"It's snake oil, absolute snake oil"

[Sharan Kalwani]

Just when you thought the latest round of VMS vs. UNIX wars
was tapering off, now comes this :-). I just came across the latest issue
of Computer Systems News, YAITR (Yet Another Industry Trade Rag) and saw
the above qoute. I append the following lines taken from the March 14 issue
for your amusement:
--- start of quote --

Asked to comment on the recent uproar over the AT&T and
Sun Microsystems Inc. Unix development alliance, Olsen
without mentioning particular companies, likened some vendors
of Unix products to "snake oil" salesmen and said the claim
that Unix will resolve incompatibility problems within
multi-vendor networks is "a naive idea."

"It still won't resolve the problem of interchangeability", he
said, adding that the operating system is just one of the
several components needed to achieve compatibility. He cited
windowing ability and communications protocols as two other major
components.

Olsen went on to call Unix "one of the most proprietary operating
systems". But he expressed suport for standards and development
of the POSIX interface, saying that will resolve the problem
of making disparate operating systems compatible.

"But that's the unimportant part of making things interchangeable",
he said. Compatibility "doesn't come by stamping Unix on the label.
It doesn't solve everything; there is no magic. It's snake oil,
absolute snake oil," he said.

-- end of quote ---

I leave to you folks to let us know what you think of the above.

----
Usual disclaimers apply. Unix is a regd. trademark of AT&T, etc, etc.
--
sharan "alf" kalwani. 110 east warren detroit mi 48201. (313) 833-0710 x411
USENET: ...!{ihnp4!mibte, uunet!umix, philabs!fmsrl7, ucbvax!mtxinu}!mcf!shan
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DEC's EASYNET: DECWRL::"umix.cc.umich.edu!mcf!shan"

[Barry Shein]

re: quote from Ken Olson...

I think when they put him out to pasture a whole lot of folks, both
Unix and VMS, w/in and w/o DEC will breathe a lot easier.

Aren't you DEC guys glad I could say that, go ahead, I saw that
smirk, I know, I know...

Bring back Gordon Bell :-)

-Barry Shein, Boston University

[964[jak]-Robert Halloran]

In article <1...@mcf.UUCP> sh...@mcf.UUCP (Sharan Kalwani) writes:
>
> Just when you thought the latest round of VMS vs. UNIX wars
>was tapering off, now comes this :-). I just came across the latest issue
>of Computer Systems News, YAITR (Yet Another Industry Trade Rag) and saw
>the above qoute. I append the following lines taken from the March 14 issue
>for your amusement:
> --- start of quote --
>
> Asked to comment on the recent uproar over the AT&T and
> Sun Microsystems Inc. Unix development alliance, Olsen
> without mentioning particular companies, likened some vendors
> of Unix products to "snake oil" salesmen and said the claim
> that Unix will resolve incompatibility problems within
> multi-vendor networks is "a naive idea."

> -- end of quote ---

Of course, Ken Olsen also made the following comment in 1977:

"There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in their home."

:-):-):-):-):-):-):-):-):-)

Bob Halloran
=========================================================================
UUCP: {ATT-ACC, rutgers}!mtune!rkh DDD: (201)251-7514
Internet: r...@mtune.ATT.COM evenings ET
USPS: 19 Culver Ct, Old Bridge NJ 08857
Disclaimer: These opinions are solely MINE; any correlation with AT&T
policies or positions is coincidental and unintentional.
Quote: "There were incidents & accidents, there were hints & allegations"
-- Paul Simon
=========================================================================

[HO]

> Olsen went on to call Unix "one of the most proprietary operating system
>

> "But that's the unimportant part of making things interchangeable",
> he said. Compatibility "doesn't come by stamping Unix on the label.
> It doesn't solve everything; there is no magic. It's snake oil,
> absolute snake oil," he said.

Do you want to know what is snake oil? DEC gets UNIX System V,
from AT&T, and everything comes along with it. Then they put in
an UDA driver, and called it DEC UNIX System V. With the UDA driver,
they broke "sar -d", so instead of fixing sar, they wrote a
"dusar". With the DEC new sar, one has to be root to look at
disk activity. Also, the output of dusar is definitely VMSish, ie,
it has brain-damaged headers. Try it, you will know what I mean.

Also Olsen said DEC UNIX System V is better than AT&T System V. I
read that in Digital News, when DEC lost that court battle about
System V being too vender proprietary. How is it that DEC is better?
By putting in 50 people at Holmdel with less that a few years of
UNIX know-how?

Last I heard, the DEC System V's uarea is going to be 6K instead
of the now 2K. Yes, I know they are in the business of selling
memory broads. Amdahl's UTS, which does a hell of a lot than
DEC System V, has 4K uarea. Of course, UTS's uarea has to be
in core all the time. That kind of defeat the purpose of
separating the proc from user, and Amdahl is also in the
business of selling memory broads.

Paul Ho