From: m05751@hypatia.data.st.statoil.no (Bjorn Larsen)
Subject: Re: Question for net.views column in UNIX Today!
Reply-To: bjla@statoil.no
Organization: Statoil, Norway
	<1992Apr1.161010.11988@auto-trol.com>
	<M05751.92Apr3145604@hypatia.data.st.statoil.no>
	<1992Apr3.155409.834@auto-trol.com>
Date: Mon, 6 Apr 1992 08:34:10 GMT


In article <1992Apr3.155409.834@auto-trol.com> marbru@auto-trol.com (Martin Brunecky) writes:
>   So besides being the oil shop, you have become also a software shop.
>   Or did you purchase any software which required (and/or shipped) the
>   MIT X11 distribution from some outside software vendor ?
>

We are a software shop. Have been for years. Show me a big company
using UNIX that hasn't become what you call a 'software shop' in the
process of implementing a UNIX strategy.

But using vanilla X is a *system administration* decision. Before we
are allowed to let a new version of an operating system go into
production, we are required to test the software. We are required to
demonstrate that the new version is stable, and that our 3rd-party and
locally developed systems run under the new version. The same holds
true for window systems. And the horror stories about vendor's
versions of X software are legion. We plain found it easier, simpler,
more cost-effective to use MIT's versions.

Please note that my argument isn't that we "need source, so that we
can hack it." We don't. We need to lessen the amount of work required
of us to support a number of different UNIX platforms. One way of
doing this is to run a single version of the windowing system across
them all. So we do. If a software vendor could provide us with
simultaneous, supported releases of X across all platforms that we
use, we'd probably buy it.


>   Any "customer" *can* decide to become a software shop and put the
>   MIT X11 distribution (and other freeware) on his/her system.
>   But as an independent software vendor, you would have a hard time
>   to sell your product with "and it requires this MIT X11, which is
>   sort of supported by MIT over the net, so better buy network 
>   connection".
>

Hopefully, you would have an even harder time selling a product with
"and it requires this XXX's MumboJumboWindows, which runs only on
XXX's workstations, so better buy workstations only from them, and
forget about X terminals and PC's with X-vision and such stuff".


>   The queustion, however, remains: why do some "customers" prefer
>   to use MIT *sample implementations* ? 
>   Because U*x  and other X vendors can't get their act together ?
>

All software has bugs. X implementations has bugs. MIT's X
implementations has bugs as well. By running MIT's sample
implementations we make an effort to confine ourselves to *one set* of
bugs across our entire set of systems. Makes stuff a bit easier to
keep track of. Stressing the fact that MIT calls its server
implementations "samples" is unfair to MIT. It means that vendors are
expected to modify them. It doesn't necessarily mean that such
modification is needed, or that the implementations are substandard in
any way.

Nowadays, upgrading your operating system often require upgrading your
vendor-supplied windowing system at the same time, running the risk of
blowing your applications away in the process. By decoupling the
windowing system from the operating system, and by running the same
version of the windowing system across all machine platforms, we are
able to do our testing of new X releases in a leisurely fashion, and
distribute them when we feel certain that they are stable enough to
run in production.


bjorn

---
Bjorn Hell Larsen                              Specialization is for insects.
bjla@statoil.no		                                      -- Lazarus Long
STATOIL DATA/TD
Stavanger, Norway