Feeping Creaturism (was Re: Unlimited software warranties)

[Paul Nash]

Thus spake rcd at ico.isc.com (Dick Dunn):
>
> jgd at Dixie.Com (John G. DeArmond) gives us a straw poll:
> >
> > Question 3: Same premise but the alternative this time is this company 
> > 	its resources in merging in Berkely functionality and compatability
> > 	maybe even getting with other vendors to try again to merge sys V and
> > 	Berkely.  Hmm.  I did not know middle aged programmers could do 
> > 	double back flips.  
>
> obscenely difficult task in the best of all possible worlds, merging two
> systems to produce something which retains all features of both while
> becoming simpler, introduces no incompatibilities and exacts neither time
> nor space penalties...and now a task which must succeed on technical merit
> alone, against the arrayed marketing skills of AT&T, SUN, OSF, DEC,
> HPollo, IBM,...

The best bet is probably to go back to Version 7, which didn't have
all the feeping creaturitis, and start again.  Oh, maybe tidy up
the kernel, convert it to message-passing, so that device drivers
are easier.  And of course, we want the source code, so that we can
add those features that we want.  Maybe a detailed description of
the code as well, because comments in the source are often not as
descriptive as one might like.  Best of all, it is available right
now ... pay Prentice Hall $150 and get a copy of Minix.  Your boss
might not like it, but it sure is a relief after playing with V.4.

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Paul Nash				   Free Range Computer Systems cc
paul at frcs.UUCP				      ...!uunet!m2xenix!frcs!paul