Adecvax.191

Adecvax.191
net.followup
utcsrgv!utzoo!decvax!aps
Tue Mar 23 20:39:51 1982
USENIX and /usr/group
Bob Rosin, I should point out that in your situation (SHARE and GUIDE),
you were both using the same machines, probably the same "monitors" and
compilers, and had dealings with the same, and only vendor. With
USENIX and /usr/group, this is certainly not the case.

In light of the growing popularity of UNIX, I believe that there is a
need to clearly define the goals of each of the two major UNIX user
organizations. It is not clear to me what the current distinctions
between the two groups are. I can say that one of them, USENIX, is an
organization consisting to a larger extent of people who are more
involved with research (computer science in particular), maintaining a
UNIX site that is source licensed and does not depend upon the growing
number of UNIX OEM's for support, and networking (which probably also
comes under comp-sci research). /usr/group is made up of people who
are more of an "end user" type than a comp-sci type. These people are
probably more interested in what office products they can buy, what
will be in the next release from Microsoft, the desire to beat up on
Interactive Systems for something called uucp so they can talk to
non-IS/1 systems, and binary licensing issues, and so on. This is not
to say that /usr/group members are not interested in things that USENIX
members are, but that the intersection is probably small and probably
not large enough to justify the trouble that would be required to
"merge" the two groups or to continue to have co-meetings.

With a definition of goals, each group could "carve out" the area that
have the greatest impact on its goals and bring its own specialized set
of resources to bare on these particular problems.

One of the major differences between the two groups (already mentioned
above) is the fact that a majority of the members of USENIX have source
licenses and, if I were to venture a guess, the majority of the members
of /usr/group get their UNIX (like) systems from an OEM/vendor and as
such, have binary only licenses. This can cause (and is currently
causing) problems in the area of software redistribution on
"conference" tapes. One of the problems that /usr/group could solve
for its members is the availability of a sanitized distribution tape.
(I will open myself up at this point, but what the hell!) It is not
clear to me that a governing body of vendors would necessarily want to
distribute software for free that may compete with some of their own
products. But that is not the discussion at hand. (Working for such a
vendor, I know from where I speak.)

You suggest that a single "COHERENT" (no pun intended, I assume) view
for the UNIX system vendor representing the concerns of the two groups
be prepared. I will go out on a limb and say that the two groups each
deal with a different set of and type of vendors. On the one hand, you
have Interactive Systems, Whitesmith`s, Fortune (sorry Dave),
Perkin-Elmer (not DEC, at least not for the software) and Microsoft, to
mention a few. On the other hand, you have AT&T (a.k.a. TPC, Ma Bell
(and child)). How one deals with these two sets, and what one can
expect from the two sets are completely different. This leads me to
wonder about coherent views.

I guess, the bottom line for me, is that I am not willing to sacrifice
slightly manageable meetings or higher membership/conference fees for
"VERY large meetings" along with a larger layout of money, just for the
sake of sharing meetings with another group whose goal/direction is
completely different from the group that I think I am a part of, just
because we use the same systems upon which theirs are based.

I do, however, encourage that "leadership" from both organizations get
together and work some sort of interface out. But before they propose
a shared meeting again, I hope they consider RS-232-C.

Armando Stettner

[P.S. Peter, I hope you didn't have to sound out anything
aps. (sick)]

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