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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.cs.su.oz.au!inferno.mpx.com.au!news.unimelb.EDU.AU!munnari.OZ.AU!spool.mu.edu!usenet.eel.ufl.edu!newsfeed.internetmci.com!in1.uu.net!world!mv!news.missouri.edu!vortex.cc.missouri.edu!rhys From: rhys@vortex.cc.missouri.edu (Justin "Rhys Thuryn" McNutt) Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.development.system,comp.unix.bsd.386bsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc,comp.os.linux.advocacy,comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc Subject: Re: Historic Opportunity facing Free Unix (was Re: The Lai/Baker paper, benchmarks, and the world of free UNIX) Followup-To: comp.os.linux.development.system,comp.unix.bsd.386bsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc,comp.os.linux.advocacy,comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc Date: 23 Apr 1996 16:03:05 GMT Organization: University of Missouri - Columbia Lines: 42 Message-ID: <4liuvp$1hve@news.missouri.edu> References: <NELSON.96Apr15010553@ns.crynwr.com> <4la318$ah3@sidhe.memra.com> <31794DB6.7DE974DF@lambert.org> <olSKcKG00iWQ85P5MQ@andrew.cmu.edu> <Dq8Jn1.AH0@detached.demon.co.uk> NNTP-Posting-Host: vortex.cc.missouri.edu X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2] Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.os.linux.development.system:22285 comp.unix.bsd.386bsd.misc:836 comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc:3356 comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:18104 comp.os.linux.advocacy:47040 comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc:3506 Daniel Barlow (dan@detached.demon.co.uk) wrote: : There are essentially two approaches which might work: : 1) Collect together a bunch of people who'd be interested in helping. : Set up a mailing list, and a web page to report progress to other : interested parties who don't have the time to actually help. Now : spend several months in pointless arguments about what the file : format and internal data structures should be, the necessity of : full extensibility, internationalisation, Unicode support, : and a builtin programming language. After a couple of months, : just get bored of the whole thing. : 2) Write something that kind of works enough to be useful. Put : it up for ftp/web somewhere. Invite testers, comments and patches. : Continue to develop it. : Method (1) was adopted for several Linux wordprocessors. Can you : see where they are now? No, thought not. Method (2), though doubtless : characterisable as a grotty hack, was employed successfully in the : design of, say, Linux. : Yeah, design issues are important, but so is prototyping. Even if the : final delivered item contains no lines of code from the original, it's : still extremely important; without the original there'll probably never : _be_ a final delivered product. I agree completely. If something has been written, it can be improved, but if nothing exits at all, even the best idea and the best implementation are worthless. Method 2's obvious weakness is that the program *starts* as a ridiculous hack with a bare minimum of functionality and portability. It has the advantage, however, of getting a useful program out into the open where everybody can contribute in his/her own time. The Linux kernel is a great example. --------- Got a Linux problem? Or can you help others solve them? Visit the Linux Common Problems page at http://vortex.cc.missouri.edu/~rhys/linux.html rhys@vortex.cc.missouri.edu