[Info-vax] HP wins Oracle Itanium case

[David Froble]

Simon Clubley wrote:
> On 2012-08-20, David Froble <davef at tsoft-inc.com> wrote:
>> I really don't understand this attitude that Unix is so great and inevitable. 
>> Seems mostly a self fulfilling prophecy rather than based upon merit.  I guess 
>> if you say something enough, people might start believing it.
>>
> 
> Well for starters, in just one market segment, there's getting on for
> about 1 million new devices per day which contain the Linux kernel
> (if not the traditional userland tools) been activated by users.
> 
> In some markets, Unix is not only inevitable, it has already arrived and
> it's not going to displaced any time soon.
> 
> You will also find, even when the underlying OS is not really Unix, that
> a number of OS vendors have implemented a Unix-style POSIX programming
> environment. This appears to be very common in the RTOS world.
> 
> Simon.
> 

So, are you saying this is what happened, or are you saying that Unix won these 
jobs by merit?  What I'm asking about is merit.

If DEC had positioned VMS to perform all these jobs, and I'm talking 1990 or 
perhaps even before, including proper marketing and pricing, would it (VMS) have 
been feasible, or are you saying VMS could not do the job?

I know that DEC blew it by trying to milk every last penny in profits, with no 
vision of the future.  But what I'm saying is, I don't think Unix was a superior 
OS, and I do think that VMS could have been the de facto standard that Unix is 
today.

Address the merits of Unix ..