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From: dean@violet.berkeley.edu.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: Extensions to MINIX or... The Courts of Chaos
Message-ID: <2335@jade.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: Sat, 24-Jan-87 14:17:41 EST
Article-I.D.: jade.2335
Posted: Sat Jan 24 14:17:41 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 25-Jan-87 14:44:51 EST
Sender: usenet@jade.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: dean@violet.berkeley.edu (Dean Pentcheff)
Followup-To: comp.os.minix
Distribution: world
Organization: University of California, Berkeley   Department of Zoology
Lines: 39
Keywords: minix extensions administration
Summary: High confusion potential approaching

I keep reading (with interest and excitement) about MINIX and its
proposed extensions.  We may wish to address (now, before things start
happening) the problem of keeping track of all the good modifications
people make.  It's one thing to subscribe to *.sources and try out the
interesting looking programs - it's a bit tougher to try out different
kernal (kernel?) modifications, each of which may depend on the
presence or absence of others.  I have a sneaking suspicion that Andy
Tanenbaum is not going to want to spend the rest of his waking hours
administrating the maintenance and extension of MINIX.

Just as a pre-proposal to think about, I could forsee the following
developments.

i) The official Prentice-Hall distribution.  This would form the core
of the system and would remain largely unchanged except for bug-fixes.
Very few, if any, extensions would be made to this version (subject to
the author's and publisher's discretion, of course).

ii) A semi-official collection of tested, documented, and coordinated
extensions, maintained somewhere on the net by a group of Good People
who foolishly volunteer their time for this project.  These extensions
would come from:

iii) Unofficial postings of extensions in this group, which people
would be free to try out, improve, rant and rave about, etc.  Once an
extension reached some stability and consensus of usefulness, the Good
People could pick it up, pester the poster for adequate documentation,
and add it to the canonical list of extensions.

This system would give those of us who want a somewhat stable system a
chance to benefit from improvements, while those of us who want to live
on the dangerous (but fun) cutting edge could try out all the new
gizmos.  Of course, it all hinges on finding a group of Good People who
are bright enough to do the job, but dumb enough to volunteer.

As my 7th grade social studies teacher used to say: "Questions-problems-
comments-answers??"

-Dean Pentcheff         (dean@violet.berkeley.edu)