🚀 go-pugleaf

>The null dereferencing problem flames should be directed both at Berkeley
>and Ma Bell rather than us, both had the opportunity, but never bothered
>to make page 0 inaccessable because of the work involved.  I heartily
>agree the current situation is a crock, and would be first in line to
>propose a new a.out type on the Vax with page 0 mapped out, but the fact
>has been that both at MIT and inside DEC Suns are uncommon and were hard
>for us to get access to.

I dunno Jim, maybe we're picking nits here cuz the bugs'll get fixed
anyhow but I think if DEC wants their window system pushed as a
standard maybe they should buy a SUN or two to test it on. I notice
that SUN has a Vax or two (and tested NFS on it.) You could fall into
worse traps than null pointers w/o test hardware (and what about that
public SUN on the 5th floor of 545, they're around.)

Anyhow, I think as usual e-mail communications are misinterpreted.
What sounds like a raving flame was probably intended as a
constructive suggestion. Code that de-refs null pointers probably has
other bugs also, it's just a very noticeable, very fundamental bug.

I don't think the issue was only portability to other vendor's
hardware, most of us scream these things at ourselves even more
loudly.

	-Barry Shein, Boston University