I propose a unix wishlist newsgroup

[David Yost]

I am getting increasingly frustrated with unix and the
discussions on the net about bug after bug, many of which
many of us have fixed and refixed year after year.

It's time for something new.  I want to create a newsgroup
"net.nextbsd" where we can make constructive suggestions for
improvements, cleanups, rewrites, and new features that we
wish would come out in the next bsd.  I hope Sys5-ers will
form their own parallel news group, and I hope even more that
someone from AT&T will listen to it and do the right things,
as I expect Berkeley will with our group.

4.3 is being sewn up right now, so we would be talking about
4.4, and hopefully discussion would continue into later
editions.  I hope this could be a newsgroup where a lot of
good ideas can be batted about, a place to transcribe good
folklore.  Word is that Berkeley is alive and kicking with
another 3-year Arpa contract.  This is probably great news.
They have a good thing going, and I personally hope that
they continue to do a lot of good things to 4.xbsd, even
radical changes.  Unix used to be interesting.  Maybe it can
still be.

Many of us are running 4.2 on binary licenses, and it is
hopeless to get most manufacturers to individually do much
important work to unix.  Berkeley serves the purpose of
being the clearing house as well as the originator of the
improvements we need, which the manufacturers will hopefully
always adopt wholesale and make available to us.

No bug discussions unless they are basic design problems
that can eliminated by a different approach.

Unix wizards only.

--dave