Ressurect V/AT?

[Bill Kennedy]

I never expected the level of interest in my hare brained scheme
that my mail bore out.  Some time back, embedded in a Microport
flame, I suggested that we contribute to a fund to hire John
Plocher and pay him to get the license for V/AT and build a staff
to support it.

Some of that is moot now since John's safely docked at Sun Microsystems,
but my mail suggests that my idea's not as wacky as I had thought.
First off, thanks to the many who replied, unfortunately I didn't start
saving names and addresses until this morning.  I'd like to re-state
my suggestion in the form of a semi-proposal and gather reaction to it.

I think we need a champion to do this, John was a logical choice, but
now I'll collect nominations/volunteers.  This individual should be
paid and paid well enough to live off of it if it's a full time job
(which I think it is).  Some mechanism would have to be set up to
administer that, but that discussion is very premature.

I suggested that Intel and AT&T were the logical sources for a 286 UNIX
license.  I don't know what rights Intel has to it, but I'm pretty sure
that they did the original port that Microport worked from.  Both firms
should be amenable to discussion.  Intel is pretty busy in the chip
business and isn't as enthusiastic about the multi-source 80286 as they
are about the 80386 and beyond families.  They never seemed to do a lot
with the 286 UNIX if they have a stake in it.  AT&T had a very nice 286
UNIX for the PC 6300 PLUS (I used it for years) but never took it to
another 286 model after the PLUS was discontinued.  PLUS owners who also
had access to V/AT agreed that AT&T's product was more elegant and I
can say that Simul-Task was the most stable and seamless DOS under UNIX
product I have ever tried.

This indicates to me that Intel doesn't want to pursue '286 software
and that AT&T doesn't want to pursue UNIX on the 80286.  Depending
on that assumption should make either or both approachable to some
kind of arrangement.  I think that trying to take over V/AT per se
would just cost a lot of time and grief with creditors and bankruptcy
stuff.  Further, we might never get anywhere if it drags out and would
we really want it?  All of it?  Personally, I'd be delighted if I could
run PC 6300 PLUS UNIX on my AT clone.

If the "approachability" assumption is valid, then someone has to do it,
but before that can happen, some bucks need to be raised.  Every mail
response I have gotten indicates that we would be willing to contribute
something in order to have a viable 286 UNIX, no real mention of any DOS
capability.  I suspect that most of us do what I do, boot native DOS
at the /system5 prompt.  The median feeling seemed to be that $50 to
enroll and $10-50/year to sustain is about right for this.  There was
also general agreement that similar reaction would be received from 286
owners who aren't on the net (could we buy Microport's mailing list?).

This proposal gets shakier as it goes :-)  Assuming that we have a vendor
for the license and money to buy it, we need an entity to get it going
and keep it going.  I'm of the opinion that this should be someone who
is savvy with AT clones and UNIX, preferably retired or semi-retired but
willing to work full time, probably at home.  The retirement status
would be some assurance that the individual was not using this venture
for career enhancement and would have some immunity to income fluctuation.
This person would be assisted, at first, by a staff of volunteers who
would perform the technical work in exchange for free or bartered product
support.  These people would have to bring what ever we bought up to date
with device drivers and bug fixes.  They should be already-capable V/AT
hackers.  I think we could recruit them from usenet since the communication
requirements are already met.

I am intentionally omitting how we would set it up, who would run it,
and what we would do with it if it was successful.  I like the idea
of giving the FSF people money to do it, but I question how much
cooperation and empathy we would get for an 80286 platform.  So the
questions are these:

1) Would you contribute some sum in pursuit of this if it was planned
   staffed and organized to your satisfaction?  How much, initial and
   ongoing?

2) Volunteers and nominees for the champion?

My questions are based on the assumption that for each of the mail
replies I got there were maybe two more who noticed, were interested,
but didn't reply.  If that's the case, then please, all of you mail
a reply.  Sure, this is our news group, but if there's much volume, I
doubt that we want to read every stitch (though I will) and I will
post a summary in a couple of weeks.  Please respond to the .signature
address, ssbn is better known to the mailers and it will forward to me.
-- 
Bill Kennedy  Internet: bill at ssbn.WLK.COM
                Usenet: {texbell,att,killer,sun!daver,cs.utexas.edu}!ssbn!bill