Re: A Customer's Request For Open Source Software

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

Alexander Kopilovitch wrote:

> I don't think that this porting is a grave problem, this is something like
> transition from 16-bit MS Windows 3.1/3.11 to 32-bit Windows 95 and Windows
> NT 3.5 and then to Windows 98 and Windows NT 4.0 and further. First time it
> was significant to support previous 16-bit applications, but then they began
> steadily disappear, being replaced by new 32-bit ones - more and more often
> not simply "ported", but designed (or redesigned) for new 32-bit systems.

It is a resource issue.  It would be nice to have a son of Multics 
implementation in Ada, but the cost of doing that for any real platform 
is prohibitive.  I think the last time I seriously looked, Multics ran 
to over 20 million lines of (almost all PL/I) source code.  That does 
include the compilers, mail system, emacs, relational data base, etc., 
but it gives you some idea how large the Multics environment was.

On the other hand most RDBMSs have options for bypassing the file system 
and managing disk storage directly.  With a large amount of NVRAM, their 
is no need for the file system at all.  So my feeling is that the way to 
get something to market at the right time is to concentrate on products 
that can take full advantage of large (and non-volitile) addressable 
memories.
-- 
                                             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