From owner-freebsd-chat  Fri Aug 29 00:15:44 1997
Return-Path: <owner-freebsd-chat>
Received: (from root@localhost)
          by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) id AAA16596
          for chat-outgoing; Fri, 29 Aug 1997 00:15:44 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from time.cdrom.com (root@time.cdrom.com [204.216.27.226])
          by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id AAA16589
          for <freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG>; Fri, 29 Aug 1997 00:15:41 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from time.cdrom.com (jkh@localhost.cdrom.com [127.0.0.1]) by time.cdrom.com (8.8.7/8.6.9) with ESMTP id AAA20965; Fri, 29 Aug 1997 00:15:39 -0700 (PDT)
To: Peter Korsten <peter@grendel.IAEhv.nl>
cc: freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject: Re: ATT Unix for Windows ! 
In-reply-to: Your message of "Fri, 29 Aug 1997 02:53:23 +0200."
             <19970829025323.52918@grendel.IAEhv.nl> 
Date: Fri, 29 Aug 1997 00:15:39 -0700
Message-ID: <20961.872838939@time.cdrom.com>
From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com>
Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG
X-Loop: FreeBSD.org
Precedence: bulk

Look, this was all already summed up very nicely by the gent (and I've
forgetten who it was at this point) who said that the fundamental
problem lies in the fact that those who most need these interfaces
lack the time or skill to implement them, those with both skill and
time not needing them enough to bother writing them.

We can sit here all day discussing how NT has a nice drivable GUI and
beats UNIX for user friendliness 9 ways to Sunday, but what's the
point?  It contributes absolutely nothing towards actually bring such
a system for UNIX into being, and much of this ideological ground has
been covered in previous "NT vs UNIX" discussions - there are a lot of
vocal passengers on this bus, but still not a driver of any particular
ability or distinction.

This discussion also entirely misses the point that Microsoft has been
able to do what it has done largely through its advantage of being a
strict monarchy - orders for some standard level of GUI-friendliness
come down from on high and those orders are carried out, regardless of
whether or not they exhibit a level of technical sophistication or
intrinsic extensibility which makes engineers happy.  The UNIX
die-hards would never settle for something like that, regardless of
the end goals.

					Jordan