[Info-vax] READ and WRITE vs. SEARCH/OUTPUT

[Michael Kraemer]

Arne Vajhøj schrieb:

> Or made OSF/1 a bigger success. Many people consider OSF/1 aka
> DU aka Tru64 to be a lot better than Ultrix.

The first versions (up to V3) didn't look and feel
much different from Ultrix, apart from being
binary incompatible, of course.
Not a good prerequisite for success in competition with
the offerings from IBM, HP, Sun, etc.

> Note that they would still have been toast today, 

not necessarily, if they had a consistent product to sell.
IBM for example has a healthy Unix business,
as far as I can see.
If vendors shoot themselves in the foot, however,
like HP did with their Itanic adventure,
or DEC with the alpha transition,
they loose the race.

> but Unix
> would have given them 10-15 more years until Linux and Windows
> would have taken over anyway.

VMS' fate wouldn't be different, but its niche would have
been more comfortable with a healthy parent company
in the background.