From: arnold@skeeve.com (arnold@skeeve.com)
Subject: [TUHS] Happy birthday, Dennis Ritchie! [ really sun vs dec/apollo --> X and NeWS ]
Date: Wed, 13 Sep 2017 01:30:22 -0600 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <201709130730.v8D7UNog003861@freefriends.org> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <e80f2b740332dca1fead3df398995c798101a79f@webmail.yaccman.com>
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And buried in this story is another reason Unix / BSD people went with
Sun --- (if you had the licenses) they would give you source! Even for
educational institutions, where I mostly worked, getting source out of
DEC / IBM / HP was essentially impossible.
Arnold
"Steve Johnson" <scj at yaccman.com> wrote:
> Funny. From the outside I had a rather different view of why Sun was
> successful.
>
> In 1986 I came to CA to work for what became Ardent/Stardent. We
> made the decision to go with Sun disc-less workstations. They got us
> more computing power, on paper, for less $$.
>
> Roughly a quarter of the machines shipped to us were DOA. When we
> got them running, the OS had a memory leak and needed to be rebooted
> several times a day. The NFS server had the delightful property of
> sometimes inserting 1024 zeros into a file it was writing or
> serving. (It was so bad that we hacked the OS to check every
> executable for 0-blocks in the instruction space and refuse to run
> it. This was especially true for the MIPS cross compiler -- 0 was a
> NOP on the MIPS, and encountering a block of zeros caused execution to
> slide down a slippery slope of NOPs into the middle of some other
> routine with a different stack layout, where it proceeded to do the
> most mysterious things...)
>
> We would go out to lunch every day and trash talk Sun up one side and
> down the other. And then we would go back to work and order more
> Suns. Because THEY UNDERSTOOD WHAT WE NEEDED, and were TRYING TO
> GIVE IT TO US. The other manufacturers were selling application
> delivery vehicles rather than attempting to support software
> development. Eventually we ironed out many of the issues (often by
> changing or hacking the code). The only fly in the ointment was the
> service department. Dealing with Sun customer service was like
> spitting into the wind. We would report the same bug every week and
> they swore the bug had not been reported before. The memory leak
> problem became so serious that we told them that we would only renew
> the service agreement if they would put a date when that would be
> fixed. They refused to do so, and we canceled the service contract,
> bought a couple of extra Suns for spares, and heaved a sigh of relief.
>
> Steve
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Jon Steinhart" <jon at fourwinds.com>
> To:<tuhs at tuhs.org>
> Cc:
> Sent:Tue, 12 Sep 2017 08:35:24 -0700
> Subject:Re: [TUHS] Happy birthday, Dennis Ritchie! [ really sun vs
> dec/apollo --> X and NeWS ]
>
> arnold at skeeve.com writes:
> >
> > In particular, the creation of NFS and then the efforts to make it
> into
> > a de-facto standard (giving away the RPC and XDR code) was a HUGE
> thing.
> >
> > They weren't afraid to swim upstream, either. Even though NeWS
> never took
> > off (even when combined with an X server), it was an interesting
> design,
> > ahead of its time even.
>
> It's interesting that you mention the two of these together. It's my
> opinion that the main reason that NeWS failed was because of the
> success
> of NFS.
>
> I recall that Apollo was really pissed off by NFS because they felt
> that
> their token-ring network was better but lost because NFS was given
> away.
> In hindsight, they were wrong; while the token-ring performed better
> in
> large networks, the advent of switches made that moot. In any case,
> when
> NeWS was released nobody except Sun knew how to do the graphics (even
> Adobe didn't know how to do it fast for display) and Apollo et. al.
> was
> worried that Sun would give NeWS away and make it yet another de
> facto
> standard a la NFS. This led to the formation of the Hamilton Group
> which
> was a thinly-disguised industry consortium that existed only for the
> purpose of making sure that NeWS didn't succeed.
>
> > DEC, IBM, and HP, all seemed to be playing follow the leader to Sun
> for
> > many years.
>
> I mentioned this to a lot of people after Sun died. Few seem to
> realize
> how much of what became PC manufacturing technology resulted from
> innovations
> at Sun.
>
> ron at ronnatalie.com writes:
> >
> > NeWS had serious issues. However, the same guy who was the NeWS
> proponent
> > learned from mistakes and the result was the must more successful
> Sun
> > tehnology: JAVA.
>
> I'm going to take issue with the above. NeWS had way fewer serious
> issues
> than X. It's main reason for failure was the coordinated effort to
> kill it
> from others in the industry. As the guy who single-handedly prevented
> X
> from becoming an ANSI standard, I'd be happy to start another thread
> on
> this topic if people are interested. Part of the result of the
> Hamilton
> Group effort was the misguided attempt to merge X and NeWS which was
> a
> botched disaster.
>
> Java is not the result of learning from mistakes in NeWS. I have
> joked with
> James that I feel that his legacy is being the person who first
> realizes that
> technology is changing to the point where something can be done using
> an
> interpreter. If you look at his project history, he's done this many
> times.
> I think that it's more accurate to say that Java is the result of a
> lifetime
> of learning from interpreter projects. I fully expect some new
> interpreter
> to take over AWS sometime soon :-)
>
> Jon
>
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2017-09-13 7:30 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 204+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2017-09-08 20:54 [TUHS] Happy birthday, Dennis Ritchie! Dave Horsfall
2017-09-08 21:04 ` Noel Chiappa
2017-09-08 21:09 ` Michael Kjörling
2017-09-09 1:16 ` Wesley Parish
2017-09-09 1:30 ` [TUHS] File-as-record (was: Happy birthday, Dennis Ritchie!) Greg 'groggy' Lehey
2017-09-09 1:43 ` Warner Losh
2017-09-09 1:50 ` Wesley Parish
2017-09-09 13:59 ` [TUHS] File-as-record Arthur Krewat
2017-09-11 17:26 ` [TUHS] File-as-record (was: Happy birthday, Dennis Ritchie!) Paul Winalski
2017-09-09 4:34 ` [TUHS] Happy birthday, Dennis Ritchie! Steve Johnson
2017-09-09 13:04 ` William Cheswick
2017-09-09 17:26 ` Steve Nickolas
2017-09-09 17:49 ` Arthur Krewat
2017-09-09 19:40 ` Steve Nickolas
2017-09-09 20:33 ` Lawrence Stewart
2017-09-09 21:56 ` Steve Johnson
2017-09-10 1:27 ` Dave Horsfall
2017-09-11 16:20 ` Paul Winalski
2017-09-09 15:55 ` Clem Cole
2017-09-08 22:28 ` Steve Nickolas
2017-09-09 11:04 ` Michael Kjörling
2017-09-09 11:19 ` Steve Nickolas
2017-09-08 21:05 ` Arthur Krewat
2017-09-08 21:14 ` William Pechter
2017-09-08 22:13 ` Angus Robinson
2017-09-08 23:11 ` William Pechter
2017-09-09 5:13 ` Dave Horsfall
2017-09-09 15:41 ` Larry McVoy
2017-09-09 4:20 ` Dave Horsfall
2017-09-11 16:30 ` Paul Winalski
2017-09-11 16:49 ` [TUHS] Happy birthday, Dennis Ritchie! [ really sun vs dec/apollo ] Jon Steinhart
2017-09-11 17:37 ` Paul Winalski
2017-09-11 23:09 ` Larry McVoy
2017-09-12 7:38 ` arnold
2017-09-12 14:12 ` Ronald Natalie
2017-09-12 14:51 ` Toby Thain
2017-09-12 15:33 ` arnold
2017-09-12 15:35 ` [TUHS] Happy birthday, Dennis Ritchie! [ really sun vs dec/apollo --> X and NeWS ] Jon Steinhart
2017-09-12 16:57 ` Larry McVoy
2017-09-12 17:04 ` Arthur Krewat
2017-09-12 17:07 ` Larry McVoy
2017-09-12 22:11 ` [TUHS] X and NeWS history (long) Jon Steinhart
2017-09-12 22:58 ` Larry McVoy
2017-09-12 23:22 ` Jon Steinhart
2017-09-12 23:44 ` Chris Torek
2017-09-12 23:41 ` Adam Sampson
2017-09-13 0:14 ` Jon Steinhart
2017-09-13 16:38 ` [TUHS] old X versions (was:X and NeWS history) Christian Groessler
2017-09-13 19:10 ` Kurt H Maier
2017-09-13 19:13 ` Henry Bent
2017-09-19 0:44 ` Random832
2017-09-19 10:30 ` Nigel Williams
2017-09-19 14:05 ` Jon Steinhart
2017-09-19 15:16 ` Gregg Levine
2017-09-19 15:39 ` [TUHS] old X versions Chet Ramey
2017-09-19 18:23 ` Nemo
2017-09-19 18:32 ` Clem Cole
2017-09-19 18:32 ` Chet Ramey
2017-09-19 18:34 ` Jon Steinhart
2017-09-19 18:43 ` Chet Ramey
2017-09-19 19:19 ` Stephen Kitt
2017-09-19 15:40 ` [TUHS] old X versions (was:X and NeWS history) Clem Cole
2017-09-19 17:01 ` Steve Nickolas
2017-09-19 17:15 ` Gregg Levine
2017-09-19 18:56 ` Derek Fawcus
2017-09-19 19:22 ` [TUHS] old X versions Arthur Krewat
2017-09-19 20:15 ` [TUHS] old X versions (was:X and NeWS history) Gregg Levine
2017-09-19 18:30 ` Nemo
2017-09-19 23:40 ` Wesley Parish
2017-09-19 23:46 ` [TUHS] old X versions Grant Taylor
2017-09-20 0:06 ` Arthur Krewat
2017-09-13 0:29 ` [TUHS] X and NeWS history (long) Bakul Shah
2017-09-13 0:52 ` ron minnich
2017-09-13 0:54 ` Warner Losh
2017-09-13 0:56 ` ron minnich
2017-09-13 0:57 ` Warner Losh
2017-09-13 2:06 ` Kurt H Maier
2017-09-13 3:34 ` ron minnich
2017-09-13 3:55 ` Jon Steinhart
2017-09-13 15:16 ` Arthur Krewat
2017-09-13 15:42 ` [TUHS] X and NeWS history (long) [ really systemd, student access to real code ] Jon Steinhart
2017-09-13 1:42 ` [TUHS] X and NeWS history (long) Arthur Krewat
2017-09-13 2:27 ` Grant Taylor
2017-09-13 16:14 ` Lawrence Stewart
2017-09-13 0:56 ` Jon Steinhart
2017-09-13 1:34 ` Bakul Shah
2017-09-13 2:43 ` Grant Taylor
2017-09-13 3:01 ` Jon Steinhart
2017-09-13 3:25 ` Grant Taylor
2017-09-13 3:27 ` Jon Steinhart
2017-09-13 15:09 ` Tony Finch
2017-09-13 15:19 ` Jon Steinhart
2017-09-12 23:33 ` [TUHS] Happy birthday, Dennis Ritchie! [ really sun vs dec/apollo --> X and NeWS ] Dave Horsfall
2017-09-12 20:15 ` Steve Johnson
2017-09-13 2:23 ` Larry McVoy
2017-09-14 0:53 ` Nemo
2017-09-14 1:18 ` Henry Bent
2017-09-14 3:15 ` Larry McVoy
2017-09-14 9:35 ` Rico Pajarola
2017-09-14 11:11 ` arnold
2017-09-14 12:13 ` Rico Pajarola
2017-09-14 12:50 ` Chet Ramey
2017-09-14 13:27 ` Rico Pajarola
2017-09-14 14:30 ` Chet Ramey
2017-09-14 13:21 ` Steffen Nurpmeso
2017-09-14 19:44 ` arnold
2017-09-14 20:22 ` [TUHS] Tools and building: libtool, autoconf, etc. [ trying to have a relevant subject line ] Jon Steinhart
2017-09-14 20:32 ` Ron Natalie
2017-09-14 21:00 ` Chris Torek
2017-09-14 21:03 ` Ron Natalie
2017-09-14 22:26 ` Grant Taylor
2017-09-16 3:34 ` Larry McVoy
2017-09-16 4:16 ` Warner Losh
2017-09-16 5:08 ` Dave Horsfall
2017-09-16 3:33 ` Larry McVoy
2017-09-14 20:41 ` Bakul Shah
2017-09-14 21:00 ` Noel Hunt
2017-09-15 17:42 ` [TUHS] Happy birthday, Dennis Ritchie! [ really sun vs dec/apollo --> X and NeWS ] Steffen Nurpmeso
2017-09-14 20:31 ` Ian Zimmerman
2017-09-15 3:16 ` Dave Horsfall
2017-09-15 3:33 ` Warner Losh
2017-09-15 8:32 ` Ron Natalie
2017-09-15 12:42 ` Arthur Krewat
2017-09-15 18:20 ` Steffen Nurpmeso
2017-09-15 18:37 ` Paul Winalski
2017-09-13 7:30 ` arnold [this message]
2017-09-13 13:35 ` Larry McVoy
2017-09-13 23:55 ` Dave Horsfall
2017-09-14 0:18 ` Henry Bent
2017-09-14 2:10 ` Larry McVoy
2017-09-14 19:37 ` Steve Johnson
2017-09-14 19:54 ` Steve Nickolas
2017-09-14 20:50 ` Ian Zimmerman
2017-09-14 21:00 ` Ron Natalie
2017-09-14 20:11 ` Ron Natalie
2017-09-14 20:26 ` Jon Steinhart
2017-09-19 0:52 ` Random832
2017-09-19 2:50 ` Larry McVoy
2017-09-19 2:56 ` Gregg Levine
2017-09-19 3:37 ` Larry McVoy
2017-09-19 6:52 ` Lars Brinkhoff
2017-09-19 7:22 ` Ian Zimmerman
2017-09-19 13:22 ` Larry McVoy
2017-09-19 13:53 ` Steffen Nurpmeso
2017-09-19 13:56 ` Larry McVoy
2017-09-19 17:56 ` Random832
2017-09-19 18:31 ` Steffen Nurpmeso
2017-09-19 18:34 ` Larry McVoy
2017-09-19 19:31 ` Lawrence Stewart
2017-09-20 3:13 ` Larry McVoy
2017-09-23 22:24 ` Ralph Corderoy
2017-09-19 14:32 ` Clem Cole
2017-09-19 14:42 ` Larry McVoy
2017-09-19 15:12 ` Clem Cole
2017-09-19 18:03 ` Random832
2017-09-10 9:44 ` [TUHS] Happy birthday, Dennis Ritchie! arnold
2017-09-13 23:22 ` Dave Horsfall
2017-09-14 16:11 ` Ian Zimmerman
2017-09-14 16:15 ` Steve Nickolas
2017-09-14 19:30 ` Theodore Ts'o
2017-09-14 19:52 ` Steve Nickolas
2017-09-14 22:03 ` Christian Groessler
2017-09-14 22:39 ` Erik Berls
2017-09-14 22:52 ` ron minnich
2017-09-14 23:04 ` Warner Losh
2017-09-14 23:14 ` Bakul Shah
2017-09-15 19:01 ` Chris Torek
2017-09-15 19:50 ` Lyndon Nerenberg
2017-09-15 19:56 ` ron minnich
2017-09-15 20:34 ` Chris Torek
2017-09-14 23:06 ` Bakul Shah
2017-09-15 0:47 ` ron minnich
2017-09-14 19:39 ` Kurt H Maier
2017-09-14 20:09 ` [TUHS] Happy birthday, Dennis Ritchie! [ really Pottering vs UNIX ] Jon Steinhart
2017-09-14 21:35 ` [TUHS] Happy birthday, Dennis Ritchie! Theodore Ts'o
2017-09-15 1:40 ` Ron Natalie
2017-09-15 14:04 ` Larry McVoy
2017-09-16 3:40 ` Larry McVoy
2017-09-16 7:45 ` Steve Nickolas
2017-09-16 12:59 ` Ron Natalie
2017-09-16 18:19 ` Andy Kosela
2017-09-17 18:37 ` Chet Ramey
2017-09-18 15:11 ` Steve Johnson
2017-09-16 19:20 ` arnold
2017-09-17 1:43 ` Larry McVoy
2017-09-17 1:55 ` Jon Steinhart
2017-09-17 2:14 ` Warner Losh
2017-09-17 2:18 ` Larry McVoy
2017-09-17 14:27 ` Warner Losh
2017-09-17 5:13 ` Ian Zimmerman
2017-09-17 5:19 ` arnold
2017-09-17 18:49 ` Chet Ramey
2017-09-17 18:57 ` Kurt H Maier
2017-09-17 19:08 ` Warner Losh
2017-09-17 19:33 ` Bakul Shah
2017-09-17 19:22 ` Chet Ramey
2017-09-17 18:43 ` Chet Ramey
2017-09-18 0:12 ` Larry McVoy
2017-09-18 0:51 ` Clem Cole
2017-09-17 18:25 ` Chet Ramey
2017-09-19 12:24 [TUHS] Happy birthday, Dennis Ritchie! [ really sun vs dec/apollo --> X and NeWS ] Norman Wilson
2017-09-19 18:09 ` Random832
2017-09-19 19:21 ` Chris Torek
2017-09-21 17:46 Norman Wilson
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