Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!know!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!julius.cs.uiuc.edu!psuvax1!eds1!cdh1
From: cdh1@eds1.UUCP (C. Daniel Hassell)
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: Re^2: Where is Minix headed?
Keywords: Minix for grad courses?
Message-ID: <612@eds1.UUCP>
Date: 17 Oct 90 04:03:04 GMT
References: <33514@nigel.ee.udel.edu> <7956@star.cs.vu.nl>
Organization: EDS - Senate of Pennsylvania
Lines: 34

ast@cs.vu.nl (Andy Tanenbaum) writes:

>In article <33514@nigel.ee.udel.edu> pezely@cis.udel.edu (Daniel Pezely) writes:
>>I do understand what you're saying, but what about the students who
>>want to learn about more advanced features of a high performance os?

>Let them read Hwang & Briggs books.  All 800+ pages of it, and small letters.

>Andy Tanenbaum (ast@cs.vu.nl)

I think Andy has a point here.  What we have is a clash of intentions.  
Andy wrote the code to be educational and has gone to great pains to keep
it so.  Us users out here though, have laid down money to get a copy a 
would like it to be also useful for real work, and the bells and whistles
being proposed would indeed aid its usefulness.

I propose that we solve this by not pestering Andy to amend his elegant
code, but rather develop an enhanced Minix, or perhaps Internet Minix,
that has the features WE want.  Someone will have to be designated as
the keeper of the official source, and occasionally release a set of 
diffs relative to the most recent AST Minix, which is 1.5 right now.

Minix was designed to be changed by users so I don't see why we can't
work together on it.  We could develop a consensus list of features
we want to work toward, and see what happens.

I do not want Andy to see this as a palace coup, but rather a reasonable
evolution of a basically great system.

What does anyone think?

Dan Hassell
cdh1@eds1.eds.com
psuvax1!eds1!cdh1