*BSD News Article 31601


Return to BSD News archive

Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!jacobi.maths.monash.edu.au!billm
From: billm@jacobi.maths.monash.edu.au (WE Metzenthen)
Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.development
Subject: All UNIXs should merge!!!
Date: 14 Jun 1994 01:32:34 GMT
Organization: Monash University
Lines: 43
Message-ID: <2tj1bi$b6c@harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au>
NNTP-Posting-Host: jacobi.maths.monash.edu.au
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2]

[ Article crossposted from comp.os.linux.admin ]
[ Author was matt.kangas@analog.com ]
[ Posted on Thu, 19 May 1994 18:48:31 GMT ]

In article <1994May19.155350.9049@liberty.uc.wlu.edu> zbuckner@sage.wlu.edu (Zach Buckner) writes:
>This may sound like a stupid question, but why can't all UN*Xs merge to
>form one single operating system, which would run on MANY different computer
>types?

You're right... it is a stupid question. People have been asking this for
at least the last decade, and it's still a stupid question. ;-)

>I know that UNIX has been around for a while, but sooner or later..... There's
>going to be a need for organization. A program, in my opinion should run
>on any UNIX with compilation.
>All the UNIX makers should merge to form a committee which SETS STANDARDS. If
>a change needs to be made, it is mentioned at a committee meeting, and all
>UNIXs change.

Har har. And you think committees get anything accomplished? A committee
would have killed Linux off long ago... it is only because it is the 
product of anarchy that it has succeeded. (Think about that for a while...)
Take a look into the history of UNIX, laddy - why BSD is different from
System V at all (thank goodness!), what happened to Univel and the 
OSF (Hint: Open Software Foundation is an oxymoron), etc.

If corporate committes decided everything, we'd all be using AIX. Yow!

		-Matt

-- 
 . . . . . , , , , , , , , , , , . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Matt Kangas `,`,`,`,`,`,`,`,`,`,`,"(Thus we join television in leading people 
matt.kangas@analog.com `,`,`,`,`,`,`,`,`,`,`,` to kill thoughtlessly.)"  -RMS
DSP Tools Group, Analog Devices Inc `,`,`,`,`,`,`,`,`,`,`[Emacs, you know...]

--
Bill Metzenthen
Mathematics Department
Monash University
Clayton, Victoria, Australia
email: billm@vaxc.cc.monash.edu.au
       billm@euler.maths.monash.edu.au