wkt@ccadfa.adfa.oz.au (Warren Toomey) (02/06/91)
In article <43780@nigel.ee.udel.edu>, wjb%cogsci.COG.JHU.EDU writes: > > Perhaps it is time (as one poster suggested) for a MAXMINIX. > Some kind of forum where discussion and organization of efforts which are > not expected to EVER become part of the standard release might be useful. > Hopefully, both groups would continue to communicate with each other and > share ideas. Here's my 2 cents worth on the topic, which many of us have seen come & go in the past four years in comp.os.minix. a) Andy is going to want Minix to be small, and he is going to bring out new releases periodically. I suggest something akin to the AT&T/UCB situation -- release diffs to the P-H Minix to create MAXMINIX, and keep strong ties with the designers of P-H Minix so as to minimise the impact of new P-H releases. This is the sort of thing that Bruce Evans, Fred van Kempen and others are currently doing. b) Try to make the damn thing as platform-independent as possible. This I guess is my current bugbear with Minix, as the 80x86 and 680x0 versions are _still_ too far apart. c) Get as many people involved as possible, to avoid the `re-invent the wheel' syndrome. Yes, everybody is writing disk drivers, I've stopped porting BSD TCP/IP/SLIP/sockets until I find out what FvK and Andy are going to bring out. The problem here is whose solution to adopt. Not everybody is going to do things the same way. Who decides what goes into MAXMINIX??? d) Make the MAXMINIX diffs public domain. A lot of high quality stuff has already been written for Minix for no cost. Let's keep it that way. e) Find out what's already been written!!! Fred van Kempen, Earl Chew, Bruce Evans, Terrance Holm, Rober Regn, Jwahar Bammi, Nick Andrew, B Szablak, Frans Meulenbroeks, Peter S. Housel, Callum Gibson, Steve Kirkendall, Norbert Schlenker, Robert R. Hall, Christoph van Wuellen, the list is endless... To those I've missed, take heart, I am (again) posting the list of _big_ comp.os.minix postings. Go through this list, find device drivers, debuggers, applications, kernel/mm/fs patches etc, and decide what should go in etc. Call for budding applications writers, kernel hackers to send in submissions for MAXMINIX, comments, thoughts etc. Set up a mailing list. f) Be fair to everybody, and have fun!! Especially be fair to Andy, who has made all of this possible. Try and make as much MAXMINIX stuff portable & useful in P-H Minix. Remember, simple is beautiful. -- Warren Toomey VK1XWT, still around. Deep in the bowels of ADFA Comp Science. `[of Fred Astaire:] He'd look good in a dress'
tsarna@polar.bowdoin.edu (Tyler Sarna) (02/07/91)
I only see one problem with these suggestions... the name! It's too
confusing, only one letter off from MACMINIX. Let's call it MAXIX
or something else. Please!
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/// Tyler "Ty" Sarna E-Mail: tsarna@polar.bowdoin.edu
\\\/// "...from France, Iraq, and other Arab nations..." - CNN
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