[TUHS] What UNIX Artifacts Are Still Missing?

Larry McVoy lm at mcvoy.com
Fri Dec 8 00:59:47 AEST 2017


On Wed, Dec 06, 2017 at 10:14:15PM -0800, Jon Steinhart wrote:
> Robert Brockway writes:
> > On Thu, 7 Dec 2017, Dave Horsfall wrote:
> > 
> > > Call me a cynical old bastard (which I am), but I can't see M$ raising a flag 
> > > for Unix...  Wasn't it Billy Gates who reportedly said that any PC running 
> > > Linux is one not running Windoze, and did his best to discredit it?
> > 
> > Microsoft today is not the company of old.  In recent years Microsoft has 
> > participated in standards bodies and worked on interoperability with other 
> > browser vendors.  They even joined the Linux Foundation last year.
> > 
> > https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/16/microsoft-joins-the-linux-foundation/
> > 
> > Cheers,
> > 
> > Rob
> 
> Don't know how much time you've spent on standards committees; I've done my
> time.  Standards committees are not filled with altruistic folks working to
> make something great.  Much of the time people are there to prevent a standard
> from interfering with their market, or to prevent a good standard from being
> adopted.  The examples of the NSA participating on crypto committees to weaken
> the standards got a lot of press and is emblematic of what happens.  Microsoft
> has a well documented record of using standards to screw the competition so I
> didn't read any goodness into their joining up.  I would agree that they're not
> the company of old in that they got themselves trounced by Apple and are no
> longer top dog and able to tell others what they're allowed to do.

My first job at Sun was POSIX conformance.  As such, I worked a lot with
the Sun POSIX guy, Don Cragun.  He must have been the exception that proves
your rule because he definitely matched the description of an altruistic
person trying to make things better.   They aren't all bad.



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