and not on programmers’ screens, Unix giants like Sun, IBM, HP, and DEC have in fact thrown millions of dollars at the problem—a problem largely of their own making. Why Unix Vendors Really Don’t Want a Standard Unix The push for a unified Unix has come largely from customers who see the plethora of Unixes, find it all too complicated, and end up buying a PC clone and running Microsoft Windows. Sure, customers would rather buy a similarly priced workstation and run a “real” operating system (which they have been deluded into believing means Unix), but there is always the risk that the critical applications the customer needs won’t be supported on the particular flavor of Unix that the customer has purchased. The second reason that customers want compatible versions of Unix is that they mistakenly believe that software compatibility will force hardware vendors to compete on price and performance, eventually resulting in lower workstation prices. Of course, both of these reasons are the very same reasons that workstation companies like Sun, IBM, HP, and DEC really don’t want a unified version of Unix. If every Sun, IBM, HP, and DEC workstation runs the same soft- ware, then a company that has already made a $3 million commitment to Sun would have no reason to stay with Sun’s product line: that mythical company could just as well go out and purchase a block of HP or DEC workstations if one of those companies should offer a better price. It’s all kind of ironic. One of the reasons that these customers turn to Unix is the promise of “open systems” that they can use to replace their propri- etary mainframes and minis. Yet, in the final analysis, switching to Unix has simply meant moving to a new proprietary system—a system that hap- pens to be a proprietary version of Unix. Date: Wed, 20 Nov 91 09:37:23 PST From: simsong@nextworld.com To: UNIX-HATERS Subject: Unix names Perhaps keeping track of the different names for various versions of Unix is not a problem for most people, but today the copy editor here
Standardizing Unconformity 11 at NeXTWORLD asked me what the difference was between AIX and A/UX. “AIX is Unix from IBM. A/UX is Unix from Apple.” “What’s the difference?” he asked. “I’m not sure. They’re both AT&T System V with gratuitous changes. Then there’s HP-UX which is HP’s version of System V with gratuitous changes. DEC calls its system ULTRIX. DGUX is Data General’s. And don’t forget Xenix—that’s from SCO.” NeXT, meanwhile, calls their version of Unix (which is really Mach with brain-dead Unix wrapped around it) NEXTSTEP. But it’s impossible to get a definition of NEXTSTEP: is it the window sys- tem? Objective-C? The environment? Mach? What? Originally, many vendors wanted to use the word “Unix” to describe their products, but they were prevented from doing so by AT&T’s lawyers, who thought that the word “Unix” was some kind of valuable registered trade- mark. Vendors picked names like VENIX and ULTRIX to avoid the possi- bility of a lawsuit. These days, however, most vendors wouldn’t use the U-word if they had a choice. It isn’t that they’re trying to avoid a lawsuit: what they are really trying to do is draw a distinction between their new and improved Unix and all of the other versions of Unix that merely satisfy the industry standards. It’s hard to resist being tough on the vendors. After all, in one breath they say that they want to offer users and developers a common Unix environ- ment. In the next breath, they say that they want to make their own trade- marked version of Unix just a little bit better than their competitors: add a few more features, improve functionality, and provide better administrative tools, and you can jack up the price. Anybody who thinks that the truth lies somewhere in between is having the wool pulled over their eyes. Date: Sun, 13 May 90 16:06 EDT From: John R. Dunning jrd@stony-brook.scrc.symbolics.com To: jnc@allspice.lcs.mit.edu, UNIX-HATERS Subject: Unix: the last word in incompatibility. Date: Tue, 8 May 90 14:57:43 EDT From: Noel Chiappa jnc@allspice.lcs.mit.edu [...]
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