Re: No Microsoft Breakup

[Chris Rehm <javadisciple@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Friday 07 September 2001 06:31 pm, Leif Svalgaard wrote:
> From: Chris Rehm <javadisciple@earthlink.net>
>
> > On Friday 07 September 2001 05:49 pm, Jim Damato wrote:
> > > Are the AS/400's TCP/IP services, spool management, and integrated file
> > > system part of the operating system?
> >
> > Short answer, no.
> > The TCP/IP stack is mostly a broker between applications (local and
> > remote)
>
> but
>
> > it will of course be managed by the OS which is responsible for providing
> > a means for communication between tasks.
>
> wrong Chris, the OS does not *manage* the stacks  (there are two of them).
> The stacks may *utilize* OS primitives. We should not lose sight of who
> is in control. Also, strictly speaking TCP/IP is WAY below the application
> layer, so TCP/IP is in no way a broker. It is (as its name says) just a
> transportation protocol.

You have misconstrued what I said in order to find it wrong. The TCP/IP stack
is a set of programs which are written to encode/decode data to/from TCP/IP.
They are managed by the OS, as opposed to being part of it. The OS does
manage all tasks. It is the OS's responsibility to allocate hardware
resources, like CPU time.

> Now, one could be justified to view TCP/IP as part of the OS as viewed
> from an application, if the application does not interact directly with the
> OS, but only through TCP/IP. Bottom line: there is no absolute definition
> of what is an OS (except from people that KNOW what it is :-)

Trying to play semantic games about what is "above" or "below" won't change
it. The OS has a set of functions. Because some things really aren't
financially profitable businesses but still are useful or necessary they have
been typically provided by the OS vendor and TCP/IP stacks are an example.
Doesn't change anything.

While you may feel the term "OS" has no definition or varies with whatever
the vendor says it is, I do not. I'll just go on using the definition I can
look up.

--
Chris Rehm
javadisciple@earthlink.net
If you believe that the best technology wins the
marketplace, you haven't been paying attention.