Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!mks!wheels
From: wheels@mks.UUCP (Gerry Wheeler)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: MKS Idea
Keywords: MKS with MSC
Message-ID: <549@mks.UUCP>
Date: 14 Nov 88 15:26:41 GMT
References: <4994@whuts.UUCP> <7501@dasys1.UUCP> <546@mks.UUCP> <1396@stiatl.UUCP>
Organization: Mortice Kern Systems, Waterloo, Ont.
Lines: 23

In article <1396@stiatl.UUCP>, john@stiatl.UUCP (John DeArmond) writes:
> Why does not Mortise Kern
> go ahead and turn MKS into a standalone OS?  You guys already
> have about 80% of it done with the shell and utilities.  Why not put together
> a nice little multitasking, single user kernel to run below the shell.

Well, it's nice to know that people think we could whip up a new OS in a
week or two :-), but I think it would really take a lot of work.  You
may not be pleased with MS-DOS, but it does represent many man-years
(people-years?) of effort.

So far, we've resisted all temptations to make any changes to the DOS
kernel -- all our programs run on stock versions of MS-DOS.  I think
we'll continue to work in that direction.  And, the same will likely be
true for OS/2 -- it may be big, but if we run on the stock version
everyone will be able to use our utilities.  Making changes to the OS
would likely create a lot of problems. 

-- 
     Gerry Wheeler                           Phone: (519)884-2251
Mortice Kern Systems Inc.               UUCP: uunet!watmath!mks!wheels
   35 King St. North                             BIX: join mks
Waterloo, Ontario  N2J 2W9                  CompuServe: 73260,1043