[Info-vax] Rethinking DECNET ?

[David Froble]

JF Mezei wrote:
> On 14-09-02 10:18, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
> 
>>> DEC bet the farm on OSI. At the time it looked (imho) like a good bet,
>> One of many mistakes!!
> 
> Betting the farm on OSI was not a mistake. At the time, governments
> mandates interoperability between different systems and mandated that
> all major computer manufacturers build a common network protocol aka:
> OSI.  (aka: solve  incompatibilities between IBM SNA, DECnet, Unix IP
> and various other proprietary protocols from the "bunch".)
> 
> 
> The mistake was not when DEC bet the farm on it. The mistake happened a
> bit later when DEC didn't realise that IP had become the common de-facto
> standard replacing OSI which was going nowhere.

The mistake was the people mandating something, and then not sticking by 
their decisions and actually using that something.  Don't blame DEC. 
They were trying to do the right thing.  Blame the governments that 
didn't stick to what they asked for.  Almost like breaking a contract.

I do believe that the governments were large enough customers that they 
could have enforced their mandates.