tlhingan@unsvax.UUCP (Eugene Tramaglino) (04/04/88)
If everyone on the net with the appropriate skills volunteered 5 (five) hours per week of their time, we could write our own OS, editor, utils, etc, and leave IBM, Apple, HP, and everyone else in the dust. Okay, maybe we'd need to tap some folx outside the net community. But ask yourself how much you'd get in software for your 5 hours. I picked 5 hours as an arbitrary number, but I hereby volunteer my 5. Now, we need a good co-ordinator. . . . I said it was Nutty. #==============================================#=========================# # Eugene Tramaglino -- tlhingan@unsvax.uns.edu # USS Mahagonny, NCC-1929 # # 1450 E Harmon 207A, Las Vegas, NV 89119 #=========================# # Data: "All paths are equally dangerous." # Member, Institute of # # Riker: "Let's go!" # General Semantics. # #==============================================#=========================#
bob@allosaur.cis.ohio-state.edu (Bob Sutterfield) (04/06/88)
In article <231@unsvax.UUCP> tlhingan@unsvax.uucp (Eugene Tramaglino) writes: >If everyone on the net with the appropriate skills volunteered 5 >(five) hours per week of their time, we could write our own OS, >editor, utils, etc, ... I hereby volunteer my 5. Now, we need a good >co-ordinator... Please send mail to info-gnu@prep.ai.mit.edu. There's plenty of work for you to do. GNU won't be PD, but it will be free, as are the utilities that are already available. >I said it was Nutty. People have been saying that about RMS for years, but they still use his editors :-) None of the Newsgroups included here are really appropriate for Yet Another Pro/Anti-GNU FlameFest, but then they haven't been appropriate for the already-rolling OS-feature wars here, either. -=- Bob Sutterfield, Department of Computer and Information Science The Ohio State University; 2036 Neil Ave. Columbus OH USA 43210-1277 bob@cis.ohio-state.edu or ...!cbosgd!osu-cis!bob
rmpinchback@dahlia.waterloo.edu (Reid M. Pinchback) (04/07/88)
In article <231@unsvax.UUCP> tlhingan@unsvax.uucp (Eugene Tramaglino) writes: >If everyone on the net with the appropriate skills volunteered 5 (five) >hours per week of their time, we could write our own OS, editor, utils, >etc, and leave IBM, Apple, HP, and everyone else in the dust. Okay, ... stuff >I said it was Nutty. Not such a nutty idea... It might be hard to coordinate, but if we could split the project into small pieces, like one whole, complete program being done by each person (for small utilities), or one major module per person (for large packages, languages, OS), then it just might be possible. Providing, that is, that we could agree on WHAT was to be done, HOW it was to be done, and HOW to maintain the resultant code. Comments, anybody? Reid M. Pinchback -----------------
jay@splut.UUCP (Jay Maynard) (04/11/88)
In article <9804@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> bob@allosaur.cis.ohio-state.edu.UUCP writes: >In article <231@unsvax.UUCP> tlhingan@unsvax.uucp (Eugene Tramaglino) writes: >>If everyone on the net with the appropriate skills volunteered 5 >>(five) hours per week of their time, we could write our own OS, >>editor, utils, etc, ... I hereby volunteer my 5. Now, we need a good >>co-ordinator... > >Please send mail to info-gnu@prep.ai.mit.edu. There's plenty of work >for you to do. GNU won't be PD, but it will be free, as are the >utilities that are already available. Well, almost. The only problem is that RMS holds PCs in contempt, and refuses to even consider making GNU work on them. In short, he's a 68000 bigot when it comes to micros - and he will require them to support demand-paged virtual memory. (Goodbye, GNU/Mac.) A better place for your efforts would be in extending Minix; it's not PD either, but it's cheap, and you even get a text in OS construction with it. See comp.os.minix for more info. (Note: I'm not running minix; I learned about it after I spent $500 for Microport System V/AT.) >None of the Newsgroups included here are really appropriate for Yet >Another Pro/Anti-GNU FlameFest, but then they haven't been appropriate >for the already-rolling OS-feature wars here, either. Followups to this one have been redirected to comp.sys.ibm.pc only, as the comments really only pertain to the PC. -- Jay Maynard, EMT-P, K5ZC...>splut!< | GEnie: JAYMAYNARD CI$: 71036,1603 uucp: {uunet!nuchat,hoptoad!academ!uhnix1,{ihnp4,bellcore}!tness1}!splut!jay Never ascribe to malice that which can adequately be explained by stupidity. Pledge #29: Vote for Kent Paul Dolan and the Birthright Party in '88!
asg@pyuxf.UUCP (alan geller) (04/13/88)
In article <6276@watdragon.waterloo.edu>, rmpinchback@dahlia.UUCP writes: > In article <231@unsvax.UUCP> tlhingan@unsvax.uucp (Eugene Tramaglino) writes: > >If everyone on the net with the appropriate skills volunteered 5 (five) > >hours per week of their time, we could write our own OS, editor, utils, > >etc, and leave IBM, Apple, HP, and everyone else in the dust. Okay, > ... stuff > >I said it was Nutty. > > Not such a nutty idea... It might be hard to coordinate, but if we could > split the project into small pieces, like one whole, complete program being > done by each person (for small utilities), or one major module per person > (for large packages, languages, OS), then it just might be possible. Providing, > that is, that we could agree on WHAT was to be done, HOW it was to be done, > and HOW to maintain the resultant code. > > Comments, anybody? > > > Reid M. Pinchback > ----------------- Actually, it strikes me as a rather good idea. Certainly, there are already top-quality shareware/PD products already available for MS-DOS; all we'd need to do is make sure that a new OS/compiler/etc. would be backwards-compatible. The two main problems are the difficulty of coordinating a large group of volunteers, and the difficulty involved in doing PD hardware. Hardware is important because every two PCs out there have some sort of difference in their configuration, and you either have to write to the lowest common denominator (bleagh!), or have a million routines built in to support every possible options (MS Windows), or somehow force everyone to have (more or less) equivalent hardware systems (Macintosh, although the II is already giving Apple problems here). At a more limited level, I would love to see more PD language systems, such as XLISP and Little SmallTalk. I would happily participate in a project that aimed at producing a production- quality C++ compiler, or regular C, or Modula-2, or even something completely new; I would also like to help take systems like XLISP and tune and extend them so that they could be used as serious production systems on a PC or Mac. If anyone is really interested in doing something along these lines, my particular interest is in compilers (parsing a specialty, not so strong on optimization), databases, and operating systems (have I got a scheduler for you ... :-), but I'm willing to work on pretty much anything. ...!{rutgers, princeton}!bellcore!pyuxf!asg Alan Geller Bellcore {who knoweth not, and careth less, from the above}
richard@bud.UUCP (richard karasik) (04/15/88)
Sounds like the kind of undertaking that could catch a lot of interest. Heck -we have people here posting evaluations of products all the time including shareware. We could draw on those for lessons learned. We could take a hard look at the issues of multi system portability (and perhaps break our eyeballs), but the idea has a certain flair to it. What pieces does anyone think we need? I mean an OS is a bit much to go multimachine with, but tools are another thing entirely. How about the best of all tools -with some team just working on and presenting "what's best" -much like the voting for a new group. ANother thing to consider is the impact of windowing systems on the scope of the tools we can hope for. If nothing else -we can end up with a shopping list to beat up sleazeware manufacturers about. (ie buy one disk now and open the package to find that you only need another 40 diskettes to make the tool almost really useful). Jump on in, it beats collecting bellybutton lint. Richard -- ----------------------------- sun!arete!bud!richard ||"No, I said the BITS .. massage the BITS" " ! " ! " !kass!richard || Richard Karasik " ! " !richard || Arete Systems Inc 408 922 8271
dhesi@bsu-cs.UUCP (Rahul Dhesi) (04/18/88)
Let's not forget the economic concept of relative advantage. Rather
than getting lots of people to each volunteer 5 hours of their time to
write public domain software, it might be better for these people to
volunteer 5 hours of their wages, pool the resulting money, buy the
rights to good existing software, and release it to the public domain.
--
Rahul Dhesi UUCP: <backbones>!{iuvax,pur-ee,uunet}!bsu-cs!dhesigeoff@desint.UUCP (Geoff Kuenning) (04/20/88)
You know, I really hate to rain on anyone's parade, especially when people
are so eager to volunteer their time for what they feel is a good cause.
But it's fairly obvious that nobody who is supporting this idea has
much experience with managing software projects. Yes, the idea *is* nutty.
Here's why:
Coordinating different workers on the same project is difficult and
time-consuming. With 3-5 workers, it's a full-time job. With
more, because of the combinatorics involved, the complexity rises
exponentially (*not* linearly). Read "The Mythical Man-Month" by
Frederic P. Brooks for a thorough discussion of this issue.
As an example, in the past year I have devoted between 500 and 1000
hours to a single program, ispell. The current version is something over
8000 lines of code, plus about 1000 lines of shell scripts, which is not
all that large a program compared to an editor, a kernel, or troff.
So, if I had volunteered my time at 5 hours per week (I've devoted *lots*
more than that, as you can see from the total) it would have taken me
between 100 and 200 weeks (that's 2-4 *years*, folks) just to get that
one program done.
The alternative suggested is cooperative effort. To keep things realistic,
I'll assume a 6-person project for ispell; at 5 hours per week, that produces
20-40 weeks of work, or about 1/2 to 1 year (1 of the 6 people will spend
all of her time coordinating the rest of us). Now go look at the number of
programs in /bin, and multiply these by an average of 3 people per program.
That's the number of volunteers you'll need. Then you'll need coordinators to
coordinate the coordinators, because of the large numbers involved.
And I'll bet money my estimates are grossly optimistic.
This is not to say the project is impossible. But I think people are
underestimating its size by several orders of magnitude, as well as
ignoring some logistical problems that are, in fact, larger than the
programming project itself.
Ask yourself this simple question: have you ever completed a 1000-line
or larger program in the time you estimated it would take? If the
answer is no, the chances are excellent that you're underestimating this
project, too.
(BTW, if nine women would like to get together and produce a baby by
next month, I'll commit to raising the thing... :-)
--
Geoff Kuenning geoff@ITcorp.com {uunet,trwrb}!desint!geoffbrad@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton) (04/24/88)
In article <2642@bsu-cs.UUCP> dhesi@bsu-cs.UUCP (Rahul Dhesi) writes: >Let's not forget the economic concept of relative advantage. Rather >than getting lots of people to each volunteer 5 hours of their time to >write public domain software, it might be better for these people to >volunteer 5 hours of their wages, pool the resulting money, buy the >rights to good existing software, and release it to the public domain. >-- >Rahul Dhesi UUCP: <backbones>!{iuvax,pur-ee,uunet}!bsu-cs!dhesi Finally somebody says something sane on this issue. Anybody who's ever actually worked on a real programming project knows that thinking you can get a program out of 5 hours from 500 programmers is like thinking that 9 women can have a baby in 1 month. And Mr. Dhesi is also correct that it would be best to buy existing software. Software written by somebody who believed that it would have to please customers who paid real money, and somebody who believed that they would have to support the software after it was done. If you tried to start a new project, you would have to trust the administrators and coders a great deal. Even then, there would be a good chance of failure. And what if it got behind schedule (we know that never happens 8-)) or went over budget (we know that never happens 8-)). You could buy a surprising number of packages for $100K. None of the real good ones, but many of the medium to good ones. -- Brad Templeton, Looking Glass Software Ltd. - Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473