From: lupe@ukw.uucp (Lupe Christoph)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sun.misc
Subject: Re: Is Sun losing touch with its customers?
Date: 27 Dec 92 20:00:16 GMT
Organization: cic

nanook@eskimo.com (Robert Dinse) writes:

>     Nah, don't see any big advantages to System-V4r for the customer for
>either the short or long haul.  I do see some big advantages to AT&T.

Depends on what the customer is doing. If they are really into (trying
to) standardizing their environment, they will appreciate a common base.
Also, SunOS 5.x brings in quite a few new features. Of course you can
argue that it would have been possible to get these new features into
the BSD base.

>     I suspect it went something like this... Sun is becoming a major vendor
>but they're a little short on cash..  The BSD4.4 project is nearing
>completion and almost all Sys-5 source has been removed.  Sun's kernal is
>based on BSD..  If the Sun were to move to a BSD 4.4 based kernal, all of
>AT&T's royalties would be out the window..

>     So they get together, they say to Sun, (mind you this IS speculation
>and nothing more), they say, "Gosh, we can help you with your short-term
>cash difficulties, if you'll just agree to make the next major release of
>Sun/OS system-V4r based so that we can continue collecting outrageous
>royalties from your customer base.

>     And so Sun, with their cash difficulties at the time, agreed, and
>Sun, AT&T, both benefited, Sun had it's cash problem fixed, AT&T was
>assured of continued royalties from Sun's customer base, and only Sun's
>customers got the shaft..  Such a deal!

You have probably not been around at the time the decision was made,
or you wouldn't refer to BSD 4.4. At the time 4.3 or 4.3 Tahoe
was most current, I believe. 4.4 was just a decimal number then.

I believe SUn was trying to get "back into the mainstream". They had
an agreement with AT&T that gave them a very good position to define
what SVR4 was going to be. And it seems they got many things in that
made generic SVR4 much better than SVR3.

This led to the Hamilton group, now known as OSF. A funny thing happended
on the way to OSF/1, though: the interfaces got more and more common,
settling on SVR4, give or take a few.

At that time no major vendor would proudly tell the world that they
would stick to BSD; either they said OSF/1 (most), or they would
join the AT&T/USL camp. All press rags were talking that it was a GoodThing
to standardize on two Unixes; but one would still be better.

Customers were demanding from their vendors to get their interfaces
sorted out, and join SVR4, or OSF, depending on the conviction of the
customer.

When Sun announced they would "join the crowd" this was generally
hailed as a good decision. But this was when nobody had the next
release around the corner, and nobody was forced to face the consequences.

Where were you BSD advocates at the time this decision was made? Nobody
spoke up for BSD at the time!

>     The only question that remains, will the customers tolerate it?

They will have to accept the consequence of their foolishness ;-)

>     The position I've taken, is to condition any purchases of Sun
>equipment upon it being able to run 4.1.x.  I write this right into the
>purchase order.  So far, 4.1.x has worked on all of the boxes we've
>purchased (mostly 4.1.3), though I'm told it won't run on mutli-processor
>SS10's.

>     I would encourage everyone who has a problem with being forced into a
>new, incompatible operating system, do the same.

#ifdef FLAME

I'm sick and tired of you types. You are the type of hypocrite who protests
against movies alledgedly immoral without seeing them first himself.
If it were for you, we would still be eating uncooked meat because
it's always been so, and fire is just too dangerous to use.

#endif FLAME
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