From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,3cd3b8571c28b75f X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2003-08-30 12:01:11 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!postnews1.google.com!not-for-mail From: aek@vib.usr.pu.ru (Alexander Kopilovitch) Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: A Customer's Request For Open Source Software Date: 30 Aug 2003 12:01:09 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com/ Message-ID: References: <3F44BC65.4020203@noplace.com><20030822005323.2ff66948.david@realityrift.com> <20030822020403.625ffbf5.david@realityrift.com> <3F4657AD.1040908@attbi.com> <3F4828D9.8050700@attbi.com> <3F4EA616.30607@attbi.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: 195.242.16.131 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: posting.google.com 1062270071 1945 127.0.0.1 (30 Aug 2003 19:01:11 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 30 Aug 2003 19:01:11 GMT Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:41987 Date: 2003-08-30T19:01:11+00:00 List-Id: Robert I. Eachus wrote: >What was so wonderful about Multics? In part, that it wasn't built >around a file system, it was built around virtual memory. I won't go >into the gory details here--you can find the Organik book if you haven't >read it. But the memory concept in Multics was that everything was made >of segments, and a process had access to segments. (Of course, some of >the things in those segments were links to other segments.) 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. You mentioned Organik's book - well, here is a copy of single review for it at Amazon: ------------------------------------------------------------------ Organick describes the design of Multics, a mainframe timesharing system that was one of the most influential software efforts of the late 1960s. The book describes the internals of the Multics system with a clarity and thoroughness that set a standard for other writers on operating systems. The book describes Multics as it was planned in the late 1960s, before it had been released to users, and it describes the version of the system that ran on the GE-645 computer. Multics became a commercial product from Honeywell on a substantially enhanced machine and continued to evolve for 20 years, so readers should understand that they are reading about the system designers' intentions and plans, and not necessarily about features of the commercial system. (disclosure: I worked on Multics in the 60s and helped review drafts of some chapters of this book before publication.) ----------------------------------------------------------------- After all, another Organik's book is about ill-fated, although also famous that time Intel 432 processor (by the way, I remember vague rumors that that processor somehows implements/supports Ada directly in hardware) - was this author specializing on the subjects that were impressive in design, but have no real perspective as products? Anyway, it seems that Multics world was very closed world, consisting of competent, creative and ethusiastic people,,, who appreciate each other, but were disinterested in presenting the results of their work to broader community. If this impression is wrong then how can one explain apparent absence of publications describing the developed Multics system? Certainly it is a tradition in science and even in engineering to describe thoroughly every significant project, which results may influence future progress. Alexander Kopilovitch aek@vib.usr.pu.ru Saint-Petersburg Russia