[Info-vax] VMS survivability

[Dan Cross]

In article <tsug6g$hia4$4 at dont-email.me>,
Arne Vajhøj  <arne at vajhoej.dk> wrote:
>On 2/19/2023 4:35 PM, Dan Cross wrote:
>> In article <tsu14t$g5l7$1 at dont-email.me>,
>> Arne Vajhøj  <arne at vajhoej.dk> wrote:
>>> But there was also hardware cost. Solaris, AIX, HP-UX and
>>> Tru64 was running on expensive hardware while Linux ran
>>> on cheaper x84-64 hardware (Solaris did also support x86-64
>>> besides the primary platform SPARC).
>> 
>> x86_64 didn't exist when this was happening.  It came in
>> 2000 or so.
>
>Linux started on x86.
>
>But it did not kill the commercial Unixes until x86-64 had
>arrived.
>
>In 2000 commercial Unix on RISC CPU's was still the thing
>that companies ported to.

By 2000 the economics were obvious.

>>> But there were also free Unixes running on x86-64 available
>>> back then. Why Linux and not them? My best guess is that
>>> Linux had better "marketing" - not traditional marketing
>>> aka slick sales people selling to big companies, but the
>>> internet developer to developer talk type of marketing -
>>> Linux was cool while *BSD was old.
>> 
>> Nope.  It had more to do with the USL/UCB lawsuit and the
>> presumed effect that that would have on the freely-available
>> BSD code.  Since Linux was a clean-room reimplementation, it
>> wasn't encumbered by AT&T copyright, and would thus be "safe"
>> should AT&T win in court.
>
>Nope.
>
>That case was settled in February 1994. Plenty of time for
>any BSD to have competed with the very new Linux and the
>commercial Unixes for the following 15 years.

This is actually funny.  You obviously weren't there.

>> What's ironic is that the people making these decisions didn't
>> quite understand the AT&T lawsuit, which was about _trade secret
>> status_ of Unix, not copyright.  AT&T was trying to say that it
>> was the system interface that was the real intellectual property
>> that was being violated, not the specific expression of that
>> interface.  This would have affected Linux, too, despite being
>> an independent reimplementation.
>
>Do you use CharGPT to create this type of fiction?

Wow, rude.

>It was both copyright and trade secrets. Plus breach of contract
>and trademark.
>
> From the judges ruling:
>
>https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/FSupp/832/790/1428569/
>
>[snip]

Tell me you weren't there without telling me that you weren't
there.

Honesetly, I think you just want to argue.

	- Dan C.