As an outsider at the time, when Linux was taking off, there seemed to be a lot of people asking why they wouldn't Open Source Solaris.
It seemed to me like they couldn't decide whether they were a hardware company or a software company.
Mind you, I was young at the time so possibly didn't have the best understanding of the situation. Seems like they left the decision too late though.
Dismissing Linux as a hobbiest OS definitely turned out badly.
>Dismissing Linux as a hobbiest OS definitely turned out badly.
That actually made me laugh. Not because it's untrue, but because it reminded me of this:
One of the questions that comes up all the time is: How
enthusiastic is our support for UNIX?
Unix was written on our machines and for our machines
many years ago. Today, much of UNIX being done is done on
our machines. Ten percent of our VAXs are going for UNIX
use. UNIX is a simple language, easy to understand, easy
to get started with. It’s great for students, great for
somewhat casual users, and it’s great for interchanging
programs between different machines. And so, because of
its popularity in these markets, we support it. We have
good UNIX on VAX and good UNIX on PDP-11s.
It is our belief, however, that serious professional
users will run out of things they can do with UNIX.
They’ll want a real system and will end up doing VMS when
they get to be serious about programming.
With UNIX, if you’re looking for something, you can
easily and quickly check that small manual and find out
that it’s not there. With VMS, no matter what you look
for — it’s literally a five-foot shelf of documentation —
if you look long enough it’s there. That’s the difference
— the beauty of UNIX is it’s simple; and the beauty of
VMS is that it’s all there.
— Ken Olsen, president of DEC, DECWORLD Vol. 8 No. 5, 1984
onraglanroad · · focus · HN ↗
It seemed to me like they couldn't decide whether they were a hardware company or a software company.
Mind you, I was young at the time so possibly didn't have the best understanding of the situation. Seems like they left the decision too late though.
Dismissing Linux as a hobbiest OS definitely turned out badly.
nobody9999 · · focus · HN ↗
That actually made me laugh. Not because it's untrue, but because it reminded me of this:
onraglanroad · · focus · HN ↗
It's basically does Linux win or why not BSD? Never what about OpenVMS.
nobody9999 · · focus · HN ↗
>It's basically does Linux win or why not BSD? Never what about OpenVMS.
While my original reply was accurate, it could have, more concisely, read: