Re: A Customer's Request For Open Source Software

[aek@vib.usr.pu.ru (Alexander Kopilovitch)]

Robert I. Eachus 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.

Well, the Multics features were more widely available then Multics itself, but
nevertheless there were (and certainly are) very few people who have real
experience with Multics or at least those Multics features and are more or
less active today. And there is no good book accumulating both description of
the real producttion system and experience with it.

> 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.

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.



Alexander Kopilovitch                      aek@vib.usr.pu.ru
Saint-Petersburg
Russia