Return to BSD News archive
Xref: sserve comp.unix.bsd:3365 comp.org.eff.talk:8544 Path: sserve!manuel!munnari.oz.au!samsung!nighthawk.clearpoint.com!transfer!bu.edu!att!pacbell.com!decwrl!pa.dec.com!nntpd2.cxo.dec.com!nntpd.lkg.dec.com!sousa.ltn.dec.com!paradis From: paradis@sousa.ltn.dec.com (Jim Paradis) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd,comp.org.eff.talk,alt.suit.att-bsdi Subject: Re: USL's Pieper profiled in UNIXWorld (selections) Message-ID: <1482@sousa.ltn.dec.com> Date: 9 Aug 92 12:01:53 GMT References: <EeUTz9a00WBMQ60ukF@andrew.cmu.edu> Followup-To: comp.unix.bsd Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation, Littleton, MA Lines: 46 fl0p+@andrew.cmu.edu (Frank T Lofaro) writes: : That is already happening. Look at Linux (a Finnish product). In 5 : months (or less!) it will really destroy Destiny's destiny. Linux is : free, pretty stable and complete even though currently still in beta. : Some commerical UN*X's (e.g. Ultrix, DEC's BSD UN*X) have some rather : nasty bugs that Linux doesn't, so don't automatically assume that free : software doesn't measure up to commerical standards. The only commerical : standards it won't measure up to are the commerical standards of : bullshit [...] Sorry, I have to disagree. Although Linux is a magnificent achievement, it will *not* eat Destiny's lunch. The reason is, quite simply, that "software" is *much* more than bits and bytes on floppy disks. For hackers like you and me, that might be the part we care about most. On the other hand, having been in the industry for a few years, I can tell you that for real world customers with real bucks, the bits and bytes are *almost* incidental to the total product! There's documentation, and service, and support, and training, and all kinds of *other* things you can't really get via anon ftp. Although Destiny might be mediocre as an operating system, USL is much more equipped to deliver all the *other* goods than Linus is. In "The Mythical Man-Month", Fred Brooks postulates that it takes three times as much effort to produce a program *product* than to produce a program, three times as much effort to produce a programming *system* than to produce a program, and therefore *nine* times as much effort to produce a "programming systems product", which is what UNIX is. Linus has put in the first three times -- that of producing a programming system. He'd have to retriple his efforts *again* to turn this into a product. When I first got out of school, I wondered why software companies could release such buggy trash and still make money. The answer was that they made up for it in other areas... the other two-thirds or eight-ninths of the product, depending on product type. [Of course, my protests that if we didn't put in so many bugs in the first place it wouldn't matter what our bug-tracking response was fell on deaf ears... 8-) ] -- Jim Paradis (paradis@tallis.enet.dec.com) Working for DEC, speaking for myself.