Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ncar!tank!gargoyle!chinet!bill
From: bill@chinet.chi.il.us (Bill Mitchell)
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: The Upgrade Process
Message-ID: <1990Mar25.175141.780@chinet.chi.il.us>
Date: 25 Mar 90 17:51:41 GMT
Organization: Chinet - Chicago Public Access UNIX
Lines: 55

I (thankfully) missed out on the 1.4.x upgrades.  Like many others,
I've done 1.3->1.5.0->1.5.3->1.5.5 working nights and weekends.  I've
cursed and sweated through it all, probably making more silly
mistakes than most, and having trouble recovering from each silly
mistake because of my inadequate checkpointing during the upgrade
process.

I don't know how Andy manages to produce all these improvements
working nights and weekends, even with help from the band of prolific
implementors whose names keep showing up on the net.  I barely have
time to keep up with the postings and try to get the current crop of
upgrades installed before the next crop obsoletes them.  I've easily
spent more than 20 hours on each upgrade - I'd guess I've spent quite
a bit more.

How many active members does this newsgroup have?  I've seen a figure
of 16,000.  I've seen a figure of 10,000.  Let's say it's really
5,000.  Of this, how many are following upgrades?  let's say 1 in 5,
or 1,000.  Let's say I'm abnormally slow and everyone else completes
upgrades 10 hours.

     10 hours * 3 upgrades * 1000 persons = 30,000 manhours
     (person-hours for gender-sensitive fellow Americans)
 
Figuring 40 hours per week and 50 weeks per year, a manyear is 2,000
hours.  30,000/2,000 = 15 manyears spent doing minix upgrades.  Can
this be right?  Could this time have been spent more productively?

Could P-H be persuaded to allow limited distribution on disk of fully
upgraded interim minix releases to owners of a prior version? 
Considering the time I've spent doing my own, I'd happily pay for
each such upgrade and still buy the next major release and
cross-referenced source listing from P-H.

Let's say such a packaged upgrade is worth $20 or so to half of the
1000 upgraders (would be worth at least that much to me).  That's
$10,000. This shouldn't be enough to panic P-H, but should be enough
to get something done.

Could someone package upgrade kits for designated upgrade providers
on each continent?  Could these upgrade providers copy and distribute
the upgrades?  $5 to cover disk and distribution costs, $5 retained
by the upgrade provider to cover the hassle of copying and mailing,
$5 sent by the upgrade provider to whoever puts together and tests
the upgrade package before distribution, and $5 to cover incidentals.
(maybe $5 sent to PH? maybe an upfront fee to PH for a license
allowing these upgrades?).

Does this make sense?  Can something like this be made to work? 
Anybody got a better idea about how we can save all those manyears
we've been spending duplicating each others efforts upgrading
manually and complaining to one another about all the upgrade
problems?