Microport, FSF, etc.

[Tom Frauenhofer]

In article <15741 at clover.ICO.ISC.COM> rcd at ico.ISC.COM (Dick Dunn) writes:
>In <98683 at sun.Eng.Sun.COM>, plocher%sally at Sun.COM (John Plocher) writes:
>[various interesting comments about final technical status of Microport
>stuff]
>
>> >       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,
>> Instead of everyone spending thousands on yet another Unix Company, why
>> not send that money to the Free Software Foundation so that someday soon
>> we ALL can have a Unix-Like OS?

... deleted stuff ...

>In spite of the "software for the people" approach (of the FSF)
>they aren't interested in any machines that don't have 32-bit
>integers and pointers, and a whole bunch of memory.

The FSF people are one group.  I haven't heard anyone talk about taking MINIX
($80 gets you the source to everything) and using that as a base for a 286
product?  I know, it doesn't have the 286 protected mode stuff built in, but
there are people who have worked on that problem.  ast has made statements that
he isn't going to make a SVID-compliant OS, but his plans are to make Version
2.0 POSIX compliant.

Yet Another Solution:
	- Microport Kernel (buggy or bug-free as it may be)
	- PD/FSF/Whatever Drivers (modified for V/AT)
	- PD/FSF/MINIX/MKS Tools (Yeah, you'd still have to buy MINIX)
	  (KSH, AWK, BISON, SED, TAR, etc.)

Neither is a perfect solution, but as time goes buy I'm more convinced us buying
Microport is not a good idea (see previous postings for the why's).

Thomas V. Frauenhofer	...!rutgers!rochester!cci632!ccird7!tvf
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