TUNSE and Retro

[Maneesh Yadav]

This is th kind of vauge talk that will end up getting this project
nowhere.  Do you think a company ever releases a suite of software with
this kind of stuff?  You can't make a real chicken out plasticene, that
is, the goals of TUNES demand good, concrete planning; the rest shall be
easy.  You guys keep comparing to linux, and it's really a bad comparison.
Linux was a small  kernel; the compilier, various utilites etc. came
easily
after since POSIX was already definined and a lot of standard UNIX utils
were already GNU'd.  Linus didn't have to re invent OS design, he didn't
have to write his own language.  Linux succedded out of necessity, people
used UNIX, they could get a free UNIX, so when they needed a driver for a
UNIX that didn't cost anything, they wrote one, a lot of times it was by
someone who had professional expereince with the particular device.

What you write is fine and dandy Kevin, but it is reminiscent of some of
these idiot naturopaths etc...it sounds fine, but it's not a real plan,
and you have no idea how TUNES will be organic or integrated or a whole
because nothing that reaches the TUNES goal has even really been planned
yet!

On Sun, 30 May 1999, Ken Evitt wrote:

> TUNES is not about features. TUNES is about integrity and consistency. TUNES
> is about simplicity and elegance. Linux started out as one man's personal
> project. But because it was useful, and free, people made of it what they
> wanted. The purpose of Retro and Brian's Arrow system is not to implement
> every feature anyone would like but to make those implementations possible,
> in a unique way--and that is TUNES.

Let me make something clear, I don't understand Brian's work yet (I'm not
sure anybody else in this group really does), but I do give him credit as,
being a trusting kind of guy, it seems to be  step in the correct
direction (formal semantics).  Although he could just have randomly pasted
words from some advanced texts and I wouldn't know the difference.  I
think that we shouldn't worry about a ukerenel right now, because you
couldn't make one hundredth as useful as the platforms currently available
(see my questions to tcn, he hasn't even planned for the real issues
involved in making an advanced ukernel).

 Everything that TUNES will handle or do
> has already been handled or done.

Would you like to say that again please?

 TUNES is fundamentally different because
> it will be a computing system that is unified, integrated, whole. TUNES will
> be organic--it will start small and grow outwards.

Not if we are approaching using the same old way all software is designed.
Are you familliar with large software projects? THe end is always the
same, a huge codebase with unbelieveable inertia.  What you are
effectivley saying is that it doesn't matter how we go about things,
somehow in the end everything will be integrated together. Things in the
real world are not so easy. We must have
the correct mindset starting off, not just making another huge peice of
software.


 That is the purpose of
> Retro and the Arrow system--the small seed from which future trees will
> grow.

again you're putting an orange and an apple in the same basket.  The
'seeds' you speak of with retro, have already been planted in the form of
just about every other OS, and many of them have grown into large useful
trees.  We want something different don't we?  Why not stand on the
shoulders of giants to see a little further...

 It is the fundamental that TUNES seeks to address--not specific
> features. 
Sure, and tcn is already impliemting an API that is not unlike any other,
and will have more bugs than a mature platform, and won't have all the
nice features that we can enjoy in a mature platforms.

That is why I don't think Retro is a waste of time--because it
> will be, from its beginning, an integrated thing that will become TUNES.
> 
> -Ken Evitt
>