Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcvax!hp4nl!botter!star.cs.vu.nl!ast From: ast@cs.vu.nl (Andy Tanenbaum) Newsgroups: comp.os.minix Subject: Re: The future of MINIX Message-ID: <2862@ast.cs.vu.nl> Date: 11 Jul 89 21:34:16 GMT References: <2835@ast.cs.vu.nl> <5870010@hpcvca.CV.HP.COM> <8176@bsu-cs.bsu.edu> Reply-To: ast@cs.vu.nl (Andy Tanenbaum) Organization: VU Informatica, Amsterdam Lines: 44 In article <8176@bsu-cs.bsu.edu> dhesi@bsu-cs.bsu.edu (Rahul Dhesi) writes: >I think Dr. Tanenbaum should consider finding a different publisher for >the revised Minix book and disks. No. (1) I have a contractual obligation to P-H and would certainly be sued if I tried to breach it, and (2) although they have screwed up the software distribution, they have done ok on the book. If I were to find a software publisher, I bet they would screw up on the book. Nevertheless, P-H is definitely learning about software. They now have a full-time customer service software person, for example, and I will try to train him on MINIX next time. VISION ON THE FUTURE OF EDUCATION: I think that in the coming decade, many universities will expect/require all students to buy a computer. If you take a $2000 computer and write it off over four years, you get $500 per year. When added to private college tuition of $10K per year, it only adds 5% and the student gets to keep the computer afterwards. At state schools it will take a little longer, but not much. These machines will need software for physics labs, biology labs, library access etc. It is my bet that 99% of it will be written by free lancers, mostly professors, the same way it is with books. There are very few corporations that churn out textbooks as their main product. Thus I expect college software to go essentially the same route as college textbooks. In this case, it makes sense that the distribution is handled by book publishers. Whether they are selling a book or a box of diskettes hardly matters--the manufacturing is contracted out to third parties in both cases. It is just a 7" x 10" x 2" lump with an ISBN number in both cases. Prentice-Hall is far and away the biggest (and as far as I am concerned) the best computer science textbook publisher, and I expect them to be the same in educational software as well. I know plenty of other authors, and have heard about other people's experiences, and while P-H is certainly not perfect, I am by-and-large pretty satisfied. If any of you are thinking of writing textbooks or educational software, they are definitely worth considering. I guess it all boils down to what MINIX is. I still see it as primarily an educational system. I can't imagine any Fortune 500 company choosing it over UNIX. Correct me if I am wrong, but I think it falls under the heading Educational/Instructional rather than Operating systems (see page 336 of the July Byte Magazine). Andy Tanenbaum (ast@cs.vu.nl)