[1984] 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.
[1977] There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their
home.