This is NeXT-source,-how-will-they-be-used? in view mode; [Up]
Date: Sun 15-Feb-1989 05:44:21 From: Unknown Subject: NeXT source, how will they be used? It seems to me that it is important to consider how sources would be used in this university versus developer debate. Perhaps the deabte isn't so serious, for much of the use of sources at the university will be to fix security holes (especialy related to the Internet), implement local access policies to public machines, and accomodate unusual peripherals and lab equipment. I don't see how these changes will break many applications. The other use one might find at a university is good honest systems research and developement. It will be in the univsersities interest to maintain as much compatibility as possible, and those with these modified systems will take responsibility for broken applications. At the least NeXT will learn what extentions they don't want to do at a pretty low cost. Commercial system developers probably care the most about corporate and commercial clients with lots of dollars. These customers are going to want the purest, approved original system and not some university mutant. Certainly anyone hacking the system source to make their little application work should be flamed, get bad reviews in Byte and scowled at by NeXT, universitites and other comercial developers. Are there developers that would do this given the chance? That is I think source can be given to the universties with little negative effect, and some positive effect to commercial developers. I think it is poor to compare the case histories of Mac and Sun to each other for they were targeted at totaly different markets and come from very different world views. NeXT is very interesting because it is trying to be both. This is a hard place to be. (keep that asbestos on, NeXT) I think most will agree that UNIX, DEC and Mac have benefitted by having ties with universities in that the products were improved and that a generation of users and progammers grew up on these systems. Wouldn't NeXT like to maximize that benefit and give us source? Even if we don't really need it, how about just to be nice and make us feel happy? .....Laurence lgl@cac.washington.edu Networks and Distributed Computing 206-534-5617 University of washington >From: weissman@decwrl.dec.com
Date: Sun 15-Feb-1989 21:11:17 From: Unknown Subject: Re: NeXT source, how will they be used? I plan to buy my Very Own Computer one day soon. I want it to be fast, powerful, Unix like - as much like my working environment as possible. (networked Suns.) NeXT is a definate candidate, considered as a chunk of iron. I also have lotsa things I could do with a a 400dpi laser printer! I also want source code, for several reasons, all of which I am sure are familiar to all of us. All my own experience at work moves me to insist on source. Ever try to make a 4.3BSD vax boot from drive 3? Want your Transcript software to emit something like EPSF code so that Scribe V6+ can use it? Can't figure out why an innocent looking change in you YP databases causes password updating to silently fail? ... ad infinitum. Without source, you are out of luck. And you <don't> have to be writing bizarre device drivers or doing REAL (tm) operating systems research to find yourself up the creek. Very reasonable, ordinary every day problems can be made almost impossible without access to the code. I'll also admit a certain hacker fascination with poring over code. I find that source code can help to disambiguate overly terse manuals... :-) But this hacker root puberty stuff is secondary. I only go over source code when I <must>. Where does this leave me? I am going to wait until the FSF has a kernel working. I will then buy the highest- powered biggest-disked system that I can afford, install GNU, and do something obscene yet decorative with the distributed OS. And about two years later, if not sooner, some outfit will start selling iron that FSF kernels are specially good with. They will sell iron and peripherals only. Overheads will be low, cause they won't need mammoth, expensive systems development shops, and the whole nine yards. And a large and growing community of GNU/Mach/FSF users and experts Trailblazed together will help each other out. A fairy tale? I don't think so. When this happens, why would a University research group, or experienced users spend good money for an expensive configuration? And it may happen soon. I think that NeXT is making a big mistake. And let me add that I, too, wish them well. >From: dorner@pequod.cso.uiuc.edu (Steve Dorner)
Date: Sun 20-Feb-1989 04:48:06 From: Unknown Subject: Re: NeXT source, how will they be used? Mr. Cumming's message sums up several reasons why I would like to see source distributed with the NeXT. I also understand (to an extent) the beliefs of the tight code people. If I were doing the source code policy at (insert your favorite hardware/software company here), I would attach with the source license a clause which states that any modifications to the kernel or utility programs on that system would silently revoke the trade name the system is running under. I.e. if I had a NeXT running the Mach kernel and decided to go and tinker with the IPC functions, no problem. At that point I am no longer running a Mach kernel. If I have a piece of software which runs on Mach and is going haywire on my system, well... I lost my right to gripe to the software vendor, to NeXT, or to anyone else when I went in to modify that kernel. Tinkers like myself (who have as a primary interest finding out what makes a certain aspect of UNIX work) have nothing to fear. Old pros who actually know what they're doing shouldn't have need to worry either. As for the people who were referred to in one of the above postings, ( Was "root puberty" the phrase I heard? ) they will be inclined to take their work a little more seriously I suppose. Credit balance: $0.02 >From: mcdonald@fornax.UUCP (Ken Mcdonald)
These are the contents of the former NiCE NeXT User Group NeXTSTEP/OpenStep software archive, currently hosted by Marcel Waldvogel and Netfuture.ch.