[Info-vax] Anyone interested in another public access system

[Bill Gunshannon]

In article <00A89E2F.E303ABEF at ssrl.slac.stanford.edu>,
	winston at SSRL.SLAC.STANFORD.EDU (Alan Winston - SSRL Central Computing) writes:
> In article <74c6h5F13742pU2 at mid.individual.net>, billg999 at cs.uofs.edu (Bill Gunshannon) writes:
>>In article <9Iqdnf8RcM-4JH3UnZ2dnUVZ_iydnZ2d at giganews.com>,
>>	"Richard B. Gilbert" <rgilbert88 at comcast.net> writes:
>>That is probably because at its best VMS was never more than minimaly
>>POSIX compliant.
> 
> (1) It was compliant enough to get Posix certification 

At what level?  There were levels of POSIX compliance.

>                                                        when some "real' 
> Unixes didn't have it.  

Why pay good money to get some third-party to say you are what you are?
POSIX was derived from Unix, not the other way around.

>                         The point of doing that was to be able to compete
> for contracts that required Posix certification.  However, somehow Windows
> was allowed as an alternative to Posix-certified systems on the DOD contracts
> that required it.
> 
> As it turned  out, the market didn't actually care about Posix certification,
> and it didn't actually care about the OSF standard.  Digital bet a lot on the
> idea that following those standards was the way to go, and spent time and 
> money on the Posix-certified VMS subsystem and on developing OSF/1 (which 
> became Digital Unix which became Tru-64 Unix, and which they sent mixed
> signals about to their MIPS customers until they pissed them all  off enough
> to go away).  These failures weren't technical failures - they were mis-set
> goals.
> 
> POSIX wasn't supposed to specify everything an operating system was.  It was
> supposed to be something customers could spec that provided a level playing
> field for vendors.  OSF/1 was supposed to be an alternative to Sun/AT&T having
> an unfair advantage over the Unix standard (which proved pretty moot in the
> long run).
> 
> (2) Posix only offered one shell, last I looked.  For the purpose of porting
> Unix software, the Unix portability effort of the last five years or so, which
> includes a lot of compatibility changes to the C runtime (and DECC$x logicals
> to control the behavior), and the GNV projects's BASH shell, have been a lot
> more effective than Posix was.
> 
> But the VMS Posix effort wasn't 'minimally compliant'; it was fully certified.

Again, at what level?  VMS never had fork() which is a requirement in
one of the POSIX levels.

> It just turned out that nobody cared.

Which was a good thing, in the long run.

bill

-- 
Bill Gunshannon          |  de-moc-ra-cy (di mok' ra see) n.  Three wolves
billg999 at cs.scranton.edu |  and a sheep voting on what's for dinner.
University of Scranton   |
Scranton, Pennsylvania   |         #include <std.disclaimer.h>