Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!mailrus!cwjcc!pirate!chet
From: chet@pirate.CWRU.EDU (Chet Ramey)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: FSF MACH?
Message-ID: <202@cwjcc.CWRU.Edu>
Date: 21 Oct 88 19:35:40 GMT
References: <354@thor.wright.EDU> <5715@hoptoad.uucp>
Sender: news@cwjcc.CWRU.Edu
Reply-To: chet@cwjcc.CWRU.EDU (Chet Ramey)
Organization: CWRU Andrew R. Jennings Computing Center
Lines: 35

In article <5715@hoptoad.uucp> gnu@hoptoad.uucp (John Gilmore) writes:
>[This is a bit out of place here, as it concerns Mach and GNU, not NeXT.]
[This is, too, I guess]

	[John talking about CMU and GNU/FSF plans for Mach development]

>The most necessary utility programs have already been developed --
>shell, compiler subsystem, and text editor.  Running these and a free
>window system on a bare bones kernel, individuals will be able to build
>the parts of the Unix environment (or any other) that they miss the
>most, and contribute them back to the project.

I read in the latest GNUsletter (the one with the pink cover handed out
at the last Usenix) something to the effect that "most of the common
Unix utilities have been written and tested and we are waiting until we
have a complete system to distribute before we distribute them"
(paraphrasal).  So, I would guess that when all the non-ATT code has
been removed from Mach and there is a working kernel, there will be a
fairly reasonable system to use (i.e.  we won't all have to rewrite
`ls' (and all of it's 78 options :-) ). 

In addition, there might not be as much ATT code to replace as John said
(though the amount will still be considerable).  RMS has made noises
about using the file system from Berkeley's Sprite OS project with the
Mach kernel, assuming he can obtain permission, since this file system
was designed from the beginning to be a distributed fs (`distributed' in
the OS sense, not "made available outside Berkeley"), and contains no
ATT code to begin with. 

Chet


Chet Ramey            			chet@cwjcc.CWRU.EDU
Network Management Group		chet@alpha.CES.CWRU.EDU
Andrew R. Jennings Computing Center	chet@pirate.CWRU.EDU
Case Western Reserve University