Re: A Customer's Request For Open Source Software

["Robert I. Eachus" <rieachus@attbi.com>]

Alexander Kopilovitch wrote:

> What is not so wonderful about Multics? That it is almost mythical in part,
> somehow like ancient Greece - famous, with obvious conceptual heritage, but
> unreachable for observation and study.

I had accounts on various Multics systems, and at one point I had half a 
dozen project accounts distributed among three Multics systems. 
(HI-Multics in Minneapolis, MN System-M in Phoenix, AZ and BCO-Multics 
in Billerica, MA.)   Later I added an account at MIT-Multics (Cambridge, 
MA).

Then I moved to Stratus Computer.  VOS, the "native" operating system 
for Stratus products was closely based on PrimOS, which in turn was 
based on Multics.  So Multics features were widely available, even if 
Multics systems were not.

I would love to have an operating system for today's x86 processors that 
took the Multics approach.  But the problem would be that most 
applications would be ported versions of applications that were designed 
around file systems, so you would have to materialize a file system for 
them. :-(

Could be done, but I think the better approach is to design applications 
that don't require a file system first.

-- 
                                           Robert I. Eachus

"As far as I'm concerned, war always means failure." -- Jacques Chirac, 
President of France
"As far as France is concerned, you're right." -- Rush Limbaugh