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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!rutgers!uwvax!mcvoy
From: mcvoy@uwvax.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: Re: MINIX extensions
Message-ID: <3166@rsch.WISC.EDU>
Date: Tue, 27-Jan-87 17:16:14 EST
Article-I.D.: rsch.3166
Posted: Tue Jan 27 17:16:14 1987
Date-Received: Wed, 28-Jan-87 22:15:09 EST
References: <252@hqda-ai.UUCP> <1953@ncoast.UUCP>
Reply-To: mcvoy@rsch.WISC.EDU (Lawrence W. McVoy)
Organization: U of Wisconsin CS Dept
Lines: 50

In article <1953@ncoast.UUCP> allbery@ncoast.UUCP (Brandon Allbery) writes:
>I dunno about you, but I intend to move my UNaXcess development environment
>to MINIX as soon as I get my hands on it and port some micro-variant of Emacs
>to it; at which point I'll be able to get cracking on the protocol module
>business and churn out programs to handle UUCP, Xmodem, Kermit, FidoNet, et
>cetera.

I'm a little amused at all the *proposed* activity.  Either you all have 
jobs that encourage non-relevent hacking or you're going to forget your
social life (you have one, right?) or you're tootin' that horn a little
loud, methinks.  Or maybe you're just orders of magnitude faster than
me (not too hard, I guess).

First of all, try porting some random programs between SV and 4BSD.  Rn,
uucp, dump/restore are all fun.  You'll find it a less than trivial task.
And this you can do on your 16Mhz 68020 w/ ~1Gig of disk...  Now,
try porting ls to minix.  By the time you have pulled all the unused
or meaningless parts of ls out, you could have probably rewritten it from
scratch.  Now try cp.  Now try vi.  Chuckle.  Remember, you're working
on a 8808 w/ a sl-o-o-o-w compiler/OS/CPU.  Runs at about 4Mhz.  Uses
floppies (whirr, whirr).  Runs a msg-based system (means nice code
but slooow throughput.  The MACH people have yet to _prove_ otherwise,
thought they sure talk a lot :-) Still here, huh?

Now, remember that AT&T code is not public domain (see below).  Things like 
the protocol that is used in UUCP are proprietary, not public domain.  Any
port of UUCP that shows up in public domain is _extremely_ suspect.  I
know of one port where the author claims to have done it all by looking 
at logfiles.   You might ask him how long it took (lauren@vortex.uucp).
AT&T can always decide to make an example to slow down theft.

>Anyway, if AT&T, as stuffy as they are, will allow you to post diffs to Sys5
>utilities, Prentice-Hall and Mr. Tanenbaum should be at least as lenient,
			      ^^^  That's Dr. Tanenbaum.  
>given the nature of MINIX.

Geez.  You really live with your head in the clouds.  Post diffs?  Chuckle.

A) The diffs would be so huge, you might as well post the entire program.

B) This is a cut-and-dried case of license violation.  You would deserve
   to lose it.

Remember, AT&T is the business to make $money$.  Not to support your
toys.  Geez.  
-- 
Larry McVoy 	        mcvoy@rsch.wisc.edu, 
      		        {seismo, topaz, harvard, ihnp4, etc}!uwvax!mcvoy

"They're coming soon!  Quad-stated guru-gates!"