*BSD News Article 30842


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From: vixie@vix.com (Paul A Vixie)
Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.development
Subject: Re: Are you really here, Bill? (was Re: Boy you are silly!)
Date: 23 May 94 01:14:05
Organization: Vixie Enterprises
Lines: 38
Distribution: world
Message-ID: <VIXIE.94May23011405@office.home.vix.com>
References: <jmonroyCq3K2n.1Mt@netcom.com> <2ri898$90c@omega.gmd.de>
NNTP-Posting-Host: office.home.vix.com
In-reply-to: veit@borneo.gmd.de's message of 20 May 1994 11:52:08 GMT

What'll actually be on the CD?  Nobody knows exactly since the advertisement
is oblique in the fact department and noone who posts here has yet received
a copy even though several folks have ordered it.  But we can speculate.

I'm not on Bill and Lynne's hit parade, for a number of reasons owing to 
various past deeds.  However, I was a customer of Symmetric (Bill's old
company) and I am familiar with some of the code he wrote for the NS16032
(ne NS32016); I've also seen his work in BNR2 and in BSD/386.  I havn't
looked at 386BSD but I assume it's pretty much the same as what I _have_
seen so my comments might be applicable to it.

In summary: Bill is a brilliant person who often has really cool ideas.
His MMU port to the NS32016 was extremely clean and optimal, and if all of
his stuff was that good I think we'd all be running 386BSD today.  I heard
Bill speak at SVNET a few months ago and the stuff he had planned for the
next release of 386BSD sounded pretty cool.  I don't think I'll be able to
take pieces of it and put it into the systems I use, since Bill's changes
sounded like they were pretty fundamental; for the same reason I don't 
expect to be able to punt my existing system in favour of 386BSD 1.0.

But whatever you want to say about Bill's personality or track record, has
to be tempered by the fact that he really has done some cool things over
time, and there is every reason to suspect that the CDROM will have new
cool stuff on it, though maybe it won't be 100% of the content.  

I guess we don't have anything else to talk about or do, so we sit here and
trade arguments about what might or might not be on that CDROM.  I'm feeling
silly participating in this discussion -- hopefully you are, too, and we can
all go back to the many other things which keep us busy, and wait for Bill
to get that CDROM out the door.  (If I were Bill, the reason I wouldn't be
reading this group or participating in this discussion would be either that
I had a lot of work to do getting the ROM out, or I was burned out from 
getting the ROM out and I went on vacation.)
--
Paul Vixie
Redwood City, CA
decwrl!vixie!paul
<paul@vix.com>