🚀 go-pugleaf

>I don't reagard it a "real" UNIX, then again I wouldn't buy a "real" UNIX,
>1970s software technology is not something I would want to buy today.

[And here I was beginning to like you because you commented, correctly, that
BSD was still in demand. Oh well.]

Statements like the above excerpt I would expect from Bill Gates but not from
a real programmer. To say that you wouldn't use Unix because it is 1970s
technology is a bit like saying you wouldn't speak French (or English or...)
because it is centuries old. What we call Unix, today, is hardly anything
like what came out of AT&T Bell Labs in the early days and is even a long
way from early System V and BSD 4.2 of a few years (well, maybe more than
a few) ago. Like most modern languages, Unix has survived because it is
dynamic and accommodating and while it is hardly the perfect operating
system (though most people's complaints, including your references to 'ls'
have more to do with the command shells than the kernel architecture) it is
not the dinosaur that the NT zealots makes it out to be. 

>Apollo in my view were the only UNIX vendor to realize that they had to put
>work into the basic operating system. They had ACLs, shared libraries and many
>other essential features five years ago.

They are essential for some tasks and totally unnecessary for others. It
depends upon the environment in which you operate. Unix didn't, originally,
have ACLs because the people for whom it was implemented didn't need it.
They had a different concept of a programming environment than you do.

>What I find disgusting about UNIX is that it has *never* grown any operating
>system extensions of its own, all the creative work is derrived from VMS,
>Multics and the operating systems it killed.

So? If originality was important Microsoft would still be a niche vendor.
First of all, your statement was inaccurate and inflammatory. More to the
point, it is meaningless. I mean, who cares. How many people have ported
VMS to their boxes? How many open systems are being developed in Multics?
What is the point?

Unix (whatever that is) is not just an operating system, it is has been the
seed of a marvelous technosocial experiment which is still being carried out.
It isn't fair to say that Unix isn't everything...it wasn't intended to be.
But I doubt that the world would have evolved on a production basis the 
concept of horizontal integration of systems without something like Unix to
make it possible.

Sean McLinden