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Received: by minnie.vk1xwt.ampr.org with NNTP id AA7398 ; Fri, 22 Jan 93 11:44:14 EST Xref: sserve comp.org.eff.talk:11808 comp.unix.bsd:10253 comp.unix.wizards:28293 comp.org.usenix:3155 Newsgroups: comp.org.eff.talk,comp.unix.bsd,comp.unix.wizards,comp.org.usenix Path: sserve!manuel.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!spool.mu.edu!sdd.hp.com!sgiblab!sgigate!sgi!igor!jbass From: jbass@igor.tamri.com (John Bass) Subject: ENOUGH! Re: BSDI/USL Lawsuit -- More Bad News for Human Beings... Message-ID: <1993Jan20.230616.25164@igor.tamri.com> Organization: Toshiba America MRI Inc, S. San Francisco, CA. References: <C0yK27.9Ly@csn.org> <1ja6bgINNh23@chnews.intel.com> <BZS.93Jan16205935@world.std.com> Distribution: inet Date: Wed, 20 Jan 93 23:06:16 GMT Lines: 75 After reading much of the topic it seems to be shaping up much as the Stalman vs. Industry debate. My views on such are neither short or to the point. First, the group at UCB, Joltz, BSDI, and others all have acted out a plan to attempt to place the AT&T/USL UNIX product into the public domain. A conspiracy based in false "Robin Hood" ethics. I doubt the Studios, Screen Actors Guild, or the courts would allow the Trekies to rewrite every line/scene of each movie/episode (while preserving the plot and fabric of each story) in an attempt to place the Startrek industry into the public domain so that freely copyable and editable movies could by enjoyed by the self proclaimed public. The fact is, that to do so is blatantly illegal ... no matter how much a bunch of highschool/college drama school wantabe actors might cry about freedom of expression while tring ... it's WRONG, WRONG, WRONG! >From my view what UCB, Joltz, BSDI and others have done has neither advanced the art nor been in the UNIX industries best interest. With forethought and malace they incrementally attempted to place the UNIX operating system product into the public domain by re-writting it line by line while leaving the framework and the fabric of the system unchanged ... same global design, major algorithms, data structures, internal interfaces, etc ... to what end? Only to attempt to destroy AT&T/USL UNIX as a commercial product. At best the debate has cost more than a million wasted man-hours that could have been more productively used to advance the art with a new design. Their actions have been WRONG, WRONG, WRONG! They should have followed the example of other university research teams and done some REAL research to give us a guiding example of what OS's should look like in the next century instead of perpetuating the mistakes and frail framework of UNIX's 1960/70's design. The vast majority of programmers rely on the success of their employers for continued paychecks to pay for the basics plus toys we wish for a comfortable living. While most of us truely enjoy our profession, I doubt most of us would continue if salaries topped out at $9k/year or we didn't have the dream of hitting the big one on some speculative development project/startup. The cry that Bell Labs release of UNIX killed OS research is not without merrit ... but to belly around the bar and cry in our beer over 386BSD is even more folly. Joltz has contended that his goal was to make 386BSD an operating system research tool/platform would have been most noble ... if it was atleast a 1990's design instead of a warmed over 1960's design. The truth is that if this was really his goal, there are dozens of better OS frameworks than the tired old UNIX design. There are many ways to build a POSIX compatable OS to advance the art ... 386BSD is not in my wildest dreams anything other than the bastard child of a tired old 1960's UNIX OS design. Bring on the MACH, SPRITE, PLAN9, and other truely inovative designs. Let the commercial guys milk the MSDOS & UNIX markets and pay our salaries as long as they can. In a few years MSDOS & UNIX are likely to be as interesting as IBM 370 OS/MVT, or 360 DOS, or 1620 executive, or DEC PDP11/RSTS or any of the other OS technolgies I sometime try to remember from my past that USED TO BE the main stream MUST KNOW. I LOVE UNIX and have been a wild supporter for 17 years ... but it has it limits, and just as MS-DOS, those limits are preventing us from moving forward to better technologies. It's time we get out of the herd mentality and view the USL vs BSDI lawsuit as it really is ... a botched attempt by BSDI & Joltz to plagiarize UNIX. Let's not make folk heros of them over their petty actions. Lets focus instead on the other teams that are bringing us our future. John Bass Consultant DMS Design