From: KP
Date: Wed, 2 Oct 1991 10:56:17 PDT
Subject: UNIX hatred - initial foray
On Tue, 24 Sep 1991 14:15:45 PDT, DC wrote:
Subject: Decay
What I find totally incredible is that the general
level of systems seems to be lower in almost every
respect than it was ten years ago -- the exception
being that the machines run ten times faster. (Well,
mine doesn't; it's a straight 3600 and thoroughly
canine. But everyone else's does.)
I maintain a couple of large mailing lists, one of
which has a nine-year history. Nine years ago it ran
perfectly on ITS, and then for another five years on
OZ. Then we moved it to Reagan (a bolix) which really
didn't work well, but was tolerable, but got more and
more broken. We've left it there, despite lost mail
and infinite maintenance aggravation because *we can't
find any machine that we have access to that has more
reliable mailing list service*. ``We'' here is a group
of five mildly famous AI PhDs at five different labs,
each among the most famous in the world.
I have some friends who work at Anon MPCSL. MPCSL is
probably the most prestigious computer science
laboratory in the world. It is the place where LANs
and printers and email and such were made practical (if
not invented). They run Sun unix now, and it is
totally broken, and no one can fix it. Their expensive
PhD researchers regularly waste *days* trying to get
files to come out of a printer or sitting around
waiting for NFS to get fixed so their machine will
unwedge. It's officially acknowledged both that this
is a disaster and that it won't get fixed.
Along with the degraded level of systems support has
come an extraordinary decrease in access that might let
one fix things for one's self. When I was 17, in 1978,
I was a ``tourist'' at the MIT AI lab -- in other
words, I used their PDP-10 although I had no
affiliation whatsoever with the lab. When the system
crashed, I would wander into the machine room, figure
out what had gone wrong, and toggle the relevant boot
sequence into the front panel of this $1e6 mainframe.
Here in the future, at most CS labs, you can't get
access to the machine room no matter who you are. If
the file server goes down at 5:01 Friday afternoon, it
stays down until 9:00 Monday when the authorized person
comes in. So a lot of famous expensive computer
science PhDs, many of them capable of designing the
file server in their sleep, grunt in disgust and go
home and get nothing done for the weekend.
I can't understand how this has been allowed to happen.
Besides being fantastically annoying for users, it's
fantastically wasteful for companies. I can't
understand why the CEO of Anon doesn't say ``God DAMN
it! We are going to have reliable mail service around
here, or HEADS ARE GOING TO ROLL!'' I can't understand
why people don't just fix things that are broken, the
why people don't just fix things that are broken, the
way they used to ten years ago. I just can't figure
out how it can have gotten this bad.
------- End of message -------
Dear DC-
Your message to unix-haters of Tue, 24 Sep 1991
14:15:45 PDT was forwarded to all members of the
computer research staff at MPCSL. I thought I would
send you some comments. I have been a UNIX-hater for
15 years, which is how long I have been at MPCSL. I
avoided the UNIX revolution until it was recently
foisted on me. At MPCSL, we formerly had three
completely incompatible programming environments:
InterLISP, Smalltalk, and Cedar. This was viewed by
the new powers as very bad and in need of fixing. So
we moved to commercial UNIX-based platforms. So now we
have about 30 incompatible systems (text editors and
formats, programming languages, window systems, window
managers, toolkits, ... ). instead of three, with more
being added every day. Top this with the incredible
morass that is SunOS and it is no wonder that you are
wondering.
Up until recently, we owned everything from the
hardware to the microcode to the applications. We
could fix anything that broke at any level; we could
evolve wonderful new systems. How do we "fix" the X11
releases or the SMTP protocol or SunRPC??
In my opinion, things got the way they are because
market forces completely overwhelmed technological
forces. Because UNIX was free (or nominally licensed)
it came into wide use, first in CS and EE departments
and later in the world. To some, moving from MS-DOS or
worse, it seemed like a win. To those of us who have
been around for a while and are aware of the
alternatives, it seemed like a nightmare. We thought
it would go away when users came to their senses. We
were naive. Sigh. Meanwhile, thanks to BSD, UNIX grew
like Topsy, or more like barnacles encrusting a sunken
ship. Ultimately, UNIX began to be viewed by decision
makers who were not technically competent as a panacea
for competing technologies.
To take your example literally, the reason that Head
Guy, CEO of Anon, doesn't say ``God DAMN it! We are
going to have reliable mail service around here, or
HEADS ARE GOING TO ROLL!'' is that HE HAS RELIABLE
MAIL SERVICE. Anon mail is based on the RELA protocol
suite and it runs on the Anon corporate internet; SMTP
mail is handled at the periphery of the corporate
internet by gateways, tortuously written and maintained
by wizards. Head doesn't know or care that UNIX is
lurking underneath all this. At MPCSL we have had
reliable mail for years, based first on the Grapevine
mail transport and storage system and then, more
recently, on RELAMail.
I have requested to join unix-haters. I look forward
to more exchanges on this mailing list.
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