Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cos!fetter From: fetter@cos.com (Bob Fetter) Newsgroups: comp.os.misc Subject: Re: Multics - Whats the current status? Keywords: Multics Message-ID: <35982@cos.com> Date: 6 Sep 90 03:28:41 GMT References: <1990Sep3.155823.13261@Oxford.COM> <6579@darkstar.ucsc.edu> Reply-To: fetter@cos.UUCP (Bob Fetter) Distribution: na Organization: Corporation for Open Systems, McLean, VA Lines: 77 In article <6579@darkstar.ucsc.edu> haynes@ucscc.UCSC.EDU.UUCP (Jim Haynes) writes: >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. Well, Multics == "MULTIplexed Information and Computing Service", but there, I think, is where your assertion stops. There never was any intrinsic reason that Multics was a "humongous machine" -- it was built as a general-purpose system. Yes, it was built as a "time sharing" system, but then what multitasking workstation today isn't a "time sharing" system. As regards the "2.5 million lines of PL/I code", take a real close look at Unix SysV or BSD 4.3 -- you will see at least 2 million+ lines of code if you include networking (which the 2.5 above includes). This is really not a big point in categorizing operating systems.... In that the concept of a "computing utility" being obsoleted by microcomputers, I submit the existence of CompuServe, Prodigy, and tens of thousands of bulletin board systems throughout the world refutes that point. Microcomputers have been a great boon to the world, but they have let us isolate ourselves in a new and insinuous way. Regarding "how it looks to the individual user", I defy anyone to present a user environment (both end-user and programmer-user) which is as consistent and as **malleable** as the Multics environment is/was. A Multics use would -->know<-- that "-brief" would be an acceptable argument to virtually ANY command to which the user would wish to get "just the facts, ma'am". In the same guise, "-long" would give the total and complete case. This was not the only example. For the progammer, the canonical control over I/O management *on the application level* gave one an incredible degree of freedom. I must be blunt on this point--Unix I/O redirection is but a shadow of what capabilities are possible. Yes, the Unix shell environment gives one a cleaner interface to this capability than the standard Multics command_processor_ did, but that's because people developed "a better way to use", not that the system itself was lacking in *providing*. In closing, the problem of "getting the cost of computing down" has not been solved by the systems currently in existance. In particular, today's "modern platforms" do not address the dynamic relocation *regardless of the mode or method of program implementation* of multiple threads of execution across the realm of 1) multiple processor (tightly or otherwise) coupled cpus ** and in a transparent and invisible manner ** 2) networked and/or otherwise co-operative cpus This does not mean that Multics solved 2) above. But, then, nothing else to-date does either. It does/did deal with 1) above as well (if not better) than anything else in commercial existance today... What we *do* have, regardless, is a homogenized environment in which Unix (or Unix work-alikes) predominate. Whether this is "a good thing" is indeed the the basis of this thread. >haynes@ucscc.ucsc.edu >haynes@ucscc.bitnet >..ucbvax!ucscc!haynes > >"Any clod can have the facts, but having opinions is an Art." > Charles McCabe, San Francisco Chronicle