It begins to look as if we can ignore most of what industry leaders say in their addresses to events such as UniForum if last week’s samples of cynical book-talking are anything to go by: first Intel Corp’s Andy Grove stands up and says that NT is a real threat to Unix, but then he would say that, wouldn’t he, because Unix does successfully run – and is widely run – on practically the full gamut of processor architectures, whereas while NT nominally runs on R-series and Alpha, no-one seems to be buying it much on anything other than iAPX-86; then up jumps Digital Equipment Corp chief Robert Palmer effectively demanding that any company that does not embrace openness wholeheartedly should be lined up against the wall and shot – a bit rich coming from the company that damned Unix with the faintest of praise for a whole decade amd after IBM Corp was the most assiduous in trying to derail and trip up Unix – but then these days, users are defecting from VMS in droves, NT on Alpha doesn’t seem to be generating much excitement, so DEC has little alternative but to talk up Unix.
