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Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!mcvax!botter!ast
From: ast@botter.cs.vu.nl (Andy Tanenbaum)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: MINIX
Message-ID: <1033@botter.cs.vu.nl>
Date: Thu, 15-Jan-87 07:01:29 EST
Article-I.D.: botter.1033
Posted: Thu Jan 15 07:01:29 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 17-Jan-87 00:37:51 EST
Reply-To: ast@cs.vu.nl (Andy Tanenbaum)
Distribution: world
Organization: VU Informatica, Amsterdam
Lines: 60

lauren@vortex writes:

> DON'T POST AT&T UNIX BINARIES OR SOURCE (OR BINARIES OR SOURCE BASED ON 
> AT&T UNIX SOURCES) TO THE NETWORK!  FOR THAT MATTER, NEVER POST
> ANY NON-PUBLIC-DOMAIN SOFTWARE UNLESS YOU HAVE EXPLICIT 
> PERMISSION TO DO SO FROM THE ENTITY THAT LICENSES SUCH SOFTWARE!
> 
> I mention this in response to Andy's comment to a uucp query where he said
> (more or less): "if you have one that runs under V7 let me know or post it."
> I assume that he meant to add, "IF and only IF it is PUBLIC-DOMAIN AND NOT
> BASED ON AT&T CODE."  

Yes of course that is what I meant.  While developing MINIX I was offered
some software from people who shall here remain nameless.  This software
consisted of utilities taken from AT&T UNIX with the identifiers all
changed, the layout modified, and a few changes here and there.  Needless
to say I sent it all back, warning the authors that making cosmetic
changes to AT&T code does not suddenly void their copyright.  If you ever
get taken to court for copyright violation the judge can easily find an
impartial expert witness and ask him if in his opinion the copy was based
on the original.  If he says "yes" there will be trouble.

The MINIX utilities and libraries were all genuinely written from scratch,
without even peeking at the UNIX code.  The only place you may find some
resemblance is in very small subroutines like strcmp.  There are not really
a large number of fundamentally different algorithms for strcmp, so there
will be some similarity.  For larger programs like ls or even cp, there
is no similarity at all.  

The policy on posting MINIX source code is this.  Although it is copyright,
if you have modified some file and think people might be interested in it,
it is ok to mail or post it.  The only thing to keep in mind is that a
large amount of the network traffic goes over dial up phone lines, even if
your site happens to be on the ARPANET.  When you post something, remember
that other people are paying the phone bills.  If you want to post a large
file, it might be a good idea to first announce it and ask people to send
you mail if they are interested.  If there isn't much response, mailing
it to a few people is much cheaper than posting it to the whole world.

On another subject, as you can imagine, I have gotten LOTS of mail, all
of it very encouraging.  However, one person who works for a major defense
contractor said that his employer was planning to aquire MINIX to run on
some PCs.  Perhaps a word of caution is in order.  MINIX was designed with
the goal of being an educational tool, for teaching in university or
corporate classes, or studying yourself.  It was also designed for hackers
to play with at home on their PCs, and things like that.   I don't think I
would like to trust the defense of the entire Western World to it.

If you sort of have the vague notion that putting MINIX on your PC will 
suddenly turn the PC into something like the VAX running 4.3 that you use at 
work, you will be disappointed.  What it does do, is turn the PC into something 
roughly comparable to a low-end PDP-11 running V7.

Mark Harris posted a question concerning MINIX and the EGA board.  I honestly
don't know if MINIX will work with the EGA board.  I don't have access to
one.  Since the terminal driver is very straightforward, if the EGA board
makes a reasonable attempt to emulate the 6845, patching the driver shouldn't
be too hard even if it doesn't work initially.

Andy Tanenbaum