Unix dead??? (long message)
Mark Crispin
The following is from the August '86 issue of the DEC
Professional. It's amusing, if nothing else. I believe Dvorak
is a VMS/IBM PC junkie.
UNIX IS DEAD! WANNA FIGHT??
John C. Dvorak
Summer is over and a plague of UNIX programmers is upon us.
College kids, wet behind the ears; greenhorns, rubes. They pour
out of various campuses talking about ROFF and ED and pipes and
paths, and they look for work. They're impressed with
themselves. After all, they've learned the language of a secret
society. If they're from Berkeley, they've learned the secret
language of a secret society.
They all program in C, and wherever they go they change the
prompts on whatever computer they get their hands on so it
resembles a UNIX machine. They creative ones go into whatever
operating system they have to use and find a symbol or token
table; then they change the commands to look like UNIX. The
*more* creative ones customize the commands further so they are
even more cryptic and weird than UNIX. Whether these people ever
do any real work is a mystery.
"Yes, weeell, to list my files I merely type P; MJOI."
"P; MJOI?? What they heck does that mean?"
"It just so happens that if I put my coffee cup on the
keyboard and rock it a certain way, that's what it will type; so,
I do that to list my files!"
While it's good to see these kids doing something other than
wasting quarters on endless games of Pole Position, I'm not so
sure UNIX dabbling is much better for society.
I feel this way, not so much because UNIX is an
old-fashioned OS that has a special place reserved in hell, but
because its time has passed. UNIX is dead, but no one bothered
to claim the body. It lives like a zombie on college computers
and serves as a gateway to all sorts of weird networks.
UNIX haunts marketing men, too. I remember when Fortune
Systems was getting started. That's about the time that a bumper
crop of college-bred UNIX drones was dumped like mulch into the
marketplace. They all were singing the praises of UNIX to the
low end of the market.
So, I went to this strategy demonstration given by one of
the vice presidents of Fortune Systems. These guys surely were
ahead of their time, and it was a perfect example of having too
much bad information. The Fortune 16:32 (or was it 32:16? In
either case it looked like a biblical reference...) said unto us:
"Come to me for thine microprocessor and spend, spend, spend!"
it was the first camel of microcomputers. Like a horse designed
by committee (aka camel), the Fortune was preceded by too much
market research. A lot of this was skewed by the hordes of UNIX
maniacs running through the valley waving the UNIX flag.
First of all, I was shown a slide that clearly showed the
Motorola 68000 as the world's greatest microprocessor.
The 68000 beat everything. Personally, I can't remember
what it was pitted against -- probably the 8080, the 6502 and a
4004. Whatever, this was the chip to use.
Then the company did some market research and, because
writers, pundits, researchers, secretaries, publishers, and
programmers all said that UNIX was the next hot operating system,
they chose it for their own little machine.
The UNIX community yelled, "Yea!" But, they continued to
use free university-provided time, and none of the UNIX hackers
bought the little UNIX boxes. Well, that was okay, it was
intended to be a business machine, anyway.
Ooops! Gee, it seems that the businessmen couldn't cope
with UNIX and "$ ls /bin/pr -p -t" or any other such nonsense.
So they had to build a performance-sapping shell around the
system, code name: SLOW. So much for the UNIX world takeover. I
figured that would be the last I heard of it.
No so. Last week, a guy walked up to me as I was writing
this column on a portable computer in a San Francisco bistro. he
had been reading it through binoculars from across the room.
"So, you don't like UNIX, huh, Dvorak? What's better, MS-DOS??
Hahahaha!"
"IBM's VM is the happening operating system," was my quick
rejoinder.
"VM doesn't run on minis and micros. It's just a shell,
anyway," he shot back.
"Is not!"
"Is too!"
"Is not!"
He took a swing at me and I caught him a good one in the
stomach. We punched each other for a good 15 minutes. All of a
sudden he stopped and yelled,
"Hey, what's going on here? Where am I? Wow, I remember my
name! What happened?"
"We were fighting about UNIX," I said.
"UNIX? I was fighting about UNIX? My God...I was
hypnotized!"
True story.
So, try snapping your fingers in the face of one of these
UNIX maniacs next time he flies off the handle.
See what happens.
-------
Bob Knight
are soon parted".
Judging by Mr. Dvorak's output that I've read, any publisher who pays him
money to be a seer with respect to the computing market is a fool.
I don't doubt that the people who founded SUN read this article. And they're
laughing. All the way to the bank.
Bob
-------
Chuq Von Rospach- Lord of the OtherRealms
Posting Dvorak's column from the Dec Professional, content discussions
aside, puts the poster and the network at potential legal liability.
We are NOT above the law, no matter how much some people might like us
to believe. This sort of garbage should not happen.
chuq
Mark Crispin
make sweeping statements about what the law says when lawyers are much
more reticent on the issue. Individual lawyers may have opinions, and
certain opinionated laymen may have their beliefs, but only the courts
are authoritative. A reasonable argument can be made that passing on
an editorial from a trade publication to various academic and trade
distributions for the purposes of alerting the individuals in that
distribution to the opinions expressed in that editorial is protected
under the Fair Use Doctrine.
I wonder if there is any relation beyond coincidence that both parties
who flamed about "posting copyrighted material is illegal" are from
SUN. Maybe this is a plot by SUN to close off people's brains so they
will sign any terrible license agreement SUN comes up with.
Sorry for passing this to all the mailing lists.
-------
Chuq Von Rospach- Lord of the OtherRealms
> make sweeping statements about what the law says when lawyers are much
> more reticent on the issue.
There is nothing that irritates ME more than someone who breaks the law
and tries to bluster their way out of it. I quote from the SAME issue
of Dec Professional:
COPYRIGHT 1986 by Professional Press, Inc. All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form
without written permission of the publisher.
> A reasonable argument can be made that passing on an editorial from a
> trade publication to various academic and trade distributions for the
> purposes of alerting the individuals in that distribution to the
> opinions expressed in that editorial is protected under the Fair Use
> Doctrine.
Fair Use covers EXCERPTS. That wasn't, by any sense of the word. It was
a clear copyright violation.
> I wonder if there is any relation beyond coincidence that both parties
> who flamed about "posting copyrighted material is illegal" are from
> SUN. Maybe this is a plot by SUN to close off people's brains so they
> will sign any terrible license agreement SUN comes up with.
Mark, besides bordering on the purely slanderous, you're flaming nuts. It
just happens that there are a couple of people who happen to believe in
following the rules. I happen to be a writer, and so copyright is an
interest of mine as well as way of life. The fact that two people from
anywhere mention it should have made you wonder whether there was a basis
in the accusation, not more defensive.
I'm also sorry for passing this to all the mailing lists, but I couldn't
let Marks name calling go uncommented on. You're wrong Mark, and I don't
care how much you tell, that was a FLAGRANT copyright violation. It YOU
wrote a piece of software, and I took a copy and gave it away on CompuServe,
you'd scream and yell until the walls fell down. Why do you think you have
the right to do the same thing to someone else?
This is my last public word on the subject. Please, folks. don't ignore
copyright. You can put yourself at legal and financial risk. You can also
put your home site at risk, as well as the entire network. It just ain't
worth it. We ARE NOT ABOVE THE LAW.
chuq
all...@ncoast.uucp
+---------------
| The following is from the August '86 issue of the DEC
| Professional. It's amusing, if nothing else. I believe Dvorak
| is a VMS/IBM PC junkie.
|
| UNIX IS DEAD! WANNA FIGHT??
| John C. Dvorak
|
| Summer is over and a plague of UNIX programmers is upon us.
| First of all, I was shown a slide that clearly showed the
| Motorola 68000 as the world's greatest microprocessor.
|
| The 68000 beat everything. Personally, I can't remember
| what it was pitted against -- probably the 8080, the 6502 and a
| 4004. Whatever, this was the chip to use.
| "We were fighting about UNIX," I said.
|
| "UNIX? I was fighting about UNIX? My God...I was
| hypnotized!"
|
| True story.
|
| So, try snapping your fingers in the face of one of these
| UNIX maniacs next time he flies off the handle.
|
| See what happens.
Some of us have committed our lives to turning a certain research-born OS into
a viable business operating environment. This, however, reeks of the same
kind of idiocy as the churches who consider FRP games to be devil's-games.
However, I won't throw in the towel just yet...
You may tell Mr. John Dvorak that (1) the 68000 is much better than the
alternatives (except for the ``upgraded'' 68000 yclept the 68020) --FACT;
and (2) Show me the VM hypervisor running on something other than an IBM 30xx
processor. (If it exists, I'd be interested. VM *does* have possibilities;
but it's not an OS, it's a hypervisor. CMS is a piece of sh*t. (I have
personal experience in this. A bastard hybrid of CP/M and OS/360 we don't
need. (CP/M on virtual punched cards? Gaak! It's as disgusting to use as it
sounds.)
I *do* admit that Unix has problems, however. The major reason is that Unix
has been until recently a research OS; AT&T is slowly turning it into a
commercially-viable OS, and UCB isn't doing so at all. Nevertheless, it is
quite capable of being a commercial OS if the proper work is done for it. (I
don't mean UNaXcess. I *do* know the difference between a BBS and a shell.)
It is possible to present Unix's filesystem as something familiar to the
business user, and also possible to hide the ``strange names'' by means of
shell scripts, sh functions, C-shell aliases (most Unix resellers provide the
2.9BSD C-shell), etc. (I have, in fact, *two* ways to present Unix. One has
the advantage that it uses Unix's directory structure to emulate for free some
rather expensive programs available for MS-DOS; it's the basis for the shell
I'm writing.)
If Mr. Dvorak isn't reading the net, someone forward this to him. He may get
an eye-opener or two; but I doubt it, as he sounds just as religious as the
Unix users he describes. (I haven't seen any of that breed yet. I daresay
they exist, but I'm not interested in a minority of idiots.)
++Brandon
--
---------------- /--/ Brandon S. Allbery UUCP: decvax!cwruecmp!
/ / /|\/ Tridelta Industries, Inc. ncoast!tdi2!brandon
---- -------- /-++ 7350 Corporate Blvd. PHONE: +1 216 974 9210
/ / /---, ---- Mentor, Ohio 44060 SYSOP: UNaXcess/ncoast
/ / / / / / -- HOME -- (216) 781-6201 24 hrs.
/ / / / / / 6615 Center St. Apt. A1-105 ARPA: ncoast!allbery%
---- -----~ ---- Mentor, Ohio 44060-4101 case.CSNET@csnet-relay
George Robbins
>
> The following is from the August '86 issue of the DEC
>Professional. It's amusing, if nothing else. I believe Dvorak
>is a VMS/IBM PC junkie.
>
compared the wonderful VMS BACKUP utility to the wimpy Unix 'ar' backup utility?
If more unix sites wasted time on the DEC professional the rag would probably
be laughed out of existance. Unfortunatly, all they have to do is publish
enough half decent VMS articles to sell their advertising...
--
George Robbins - now working with, uucp: {ihnp4|seismo|caip}!cbmvax!grr
but no way officially representing arpa: cbmvax!g...@seismo.css.GOV
Commodore, Engineering Department fone: 215-431-9255 (only by moonlite)
Jay Batson
>> A reasonable argument can be made that passing on an editorial from a
>> trade publication to various academic and trade distributions for the
>> purposes of alerting the individuals in that distribution to the
>> opinions expressed in that editorial is protected under the Fair Use
>> Doctrine.
>
>Fair Use covers EXCERPTS. That wasn't, by any sense of the word. It was
>a clear copyright violation.
>
Ok. Lets set the record straight on Fair Use. This is a
doctrine that says, in effect, "there are certain uses of
copyrighted material that appear to have legitimate use, and
don't harm the copyright owner in any way, so we'll say that
reproduction of the material does not violate the copyright
laws."
In determining whether a given use falls within this area, the
courts "balance" four factors. They are:
1) The purpose and character of the use, including
whether the use is commercial or for non-profit,
educational purposes;
2) the nature of the copyrighted work;
3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used
relative to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
4) the effect of the use on the potential market for
the value of the copyrighted work.
See Financial Information, Inc. v. Moody's Investors
Service, Inc. 751 F.2d 501 (2d Cir. 1984) and
17 U.S.C. 107.
Note that these four factors are "balanced" against each
other. Chuq, ask yourself:
1) was the reproduction of the article on the net done
to enhance the reputation/give commercial advantage/
otherwise promote the person who reproduced it? NO.
2) was the article one which has intrinsic value, like
a textbook or software program was? No. It was opinion.
3) was the whole article reproduced? Yes.
4) did the reposting affect the copyright holders
ability to re-sell the article again? No. IN FACT,
if anything, it may have gone some folks to go out and
_buy_ the magazine, just to see how bad the rag is.
What is the net balance? Probably on the side of
allowing the posting as fair use. We aren't judges, but we
can use the same tests they do, and decide for ourselves how
to act on the net. We don't need to be frightened off by
incorrect, blanket statements like Chuq's that say "all
re-postings are violations, and we should never do them."
Just be sure to do the balancing test for yourselves.
--------
"Stop it!! Stop it now. This is getting silly again, and this silliness
has _got_ to stop. Go on to the next sketch. Go on. Turn this camera o "
Jay Batson
ihnp4!onecom!\
isis!jay
seismo!{hao,nbires}!/
Guy Harris
> John C. Dvorak
> "IBM's VM is the happening operating system," was my quick
> rejoinder.
You're right, this article is certainly amusing - good joke, John! Of
course, he isn't serious about this; VM certainly isn't happening on any IBM
PC's out there, with the *possible* exception of the PC-XT/370, and I'm not
sure even that is running *real* VM. VM isn't going to happen on any PCs
until you start seeing recruitment ads reading "IBM needs a few hundred
experts in 370 assembler and the Intel 8086 family to rewrite an operating
system made of lots of 370 assembler code and (maybe) PL/S for a completely
different machine with the opposite byte order and a different
floating-point format."
Of course, all the stories in the trade rags (about the same page size as
the National Midnight Star and, at times, about as accurate) about how
people are looking forward to running not only VM but *MVS* on their PCs are
even more amusing.
Another good joke Dvorak stuck in was the remark about cryptic UNIX
commands - a lot of business people seem to be able to handle cryptic
MS-DOS commands on their PCs.
--
Guy Harris
{ihnp4, decvax, seismo, decwrl, ...}!sun!guy
g...@sun.com (or g...@sun.arpa)
Carl S. Gutekunst
>I wonder if there is any relation beyond coincidence that both parties
>who flamed about "posting copyrighted material is illegal" are from
>SUN. Maybe this is a plot by SUN to close off people's brains so they
>will sign any terrible license agreement SUN comes up with.
I haven't had any problems with Sun's license agreements: a lot of their best
stuff they give away free! (RPC, XDR, user level NFS....)
Lets get real. If you are a writer, you are going to be very concerned about
unauthorized reproduction of copyrighted work, especially when the medium has
never been examined by the courts. And aside from the legal issues, there
remains the question of whether it's *RIGHT* to reproduce someone else's work.
I feel I have the best chance of being both *legal* and *right* by limiting
myself to excerpts, or by just making a reference. If people really care about
it that much, they can go buy a copy (or sneak a peak on the newstand :-)).
Was it *right* to reproduce Dvorak's article? Probably not. (1) I don't see
much point in posting a satirical article by a relatively unknown author from
a low-credibility publication to be held up on the net for public ridicule.
(2) We already have enough Unix versus the world discusssions going; we don't
need any more.
<csg>
Barry Shein
>Isn't this the same magazine that had the 'Special Unix Issue' last
>year that compared the wonderful VMS BACKUP utility to the wimpy Unix
>'ar' backup utility?
>If more unix sites wasted time on the DEC professional the rag would probably
>be laughed out of existance.
Hey, wait a minute...I published an article in this magazine on UNIX
and it was absolutely correct in every detail :-)
To shed a little light from my experience with them, I had no
particular reason to believe anyone had ever critically read my
submission before publishing it (other than the people involved in the
article's format and perhaps writing style.)
It isn't exactly a refereed journal. They are biased towards VMS
inasmuch as DEC is and (hence) DEC's customers [at least from the
magazine's point of view.]
I'm mixed, on the one hand, yes, the quality can be quite low. On the
other hand, you might see most any view published eventually as they
have fairly loose editorial policies.
I think the best way to view the Dec Professional and other, similar,
trade magazines is that they're kinda like USENET or these mailing
lists (only cheaper :-). To be read with a grain of salt probably for
ideas, comments etc that you can judge for yourself, not as gospel.
And of course, the ads, which are useful.
As for Dvorak, he speaks with the same tone of desperation of other
VMSoids, blaming UNIX for the inevitable collapse of their favorite
piece of malengineering.
Maybe, I suppose a monopoly would help their cause.
Look, there's two ways to make yourself feel taller in this world,
grow or try to make everyone else stand in a hole.
Dvorak has clearly chosen the latter path and it's pretty pathetic.
As with politics, be very suspicious of anyone who can only talk about
what s/he doesn't like and leaves one only to wonder what it is s/he
does like and why.
-Barry Shein, Boston University
Dick Dunn
UNIX/VMS flame.)
Regarding Mark Crispin's reposting of an anti-UNIX flame from the 8/86
"DEC Professional" (sic) -
DEC is showing various signs of being unable to decide whether they want to
be a closed, "us and them" sort of company or want to participate in an
open world where hardware and software both come from various sources. You
can pick examples like the attitude toward the BI bus, or the printer shown
at DECUS which will apparently only talk DECNET, or in their attitude
toward UNIX.
The problem is roughly this: If you can lock people into your systems,
you've got a more stable captive market. If you open up your systems, you
can lose piecemeal to other vendors. But you can also sell to a larger
market, and you can sell, e.g., peripherals, to people who aren't your
standard locked-in customers. DEC is pulled both ways more than most
manufacturers--they're large enough to be tempted to try the dominant,
insular approach but they're not large enough to be sure to be able to do
it (meaning simply: they're not IBM).
With UNIX, the problems come up in spades: Who asked anybody to go write an
operating system for DEC computers? It's particularly confounding because
it undercuts their software and sells their hardware! Watching DEC from
the outside, I would have to guess that there are massive internal wars
over VMS vs UNIX. I guess when the radical VMS faction gets the upper
hand, you get the sort of tripe that Dvorak wrote (Dvorak being the author
of the article that Crispin posted).
It's pretty clear that Dvorak's words won't really do VMS any good, nor
UNIX any harm - in fact, probably just the opposite. But they're the sort
of war chant which will whip up a frenzy in one small part of the VMS
camp. The mere publication of that sort of article says a lot about DEC's
problems. Unfortunately, one of the attitudes that it suggests is a sort
of desperation--if you can't attack substance, go for an ad hominem attack.
I doubt that VMS is really that seriously threatened--it's not a terrible
system and it's got some things that UNIX lacks--but the article seems like
a vicious rejoinder to SOMEthing. (It's reminiscent of blasts against UNIX
that I saw in a couple of random DTACK Grounded issues once.)
I think DEC needs to decide whether they're going to become serious players
in an open, competitive marketplace (of which UNIX is a vital part) or try
to take their customers off to one side where they can see that they get
only DEC hardware and software. I rather hope DEC will decide to join the
party, because I think they could do a lot of good--they're big enough to
be able to force things to happen but also technologically capable enough
to force them in the right direction.
--
Dick Dunn {hao,ucbvax,allegra}!nbires!rcd (303)444-5710 x3086
...If you get confused just listen to the music play...
Brett Galloway
>I don't doubt that the people who founded SUN read this article. And they're
>laughing. All the way to the bank.
to sit on its campus network, namely the Stanford University Network (hence
the name SUN). SUN's commercial market came later.
--
-------------
Brett Galloway
{pesnta,twg,ios,qubix,turtlevax,tymix,vecpyr,certes,isi}!wjvax!brett
Bill Shannon
> >I don't doubt that the people who founded SUN read this article. And they're
> >laughing. All the way to the bank.
> Actually, SUN had a guaranteed market, selling 68k unix boxes to a university
> to sit on its campus network, namely the Stanford University Network (hence
> the name SUN). SUN's commercial market came later.
The name of the company is "Sun", it is not an acronym. SUN is indeed
the Stanford University Network, and that's where we got our start, but
we broke away from that very early on.
Bill Shannon
ddavis
Come on Chuq. I think that copywrite laws exist to make sure that
only the original author of a work gains financial or other benefit from
it. Posting to the net, with credit given to the original author and
publication, is hardly detrimental to the author's interests. I don't
think that Mr. Dvorak would even want to bring suit against the net for
such a violation. Is it even a violation? Lighten up. Your example of
posting a piece of software to a net without the author's permission is
not valid since such an incident would serve to deprive the author of
expected monetary return. What is Mr. Dvorak or DEC Professional losing
via the posting of such an article to the net?
Frank Godek
UCB
Dave Horsfall <VK2KFU>
> Isn't this the same magazine that had the 'Special Unix Issue' last year that
> compared the wonderful VMS BACKUP utility to the wimpy Unix 'ar' backup utility?
The author obviously was in search of Unix backup utilities, and stopped
reading at page 1 !!!
--
Dave Horsfall VK2KFU ISD: +61 2 438-1266 VTL: 248181000
SUN Computer Australia STD: (02) 438-1266
20 Waltham St ACS: dave@pta, dave@runx
Artarmon NSW 2064 UUCP: seismo!munnari!pta.oz!dave
AUSTRALIA ARPA: munnari!pta.oz!dave@SEISMO
"ADA - from the people who brought you COBOL"
Phil Staub
>In article <5...@cbmvax.cbmvax.cbm.UUCP>, g...@cbmvax.cbm.UUCP (George Robbins) writes:
>> Isn't this the same magazine that had the 'Special Unix Issue' last year that
>> compared the wonderful VMS BACKUP utility to the wimpy Unix 'ar' backup utility?
>
>The author obviously was in search of Unix backup utilities, and stopped
>reading at page 1 !!!
>--
I think the point was that the author did not even read page 1, since 'ar'
is a library generator/archiver, not a backup utility.
Phil Staub
Tektronix, Inc.
ISI Engineering
P.O. Box 3500
Vancouver, Washington 98668
C1-904, (206) 253-5634
..tektronix!tekigm!phils
Matt Crawford
>
> What is Mr. Dvorak or DEC Professional losing
> via the posting of such an article to the net?
Face.
Nick Andrew
Its hard for me to consider Dvorak's editorial seriously. The man's
probably jealous because he doesn't understand Unix ... or can't keep up
with the "wet behind the ears" students he criticizes.
Nick Andrew
In message <15...@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> dda...@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU (ddavis) writes:
> What is Mr. Dvorak or DEC Professional losing
> via the posting of such an article to the net?
> Frank Godek
> UCB
Yes indeed? What? Only professional reputation. However the purpose
of a magazine is to distribute text [etc]. See somebody's previous network
message on tests used to determine legal standing. In this case the
editorial has merely been reproduced on a relatively unfriendly medium [ie
the network]. Dvorak and "DEC Professional" are living in a dream
world if they expect their words to reach only friendly ears
[the captive readership] or conversely: if they expect that their
readership be only subjected to pro-VMS opinion.
Regards, Nick Andrew.
Edward Vielmetti
overblown rumors, mostly. Case in point: He just recently raved
about a communications program for PCs called Procomm. That's
hardly new news to me--I had an early version a year ago, and the
current release (2.3) for *six months* now.
I conclude that his information is running about 6 months behind,
not too good for the supposed "cutting edge" of information.
Edward Vielmetti, U-M Computing Center, ihnp4!umich!umix!emv