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From: Rick.Rashid@cs.cmu.edu
Newsgroups: comp.os.misc
Subject: Re: Rashid's complaint (also, how to get Amoeba papers by FTP)
Message-ID: <IbrfCkS00jdXEAfG0P@cs.cmu.edu>
Date: 13 Mar 91 23:20:16 GMT
Organization: Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA
Lines: 50

Andy,
    I didn't realize you kept such detailed notes on the dates and times
of our meetings.  Please find that rogue computer, it could be dangerous.

    In your reply to my complaint about your characterization of Mach, you
made or implied several inaccuracies:

    1) I am not a businessman.  Everything I (or my group) does is freely
available - papers, documentation and code.  The Mach 3.0 kernel is
available by anonymous FTP from CMU and a number of sites in Japan and
Europe.  I have tried to maintain the view that work done in an academic
environment with public funds should be available to all.

    2) The Mach kernel supports complete multiprocessor and network
transparency.  It was designed as a follow on to the Accent (1981) and
RIG (1976) kernels and was certainly designed from scratch in the same
sense as Amoeba.  Application servers and operating system enviornments
(such as Unix and DOS) which run on top of Mach provide varying levels
of transparency of the kind you refer to in your note.  On the machine
I am using right now, for example, I can ls -l in the same directory tree
files at Stanford, Dartmouth, Michigan, MIT, OSF/Cambridge, OSF/Grenoble, etc.
There are numerous published papers describing transparent distributed
systems which have been built on Mach.

One reason for possible confusion between your viewpoint on this issue
and mine is that I make a clear distinction when I refer to Mach between
Mach as a system software kernel and the various possible operating
system environments which could be supplied above it.  I believe your
comments about transparency in Amoeba really refer to specific servers
and services which have been provided above the Amoeba kernel.

So, I hope this clears things up:

      * Mach is not Unix
      * Mach is not even an operating system in the sense of Unix,
        but rather a system software kernel which can (and does)
        support several operating system environment plus a wealth
        of distributed and parallel applications
      * Mach evolved from RIG and Accent and was designed from
        first principles to deal with MP and network environments
        (as documented in dozens of papers from 1976 to 1991).
      * I am not a businessman
      * I can't spell Amoeba (actually, I can't spell at all)
      * We are both nice guys when we aren't debating the merits of
        our own systems

-Rick

PS - Now that we have exchanged an even number of mail messages on half a
dozen mailing lists we could move the discussion to our private mail.