[Info-vax] New CEO of VMS Software

[Dan Cross]

In article <uncc5u$ns66$2 at dont-email.me>,
Lawrence D'Oliveiro  <ldo at nz.invalid> wrote:
>On Sat, 6 Jan 2024 10:47:11 -0500, bill wrote:
>
>> On 1/5/2024 9:38 PM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>>
>>> For what I mean by “workstation”, look at the capabilities of the Unix
>>> workstations in the 1980s/1990s: remember, they ran the same OS as
>>> their respective companies’ server offerings, with all the same
>>> capabilities. It was Microsoft that came along and offered a
>>> “Workstation” OS that had cut-
>>> down capabilities compared to their “Server” offering, so they could
>>> charge less for the former ... and more for the latter.
>> 
>> Not sure I agree with this at all.  It's been a long time and my memory
>> may not be what it once was but I distinctly remember the only
>> difference between NT Server and NT Workstation was Registry Settings.
>
>You are remembering NT 3.51, I think it was, when somebody discovered 
>that, indeed, all it took was a single Registry setting change to enable 
>“Server” functionality on an NT “Workstation” installation.
>
>Microsoft fixed that in the next version. Remember, it was not in their 
>interests to allow this sort of thing to continue, given the significant 
>difference in price between the two products.
>
>So you see, on the Unix side, the vendors never thought to charge any 
>different for the "workstation" versus "server" software, because it was 
>the exact same software, with the exact same capabilities.

I remember pretty specifically maximum user limits on versions
of commercial Unix.  Most of the time it didn't matter for a
workstation, where only one user at a time (generally) was
logged into the machine.  For servers and timesharing hosts?
It was a big deal.

>Today, the only OS in widespread use with this commonality of function 
>across disparate hardware configurations is Linux.

Or FreeBSD.  Or OpenBSD.

	- Dan C.