🚀 go-pugleaf

Greetings.

I keep seeing posts wondering about the relationship between OSF/1 and
Mach, so I guess I need to post a reply rather than reply to all the
posts!  So:

Mach and OSF/1 should be thought of as completely different animals.
Mach is an operating system, OSF/1 is a different operating system.
However, Mach is an operating system that allows user space code to
perform higher complexity operating system functions based on the
primitives that Mach provides.  For example, a task running under Mach
can provide OSF/1 semantics.  This Mach program exists; it is called
the OSF/1 single server (SS).  Other Mach servers have been written
for BSD4.3 and DOS, and still others are in development.

Now the OSF/1 that vendors are currently shipping happens to be based
on an earlier version of Mach that, for ease of Mach development,
happened to have a lot of BSD code in the microkernel itself (as
opposed to in a user space server as outlined above).  This is called
the OSF/1 integrated kernel (IK).  OSF's goal is to move away from an
IK implementation and toward an SS implementation.

Both OSF and C-MU are currently working on Mach microkernel
development, but they continually swap fixes and every so often they
do a big merge.  Their joint goal is to provide a single version of
the microkernel, but right now too many people are working on it at
too many locations with too many specific project goals in mind.
That's why you see a lot of MK version numbers out there.  

I hope this helps clear things up.  If I've misrepresented the state
of any Mach 3.0 based projects out there, please feel free to correct
me.

	yr obdnt svnt,
	mjl
--
--
Michael J. Leibensperger      "Rats and roaches live by competition under the
Locus Computing/Boston		 laws of supply and demand; it is the privilege
25 Mall Road; Burlington MA	     of human beings to live under the laws of
01803 (617)229-4980 mjl@locus.com       justice and mercy."  -- Wendell Berry
Member of the League for Programming Freedom --- write league@prep.ai.mit.edu