Xref: utzoo comp.os.mach:356 comp.unix.questions:20950
Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!clyde.concordia.ca!uunet!mtxinu!ed
From: ed@mtxinu.COM (Ed Gould)
Newsgroups: comp.os.mach,comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: AT&T source license
Message-ID: <1169@mtxinu.UUCP>
Date: 28 Mar 90 23:58:48 GMT
References: <1990Mar26.194904.25560@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca> <1990Mar28.100450.2614@aai.uu.net>
Reply-To: ed@mtxinu.COM (Ed Gould)
Organization: mt Xinu, Berkeley
Lines: 28

>"We hope to use the Mach message-passing kernel being devevloped
>at CMU.  The current distributed version of Mach is not free because
>it contains code from BSD of AT&T origin.  However, the Mach
>developers have been working to separate this code from the kernel
>and they now say they have a first version of this running in alpha
>test. ..."

While this statement is true, it's important to be clear what it
means.  The pure Mach kernel (known as Mach 3.0) does not contain
any AT&T code.  Neither does it provide any UNIX services, or
most of the other services we users of modern operating systems
expect.  At CMU, there are two different development efforts aimed
at providing UNIX services based on Mach 3.0.  One of these efforts
is essentially taking the UNIX kernel code and making it into a
multi-threaded user-level server.  This server *will* be encumbered
by the AT&T license (as will many if not all of the common UNIX
utilities).  The other effort is producing a set of servers to
provide typical OS functionality.  I don't know for certain that
the UNIX services so provided will be free of AT&T code, but my
understanding is that they will.

Currently, only the AT&T-based server is (to my knowledge) usable.

-- 
Ed Gould                    mt Xinu, 2560 Ninth St., Berkeley, CA  94710  USA
ed@mtxinu.COM		    +1 415 644 0146

"I'll fight them as a woman, not a lady.  I'll fight them as an engineer."