On Tue, 14 May 2002 07:32:01 -0500, Dennis Handly <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:

>>From: "John R. Wolff" <[log in to unmask]>
>>UNIX has never respected and does not value compatibility and UNIX
>>users (of all people) should know this.
>
>But Standards are more important.

As a user I respectfully disagree that Standards are more important than
compatibility.  This has been the problem with HP thinking in the last
several years  --  standards compliance at the expense of everything else.
Standards are of interest to vendors like HP so they can try and get new
customers from other standards based competitors.  The vendor has different
objectives than the customer in this situation.  (By the way, this is a 2
way street  --  I can move more easily to your competitor also.)  Standards
are of much less interest to an installed base set of customers who are
just trying to run their businesses with minimum disruption and cost.  Do
you know what I get everytime I convert/adapt to the latest set
of "standards"?  The answer is: nothing but a lot of work, lost
productivity and big consulting bills.

Compatibility was the beauty of MPE  --  HP did not have to change the CI
to suit some "standards" group periodically  --  hence compatibility and
reduced disruption and cost for the customer.  This has marketing value for
the vendor and true value for the customer  --  a win-win situation.  In
this sense, the MPE *proprietary* operating system is a true asset and a
superior product for business interests.  Most business customers are not
interested in the latest thinking in the finer points of computer science.
They are interested in making money, rather than spending it on a vendors
whims  --  even if "standards" driven.

>>In addition the myth of UNIX "standards" is a joke.
>
>But most of Stan's listed routines were obsoleted because they weren't
>Standard.

So what?  There was no cost to HP to leave these in for compatibilities
sake.  There was cost to HP to remove them.  And of course, there was cost
to users that had to deal with this pointless change.

>>Why do package vendors supply different editions of the same release of
>>their software for the same platform if the OS is transparent?  We found
>>this to be true just going to 10.20 HP-UX from 10.01, and it has been true
>>for every release I have ever seen or investigated.
>
>Unfortunately we didn't learn our lessons on 10.x and not enough people
>came from a MPE background like me.  On 11.x, we are doing better.

Hope springs eternal.

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