[rescue] Interesting bit on Multics

[Lionel Peterson]

--- Dave McGuire <mcguire at neurotica.com> wrote:
> On Sunday, October 19, 2003, at 03:10 AM, Francisco Javier 
> Mesa-Martinez wrote:
> >>> The multics sources are neither open nor free, they belong to
> >>> Groupe Bull,
> >>> and it seems they are not interested in releasing any of it.
> >>
> >>    So the suits are just going to sit on it?  To what end?
> >
> > Well it seems they have been sitting on it for over 2 decades,
> > which I believe was the last time a multics specific design
> > was marketed.
> >
> > Groupe Bull is rather mismanaged, so I would not put any sort of
> > hope/faith in them doing the right thing and release the sources.
> 
>    I don't understand this.
> 
>    But then, I'm a decent human being and a productive member of 
> society, not a suit, so I suppose I wasn't meant to understand it.

Dave,

I choose to understand it this way:

"For fear of giving away (literally or figuratively) something that
prove to have value down the line, they would rather sit on their
assetts than risk a mistake."

Doing nothing is the path of least resistance.

Oddly, it seems that Unix and Multics are on inverse paths (Multics was
expensive, now it is worthless and interesting - when Unix came out, it
was worthless and interesting, now it is expensive (at least that is
what SCO thinks)...


=====
Lionel

"I am not into examining other peoples' dumps..." - Sheldon T. Hall

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