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From: chris@mimsy.umd.edu (Chris Torek)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions,comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: MACH kernel - source become pd?
Summary: Sad facts
Keywords: MACH
Message-ID: <26980@mimsy.umd.edu>
Date: 13 Oct 90 13:49:08 GMT
References: <450@dill.UUCP>
Organization: U of Maryland, Dept. of Computer Science, Coll. Pk., MD 20742
Lines: 35

In article <450@dill.UUCP> tilley@ukfca1 (Jonathan Tilley) writes:
>[An] article said that once the MACH kernel was completely free of
>ATT stuff and was stable, it was going to be available free.

This is the plan.  As the old saying goes, `Don't count your chickens
before they hatch.'  (Things look good; CMU already gives away Mach
for free.  The problem is that you must first show your AT&T source
license.)

>I know that the kernel is now stable - NeXT has it as their operating
>system,

(a) CMU Mach != NeXT Mach; (b) just because NeXT ships it does not mean
it is `stable'.%  Neither of these is really important, though:

>so does anyone know if or when MACH will become free?

It already is freely available.  The problem is that the Mach kernel
is also useless *by itself*.  The Mach kernel is a *kernel*, NOT an
Operating System; it is more like what IBM sometimes calls a `nucleus'.
It does not provide a file system, for instance.  No file system ==
no files on disks == no place to keep data.  You can use it with the
AT&T and/or Berkeley file systems, of course, but you have to pay money
for those.  It also does not come with little things like a shell,
login program, ....

(Note that Berkeley CSRG are working on a free 4BSD as well.  The same
set of caveats above apply, except that the 4BSD `kernel' is pretty much
the whole O/S, not just the bits that cannot be paged.)

-----
% See the lyrics to `There Must Be 50 Ways to Crash Your NeXT Box' :-)
-- 
In-Real-Life: Chris Torek, Univ of MD Comp Sci Dept (+1 301 405 2750)
Domain:	chris@cs.umd.edu	Path:	uunet!mimsy!chris