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Received: by minnie.vk1xwt.ampr.org with NNTP id AA2235 ; Mon, 01 Mar 93 10:50:25 EST Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.questions Path: sserve!manuel.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!news.Hawaii.Edu!ames!agate!howland.reston.ans.net!gatech!hubcap!ncrcae!ncrhub2!ncrgw2!psinntp!uuneo!sugar!peter From: peter@NeoSoft.com (Peter da Silva) Subject: Re: 386BSD Posix Compliance Organization: NeoSoft Communications Services -- (713) 684-5900 Date: Thu, 25 Feb 1993 12:44:03 GMT Message-ID: <C308pG.2v6@sugar.neosoft.com> References: <1me016$4j8@agate.berkeley.edu> <C2z38u.3BA@panix.com> <1993Feb25.080612.16553@gmd.de> Lines: 40 In article <1993Feb25.080612.16553@gmd.de> veit@fanoe.NoSubdomain.NoDomain (Holger Veit) writes: > In article <C2z38u.3BA@panix.com>, tls@panix.com (Thor Lancelot Simon) writes: > |> With all due respect, I think you're misunderstanding the issue! > *I* think *you* are misunderstanding what POSIX is, and what Bill (Lynne?) > meant with compatibility and interface. See below. No, I think we understand what the Jolitzes are saying. I don't know whether they understand our concerns, and it's pretty clear you don't. There are people using the existing BSD kernel interfaces in 386BSD and BSDI to design and implement new and novel software components that can't be written to the POSIX interface. This is the second widely available reasonably modern operating system that allows this sort of work, and maintaining those interfaces so this work can proceed is just as desirable as maintaining the POSIX application interface. Probably more so, since most of the available software *isn't* written to the POSIX variant of *IX. > The second aspect is the kernel domain. A typical user does not normally write > kernel code; But, with 386BSD, they can. This is probably the most powerful part of the system as a research base. > Bill's mentioned "novel research" focuses on changes in the kernel interfaces, > for instance device drivers, memory management, file systems, networking. This > might be an extreme change for kernel hackers, and 386bsd surely becomes > incompatible to e.g. NET/2 on the *source level*; but this *is* acceptable No, it's not. Not yet. Not until 386BSD is stable without lots of patches. If 0.2 is significantly incompatible with 0.1 at the kernel level, without some compelling breakthrough to offset this cost, then I can guarantee that there *will* be a fork with lots of people sticking to 386BSD-classic and probably creating a new baseline distribution. -- Peter da Silva. <peter@sugar.neosoft.com>. `-_-' Oletko halannut suttasi tänään? 'U` Tarjoilija, tämä ateria elää vielä.