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Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.development Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!msuinfo!agate!library.ucla.edu!csulb.edu!csus.edu!netcom.com!netcomsv!calcite!vjs From: vjs@calcite.rhyolite.com (Vernon Schryver) Subject: Re: Call for 386BSD Rel.1.0 SIG (Special Interest Group) Message-ID: <Cv5u8o.CEn@calcite.rhyolite.com> Organization: Rhyolite Software Date: Fri, 26 Aug 1994 20:58:00 GMT References: <FOO-MAN.94Aug23191512@raven.raven.csrv.uidaho.edu> <jmonroyCv2Iw2.AD9@netcom.com> <1994Aug25.074246.4082@cs.brown.edu> Lines: 58 In article <1994Aug25.074246.4082@cs.brown.edu> mhw@cs.brown.edu (Mark Weaver) writes: > ... >I'm not saying that 386BSD 0.1 wasn't a remarkable accomplishment. >It *WAS*. If it wasn't for his work, we'd probably all be using >Linux right now. .... I probably shouldn't do this, but for the same reasons that you say Mr. Monroy's should misstatements should not go unrefuted, this personality cult should be lanced at every appearance. The second sentence may well be true, that those interested in free Unix would be concentrated on Linux if not for 386BSD 0.1. The first sentence is an overstatement at least by implication. 386BSD 0.1 was remarkable in the literal sense, as in "worthy of notice," but technically it was at best unremarkable. Hundreds of other people had ported UNIX to more difficult platforms over the previous decades, and done better jobs of it. 386BSD 0.1 was remarkable mostly because it was free. Before you praise 386BSD 0.1, boot it. Remember how easy it was to crash the tinybsd floppy? Remember how much of a mess it was to install on a hard disk? It was perhaps more than you'd expect from the first 3-12 weeks of a porting job, which would be fine except that that was all there ever was. The "dog (disk crash) ate my homework" story was ok for a few weeks, but smelled bad after 6 months. Mr. Monroy, despite his cognitive and communications difficulties, has contributed more to the free Unix community than the Jolitz's. Any half-competent programmer can do a UNIX port to a platform as similar to a VAX as a 386, as many people have proven over the years. Given that fact that AT&T had long since switched the main System V source reference tapes to 386's, and given Dell, Interactive, Microport, and Coherent, absolutely no innovation was necessary. It needed at most a little locore reverse engineering and some drivers. Mr. Monroy's unquenchable enthusiasm is rare. Those with clues who see his wild cross postings no doubt just laugh, but he no doubt intrigues people who otherwise hear only nonsense like that in "Comm. Week" where they wrote "you can't down load UNIX from a bulletin board." To a first approximation, Mr. Monroy's persistent message is "Unix is Free and Great!" Who complains about that? (Except Novell and Microsoft.) You could argue that 386BSD 0.1 was remarkable as a very bad thing, that it caused the fragmentation into NetBSD/FreeBSD/Linux. Imagine what might have happened if 386BSd 0.1 had not appeared. What if we had only commercial source products like BSDI and free Linux? Linux's NFS and network code might be far stronger, and benefiting the efforts of people who know the BSD source. That would have been a better world for many reasons. Think about why 386BSD exists separate from BSDI's BSD/386. If you think 386BSD 0.1 was an altruistic effort to Give Unix To The People, then you need to talk to more people. Of course, there's nothing wrong with self-interest--except when people don't realize it is present. Vernon Schryver vjs@rhyolite.com