From: mjr@hussar.dco.dec.com (Marcus J. "Buddy can you spare a clue?" Ranum)
Subject: Re: Excuse me, but isn't this 1992?
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation, Washington ULTRIX Resource Center
Date: Wed, 7 Oct 1992 14:47:12 GMT

ehrlich@cs.psu.edu (Dan Ehrlich) writes:

>Sorry Pete, but I don't think that asking my vendor for six year old
>technology in this forum is unreasonable.

	I think that asking a vendor for technology in *this* forum is
not likely to have huge results. I doubt that many vendors accept USENET
postings into their product requirements cycle. I suspect that a lot of
them have folks who read news and try to propagate requirements up
based on customer demand and what they read (folks like Pete, or even
me).
	Formal channels for asking for technology exist, but I personally
am not convinced that they work a lot better than USENET postings. (I am
speaking in general here, not just about Digital)  IMHO, the best way to
formally ask for a technology is to have a few million dollars out for
bid, and to write exactly what you want into the RFP. That way, vendors
will either provide you exactly what you wanted - or nobody'll bid for
your business. In general, money is the ultimate lever.

	Dan, a lot of the folks from DEC who read news here pass your
input up into the system. Sometimes we manage to make a difference, and
sometimes we don't. I think Pete's reaction was just as much frustration
as yours - but generally a USENET posting isn't even worth the weight
of the paper it's printed on.

> According to the SPD for Ultrix
>4.2A (SPD 26.40.27) the version of NFS is v2.0.  Come on!  NFS 3.0 has been
>out for years and NFS 4.0 is getting a bit old too.

	One thing that sucks about licensing technologies is that a lot
of the time what you license needs to be fixed. For example (to keep
Digital out of it) I know that many vendors have had to put considerable
work into the lock manager for NFS to get it to actually do what it is
supposed to do (or even just try real hard!). When a new version comes
out, it's *just* like for you guys - a whole new set of bugs and gotchas
that the vendor needs to either fix, ignore, or deal with. That's one
reason why often vendors lag way behind in versions of technologies.

	Another reason technologies often lag versions is licensing.
When you license software from your competitor do you expect that
they are going to give you the most favorable price? There are a lot
of folks out there selling UNIX based on older kernel technologies
with years of fixes because they have a license to sell the older
stuff, at more favorable terms. I am not speaking in specific about
NFS here, but in general you have to be aware of the tradeoffs. It
adds to cost, and it makes you less competitive as a result. We're
in the land of endless tradeoffs, here.

	Now, all that being said - the customer is always right, and
I *agree* with you that it's reasonable to expect a working version
of a complete and relatively current version of software for one's
system. The fact that vendors have to grunt and sweat behind the
scenes to make these tradeoffs is *their* problem, not the customer's
and while hopefully my remarks above may serve to explain some of
what happens, they don't excuse it.

>You may feel free to call me a cynic, but from what I have seen curently
>and in the past from DEC regarding a commitment to UNIX(tm) it seems to
>be sorely lacking.

	I can't comment meaningfully on this, since it's an opinion. Let's
agree to a difference of opinion on the topic, if that's OK with you.

mjr.
-- 
	It is important to focus on writing software that is "adequate."
Having one's software be "good" or even "excellent" is over-rated. If
"good" were necessary or even important, DOS would not be the de facto
standard operating system.                          -notebooks of a heretic
Newsgroups: comp.unix.ultrix