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From: haynes@ucscc.UCSC.EDU (99700000)
Newsgroups: comp.os.misc
Subject: Re: Multics - Whats the current status?
Keywords: Multics
Message-ID: <6579@darkstar.ucsc.edu>
Date: 4 Sep 90 17:50:49 GMT
References: <R6=%L%=@rpi.edu> <1990Sep3.155823.13261@Oxford.COM>
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Reply-To: haynes@ucscc.UCSC.EDU.UUCP (Jim Haynes)
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Organization: University of California, Santa Cruz  CATS
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In article <1990Sep3.155823.13261@Oxford.COM> Sibert@Oxford.COM (Olin Sibert) writes:
>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
>
>  > 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

Yeah, seems to me that Multics as we know it is rather rooted in the
"computing utility" concept of the 60s that has been completely
obsoleted by microcomputers.  That's the "business end" of those
2.5 million lines of PL/I code.  Now the way it looks to the individual
user is something else again; that's what we want to mine for good
ideas and transfer them to modern platforms.  But there's no future in
building humongous machines to be time-shared among many users as a
way of getting the cost of computing down.
haynes@ucscc.ucsc.edu
haynes@ucscc.bitnet
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"Any clod can have the facts, but having opinions is an Art."
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