🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <3NOV199113581633@minnie.me.udel.edu> johnston@minnie.me.udel.edu (Bill Johnston) writes:

   In article <226@news.duke.edu>, magidj@cellbio.duke.edu (Jonathan Magid) writes...
   >what i was saying is that we want people to originate *new* things,
   >not spend their time innovating things that have already been done...

   This is exactly what GNU does not do.  It spends most of its 
   time reinventing programs that have been around for years.

This only makes sense if you think that all programs which perform the
same function are the same. GCC is, in fact, remarkably innovative -
many folks thought building a retargetable highly optimizing compiler
was impossible until quite recently.

   Even the GNU OS, when completed, will 
   merely be "yet another PC Unix".  Free, but not innovative.

Actually it's likely to be the first widely available OS structured as
a microkernel and a set of function-specific servers. Among other
things, one might imagine this will give it the ability to emulate
other operating systems, support the development of device drivers and
other traditional "kernel" resources at user level, and support
further innovation by making it much easier to incrementally replace
the various building blocks.

Not a new idea, to be sure. But a new -thing-, and certainly a step
forward from "yet another PC Unix".

				-john
				jtw@lcs.mit.edu