Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rutgers!ames!sdcsvax!ucsdhub!jack!man!sdeggo!dave From: dave@sdeggo.UUCP Newsgroups: comp.arch,comp.unix.wizards,comp.os.minix Subject: Re: Free Software Foundation (was: Re: Mach, the new standard?) Message-ID: <87@sdeggo.UUCP> Date: Sat, 12-Sep-87 18:38:24 EDT Article-I.D.: sdeggo.87 Posted: Sat Sep 12 18:38:24 1987 Date-Received: Sun, 13-Sep-87 10:01:37 EDT References: <1665@ncr-sd.SanDiego.NCR.COM> <8381@utzoo.UUCP> <797@Pescadero.ARPA> <692@sugar.UUCP> Organization: Lazy Programmer's Society of San Diego Lines: 40 Xref: utgpu comp.arch:2041 comp.unix.wizards:3928 comp.os.minix:1556 In article <692@sugar.UUCP>, peter@sugar.UUCP (Peter da Silva) writes: (there was more up here about GNU being better than Minix for software development) > Are you implying that Version 7 wasn't suitable for research or commercial > development? Remember... UNIX didn't start out as BSD 4.3 either. Thank > the gods (Thompson & Ritchie). BSD would never have run on the machines > available in the early and mid seventies, just as GNU won't run on the > personal computers available today. It's not a case of wasn't; it was. It isn't today (at least not a PDP-11 based version), and neither is Minix in its present, IBM PC form. Minix is an impressive effort, and I give Dr. Tanenbaum his due, but I would hate to have to develop a large software package (has anyone ported "hack" yet?) under it. It's kind of like all the people who have taken Pascal (designed as a _teaching_ language, to be hand compiled by an instructor!) and wanted to try and develop real software in it. It's possible, but it ain't pleasant. BSD 4.3 would run just fine on an 80386 and it does run just fine on 68000's and 68020, so there is no reason that GNU wouldn't. "Personal computers available today" are available based on those chips, and that is where the market is heading. Wtih some work, (as Peter pointed out in his article, but I already threw away that part :-( ) Minix could be changed to be BSD compatible. The first task, though is to port it to a 68000 (with a good memory manager) or an 80386 and get around the 64K task size limit. The rest could be added in slowly. This might beat GNU out the door, but I'm not sure of the status of the GNU project. Why are so many people so anxious to beat on it? Someone's doing you a favor and all you can do is bitch about how "it's not here, it's too big, it doesn't do what I want it to do, my machine can't run it..."? Cripes, don't look a gift horse in the mouth. Especially one that nobody's really seen yet. -- David L. Smith {sdcsvax!sdamos,ihnp4!jack!man, hp-sdd!crash}!sdeggo!dave sdeggo!dave@sdamos.ucsd.edu "How can you tell when our network president is lying? His lips move."