Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cornell!rochester!udel!mmdf
From: wzg91@ttacs1.ttu.edu (BROWN, KEVIN)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: grrr...BCPL....
Message-ID: <14868@louie.udel.EDU>
Date: 7 May 89 14:21:12 GMT
Sender: mmdf@udel.EDU
Lines: 59


To the Amiga OS developers:

I've been informed about the history of AmigaDOS, and why there haven't 
been any attempts to rewrite it.

My humble apologies for flaming you in my last post.  Considering the
pressures and limitations placed on you, you've done an excellent job. 

C-A management, on the other hand, deserves the full force of my previous
flame.  While I now understand and (partially) agree with the reasons for
the INITIAL version of AmigaDOS (time constraints for release of the 
product), I DON'T agree with the reasons for not FIXING the problem (i.e., 
I don't agree with the priorities set by C-A management:  Autobooting, V1.2 
of the OS, FFS, etc. taking priority over a rewrite of AmigaDOS).  The 
reason is that autobooting and FFS can both be accomplished by a rewrite of 
AmigaDOS, with the added advantage that the current limitations of AmigaDOS 
would be removed.

Granted, rewriting AmigaDOS will introduce a host of new bugs, but finding 
these is what beta testers are for!  Out of curiosity, how many people are 
actually acting as beta test sites for new revisions of the OS?  I suspect 
not nearly enough.

There are a LOT of people on comp.sys.amiga and comp.sys.amiga.tech.  I'd 
be willing to bet that quite a number of them (myself included) would be 
willing to act as beta-test sites, provided that it doesn't cost anything 
(and why should it?  Beta testers are providing a service for free, at 
least to the best of my knowledge!).

But since your hands are essentially tied by management (unless the
situation has changed, of course), I have a suggestion: why not release
information about the internal workings of DOS to those who are interested
and let THEM rewrite it?  Many of them (myself included) would probably be
willing to do it for FREE!   Already we have one person (Deven Corzine)
working on a Un*x programmer's interface for the Amiga.  I suspect he'd be
elated if he were allowed to rewrite DOS!  God knows he seems competent
enough to do so...  And when you have enough versions, you can evaluate
them all and decide on which one to use and then release it to your
beta-testers.  Needless to say, I would strongly recomment hiring the
author of the DOS you decide to use so that bug-killing will be easier :-)
:-).  And once the bugs are out, you can release it to the world... 

So what about it, guys?  What's to stop you from taking this course of
action?  It doesn't look like AmigaDOS will be rewritten in-house anyway
(at least not any time in the near future) so why NOT have it written
elsewhere???  And your management might like the idea, too, since you (the 
Amiga OS people) could concentrate on what your management believes are the 
priority items.  In other words, C-A, what do you have to lose?


				Kevin Brown

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