Microport Buyout ( was: Microport Status )

[Eric Schnoebelen]

In article <10317 at cit-vax.Caltech.Edu> tim at cit-vax.UUCP (Timothy L. Kay) writes:
-
-You aren't seriously considering a Microport buyout, are you?  As has
-been pointed out, they really don't have that much of value, and they
-carry a pretty bad reputation.

	Yes, Microport does have a fairly bad reputation right now.
But they also have name recognition.  Starting an entirely new software
endevor, without a known name would be very expensive, just in terms of
getting the name established..

-They do have one thing to offer, though.  Wouldn't it be nice if the
-device drivers they produced somehow end up in the public domain, or
-even better, in the hands of the Free Software Foundation?  Ideally,
-somebody could propose a mechanism whereby Microport (in the absence
-of an interested buyer) would donate their device drivers to the Free
-Software Foundation.

	Well, none of the drivers for Microport are going to go into the
public domain, at least not until their usefulness has passed.  Right
now they have value to someone ( even only if it is the person who wrote
them.. )

	And the FSF doesn't have that kind of money to spend, and thier
goal is to build a Unix system that is totally free of any AT&T code,
and that certainly couldn't be guarenteed about the Microport code.

-I am aghast at the poor quality of *all* the 386 Unix's, and I am
-going to be one of the first people to adopt GNU if we ever get the
-chance.

	I too am dismayed by the quality of the Unix/386 implementations
I have seen and read about.  I have both Microport Unix/386 and
Unix/286 and Interactive 386/ix, and I much prefer Microport ( I've got
my flame suit on, thanks anyway.. ) to Interactive.  And I have seen
nothing that recommends any other version over Microport to me. ( Enix
might have a chance, but I have yet to play with it.. ) And please don't
tell me about SCO Xenix,  I see more traffic in that group about bugs
than I do in this group and comp.unix.i386 combined.. ( now where did I
put the other flame suit.. :-)

-- 
Eric Schnoebelen
egsner!eric at texbell.swbt.com			...!texbell!egsner!eric
egs at u-word.dallas.tx.us				...!killer!u-word!egs