the death of dreams (was Not again (BSD etc. ports))

[andrew.d.hay]

In article <1991Mar26.042109.25425 at sci.ccny.cuny.edu> jeffrey at sci.ccny.cuny.edu (Jeffrey L Bromberger) writes:
[]
"Right now, believe it or not, I have fallen under the beliefs of other
"long-term users.  Namely that there is not all that much wrong with
"3.51m unix.  There'd be too much lost by starting over again.  I'm
"saying that as someone who uses tape, ethernet, voice, combo, and
"sometimes dos cards.  Nobody has the specs for those things.  So I'd
"end up losing what I have. No way, not after all I've laid out for
"them.  For the things that our kernel is missing, like symlinks and
"UIPC, well, there's the hope of loadable drivers.  And the same few
"are still cranking them out.  Names like Mike Ditto, Alex Crain and
"David Herron.  These are our kernel hackers.  People,
"there are only a few who are skilled at kernel.  Sure, anyone can
"write regular code, but stuff like drivers is different.  Does anyone
"have not only the time and experience, but the machine to experiment
"on?  I can't afford to use my one machine to do kernel testing.  What
"happens if one trashes their disks?

this is exactly why i suggested we start with miniframe ctix 5.X.  the
miniframe is a *very* close relative of the 3b1; binaries can be
ported, for example (are drivers also portable? thad?).  i thought
that by diffing the src trees for ctix 5.X and 3.51m, we could easily
spot the hardware dependencies.  this would reduce the porting job to
an editing job, which is something even i could do -- and i would come
out of it knowing a lot more about the kernel and kernel programming,
which was one of my major goals in this project/dream.

but response to my proposal has been sparse; i've only seen about a
half-dozen replies from people willing to commit money toward source
licenses.

oh well...

-- 
Andrew Hay		+------------------------------------------------------+
Ragged Individualist	| 			JAAAAAAANE!		       |
AT&T-BL Ward Hill MA	|	    HOW DO YOU STOP THIS CRAZY THING?	       |
a.d.hay at att.com		+------------------------------------------------------+