Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!uunet!Oxford.COM!wos From: wos@Oxford.COM (Olin Sibert) Newsgroups: comp.os.misc Subject: Re: Multics - Whats the current status? Keywords: Multics Message-ID: <1990Sep3.155823.13261@Oxford.COM> Date: 3 Sep 90 15:58:23 GMT References: Reply-To: Sibert@Oxford.COM (Olin Sibert) Distribution: na Organization: Oxford Systems, Inc. Arlington, MA Lines: 136 I don't normally read this newsgroup, but a colleague forwarded me this discussion, so I thought I'd say a bit [more than I ought to, perhaps]. In article [Boy, is *that* a weird message-ID], multics@MTS.RPI.EDU (Richard Shetron) asks: > Whats the current status of the Multics hardware and software? Alas. It's dead. It is an ex-parrot. There's a handful of installations (in the U.S., Canada, England, and France) still struggling with the question "Gosh, what could we possibly migrate to after having used the best operating system in the world for so many years?" -- and I can understand their consternation. I'm not sure what the numbers are now, but at one time (late 1985) there were about 70 sites (65 customers, 85-90 systems). Indeed, I use one of the remaining systems nearly every working day, but it seems more of a dinosaur each time. Multics is still "supported", in one sense of the word: a spin-off from the University of Calgary, the Advanced Computing Technology Corporation, has a contract with Bull HN Information Systems, Inc. (nee Honeywell Bull, nee Honeywell Information Systems, hereinafter HoneyBull) to do what little software work that the customers require (things like occasional crash analysis, trivial software enhancements, and the like), but there's no real development. In fact, there's no longer even the "small group of developers in Phoenix"--it's all in Calgary now. The big Multics system in Phoenix ("System-M") remains, and Frank Martinson still runs it, though I don't know how long it will stay in operation. > I've heard that HIS is/has canceled Multics. Yes, indeed: in July, 1985, they sent a letter to customers announcing that the (long-anticipated) new hardware had been cancelled, and that the software would be in maintenance mode immediately, and no longer supported at all after July 1990. Various customers, in rough proportion to their size and/or desperation, quickly negotiated support contracts to help them through migration--but I think even those mostly run out in 1995 (which no longer seems that far away). There had been no significant new Multics hardware designed since the late 1970s, and though it still worked pretty well, it was nearing the end of its design life even then. > I've been thinking of working on a version for the 386 chip. There's a lot to Multics. About 2 - 2.5 million lines, as I recall. It's also written in Full (nearly-)ANSI PL/I, which qualifies as a pretty dead language these days. Although there are lots of PL/I subsets for small machines, and I believe even a few for the 386, the full language awfully complicated, and is heavily used by Multics. Then, of course, there's the 36-bit problem: Multics code is well aware that it lives in a world with 36-bit words, 9-bit bytes and, 18-bit address offsets, and would be pretty tough to convert to 32 and 8. A toy Multics would be easier--I'll bet a lot of the commands could be ported to UNIX pretty easily, along with the command processor itself (it'd be easiest, I think, as a complete transliteration to C). But what's the point? Multics is an integrated environment, and the rough edges would quickly appear. > Is there any old pre HIS versions that might be public domain from > the project MAC days? As Barry says, there never was a public domain version. In theory, MIT holds the sole copyright to the 1972 version, but that's *really* old (pre-6180), and the theory has not been tested recently. In the 1970s, MIT did give Control Data a license to that version, but nothing was ever heard after that. Who knows? Maybe it made some meaningful contribution to NOS/VE, another operating system that now seems on the skids (that's also a great shame--the Cyber 180 hardware is also quite well-suited to a Multics-style operating system). And, in article <35771@cos.com>, fetter@cos.com (Bob Fetter) adds: > I remember some "discussions" regarding one Mssr. (Olin?) Sibert and a > request by him to buy access to Multics for purposes of porting to the > 286/386 back in the middle-late 80's. Last I remember, the deal fell > through ... more from a political/marketing standpoint than from a > technical one, if the rumor mill fed me correctly. I'm he; there were, and it did. Your rumour mill is pretty close to the mark (and spells my name correctly, too, thanks). There were two attempts to rescue Multics, one by me in late 1985-86, and one by Michael Tague about a year later. I planned new 36-bit hardware (closely based on what HIS had been developing, but cancelled), followed by a transition to Intel architecture. Michael, being later, planned to transition directly. HoneyBull didn't much want to talk to me at the outset, and never really warmed to my proposal. They finally told me, with great vigor, to go away and darken their doorstep never more. All in all, I was grateful that I didn't have to hire a lawyer, and relieved that the attempt only wasted about a year. Michael had better luck initially, but also got the shaft in the end. I've since concluded that Multics would have been a good short term business (4-8 years), but probably doomed in the long run. I'd like to credit HoneyBull with that same vision, but I think it was more that they couldn't figure out how they'd deal with it whether it succeeded or not. They clearly wanted to get out of the computer business in the worst way, and most would agree that they have. They just weren't looking for new and risky opportunities to make money in computers. > Multics, in and of itself, was a rather holistically based system, > but the model it used has been left behind. Indeed, and this is why I think a Multics business would have been ultimately unsuccessful. There's a lot in Multics that still isn't matched, even in research systems like Mach. On the other hand, there's a lot of new technology out there that's extremely useful and appropriate, but simply couldn't be incorporated into the Multics model no matter how big a crowbar one used. I also haven't seen any system that approaches Multics for its internal consistency and integration, which I believe to be the result of a close-knit development community working together, not for years, but for decades. That, too, would be extremely hard to do in today's marketplace--a lot of things were easier when computers stood seven feet tall and fifty units a year was respectable volume. It sure would be nice to see, today, another broad-based effort like Multics to advance the state of the art in all areas of computer technology. It's been 25 years since the last one, so maybe it's about time. Today's nine hundred and seventeen research projects to make a (slightly) better UNIX certainly don't qualify. Anyway, thanks for asking. --------------------------------- Olin Sibert, Oxford Systems, Inc. Sibert@Oxford.COM uunet!oxford!sibert -- W. Olin Sibert |Internet: Sibert@Oxford.COM Oxford Systems, Inc. |UUCP: uunet!oxford!sibert