From: daleh@ix.netcom.com (Dale Harrison (AEGIS))
Date: Sun, 29 Jan 95 22:48:35 PST
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: UNIX bashing?
Message-ID: <199501300647.WAA00604@ix2.ix.netcom.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


You wrote: 

>Microsoft hasn't really made any attempt to enbrace the UNIX community.
>Why should we embrace Microsoft?

Gravity has made no attempt to embrace me, why should I embrace gravity? 
Because it's a force-of-nature bigger than any of us.  It's not a matter 
of embracing (or not embracing), it's a matter of recognizing the 
obvious.  

Also, just as an historical note, the offical internal policy at 
Microsoft until about 1986-7 was that DOS was a stopgap measure that 
would eventually be replaced by a 16-bit version of Xenix (M/S's 
proprietary Unix variant) that would ship with the 286 based systems. It 
was the MARKET's rejection of Xenix that forced Microsoft to reluctantly 
look towards OS/2 and Windows rather than Unix as its future flagship 
OS.  Again, this has nothing to do with Unix's obvious technical merits, 
but the triumph of social, market and economic forces over technical 
forces.  Look at the fact that the existing global code-base consists 
overwhelmingly of Cobol closely followed by dBase with C/C++ trailing 
way down in the noise.  The realworld is a messy and complex place.

Dale H.