Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cornell!rochester!udel!mmdf From: wzg91@ttacs1.ttu.edu (BROWN, KEVIN) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: A BIG apology and, hopefully, a useful suggestion... Message-ID: <14870@louie.udel.EDU> Date: 7 May 89 14:21:53 GMT Sender: mmdf@udel.EDU Lines: 94 To the Amiga OS developers (and to the rest of the newsgroup: apologies for my childish behavior. I feel really silly now): 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. Your management calls the shots, so I guess there isn't a whole lot you as developers can do, even though you may have a better understanding of the situation than your management... I now understand and (partially) agree with your management's reasons for the INITIAL version of AmigaDOS (time constraints for release of the product), but I DON'T agree with the reasons for not FIXING the problem (i.e., I don't agree with the priorities set by your 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. While this might take longer (and I say *might* because you wouldn't have to work around the existing code to achieve your objectives), I feel the result would have been worth the time. Yes, rewriting AmigaDOS will introduce a host of new bugs, but 1.1 of the OS had a number of bugs as it was, and I would hope, at least, that the introduction of a rewrite of DOS would not have introduced any more bugs than already existed (though the bugs would certainly be of a different nature). In any case, finding bugs 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 to get most of the bugs worked out in a reasonably short period of time, though I really can't say for sure. This may not have been a situation that you had much control over initially, since there may not have been many people around to act as beta test sites. With 1,000,000+ Amigas out there now, I don't think that is a limitation any more. So the question is, are there now a reasonable number of beta test sites? If not, then it seems that it should be an easy problem to rectify. There are a LOT of people on comp.sys.amiga and comp.sys.amiga.tech. I would think 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 the OS 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. You could set things up so that those who want to give rewriting DOS a shot could access any internal information necessary (provided, of course, that such information will not change in future revisions of the OS), and then turn in their finished work to you. You can even make alpha-testing their responsibility. After a specified period of time, or 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 recommend hiring the author of the DOS you decide to use so that bug-killing will be easier :-) :-). And once the bugs are out (to the best of your knowledge), you can release it to the world. Since this is a project that would be done independently by outside people, the current bugs and enhancements in the current AmigaDOS can be addressed by you (which is already the case anyway), so nothing is really lost in that respect. It seems to me that the only drawback to this idea is that the rewritten DOS may have more bugs at the time of official release than AmigaDOS would at that time. However, since this project would be independent of the existence of AmigaDOS as it currently is, there is effectively unlimited time to work out the bugs in the new AmigaDOS before release. This is different from the situation you guys originally had to deal with, when there was no other working alternative. 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 Internet: wzg91@ttacs1.ttu.edu or Bitnet: WZG91@TTACS1 or c8u00@ttacs1.ttu.edu C8U00@TTACS1 Snailnet: 4817 Saxon Voicenet: (806)742-4375 Bellaire, TX 77401