From: jfr@glitter.RedBrick.COM
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.advocacy
Subject: Re: Rumor control (was Re: Open Letter: Don't get rid of UNIX
Date: 7 Sep 92 04:42:50 GMT
Organization: Red Brick Systems, Los Gatos, CA

In article <92246.104512MKK2@psuvm.psu.edu> <MKK2@psuvm.psu.edu> writes:
>[munch]
>   Lastly, who thinks NeXT, Inc. has the manpower available to create a new
>OS from scratch?  Could Trevanian (spelling?  sorry) do it alone?  Microsoft
>and IBM haven't done such a great job of it, that's for sure.

 Well of course they could.  Many of the predominant OSes of the modern 
 day were the original conception and implementation of a handful of very
 talented developers.  Certainly UNIX and DOS are the most glaring examples.
 UNIX was initially developed by a handful of AT&T radicals (KRT et al).
 And DOS was developed by Seattle Microcomputer (before BG bought them out
 to sell it to IBM).  Not to mention the Mac OS which was developed by a
 very small group of developers.  

 There are, of course, "big" OS successes as well, including obviously,
 IBM's OS/360 (now MVS) which was the product of tens of thousands of 
 "man-months" of effort (and resulted in Fred Brooks' classic book,
 The Mythical Man-Month).  I assume VMS was also a "big" OS in development
 terms.  But so what?  Great OSes can, and have, been created from scratch
 by a few talented people.  IBM's and Microsoft's recent efforts to do so
 with huge teams do not invalidate in any way, IMHO, the possibility that
 a small team could do better.  In fact, it may be exactly why a small team
 COULD do better.  

 This has been typical in my view of the software industry from a 20-year
 vantage point.  Time after time, software companies in all areas (OSes,
 DBMSes, utilities, languages, productivity tools, etc.) prove the adage
 (and fall victim to it) that those who don't learn from history are
 condemned to repeat it.  Look at the most successful software in our
 business over the past 20 years.  FOCUS, DYL-280, Candle's Omegamon,
 Visicalc, Dbase II, Lotus 1-2-3, etc.  (I mention the first three which
 many of you may not be familiar with because they are very successful
 products from the IBM mainframe arena and are products which were designed
 and implemented in their original incarnations by a handful of people, just
 to prove that this is not solely a PC/workstation phenomenon).  All of 
 these companies later tried to create huge development organizations to
 develop the "next winning product" totally ignoring the genesis of their
 original product's success.  To the best of my knowledge, none of them
 succeeded and they either continue to do well enhancing and milking their
 "cash cows" (FOCUS, DYL, Candle, Lotus) or they have died or been sold
 off (Visicorp, Ashton-Tate).  None have really created a follow-on "hit"
 product.  Interestingly, Lotus' Improv may prove to finally be a hit
 now that Lotus has exported it to the Windows arena and we all know that
 this product was the "bastard step-child" at Lotus for quite a long time.
 
 So, can NeXT build a completely new (and better OS)?  Yup, and their
 success with the NeXTstep interface (which is probably more complex in
 many ways than the actual OS kernel it is built upon) is proof of that.
 Will they do this to replace Unix?  I doubt it, but not because they
 couldn't if they wanted to.

 Jon Rosen
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.advocacy