Minix 3 hits the net
Minix 3 hits the net
Posted Oct 24, 2005 14:57 UTC (Mon) by thomask (guest, #17985)Parent article: Minix 3 hits the net
What's un-free about Minix 3, apart from the fact it uses a BSD license?
Posted Oct 24, 2005 15:02 UTC (Mon)
by hawk (subscriber, #3195)
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Posted Oct 25, 2005 0:37 UTC (Tue)
by ncm (guest, #165)
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Posted Oct 25, 2005 1:40 UTC (Tue)
by corbet (editor, #1)
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Posted Oct 25, 2005 21:12 UTC (Tue)
by ncm (guest, #165)
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Posted Oct 30, 2005 17:13 UTC (Sun)
by Los__D (guest, #15263)
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Under the "Source code" tab:
"MINIX 3 Source availability
Dennis
Posted Oct 30, 2005 17:22 UTC (Sun)
by Los__D (guest, #15263)
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Posted Oct 24, 2005 15:03 UTC (Mon)
by rmini (subscriber, #4991)
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Posted Oct 24, 2005 15:26 UTC (Mon)
by dowdle (subscriber, #659)
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Yes, minix was totally closed (as in AST would not accept patches for it) in the beginning because AST said he wanted to keep it simple for his OS book/class. He wanted to keep it multi-platform and wasn't interested at that time in arch independent optimizations. People could not distributed modified binaries and all changes to minix, as I understand it, were issued as patches against the pristine source... and the source was not freely distributable... without owning a copy of the book it came with. That was really a part put in there by the book publisher.
Of course fancy stuff was added to minix (like optimizations for the i386 and more advanced memory management) but it was harder to distribute them than on a truely free system... and thus Linux was born. If minix had been free, chances are Linux would NOT have been born... as Linus probably would have continued to use minix for the underlying system and just forked it at some point. Of course that is a lot of speculation on my part.
Thanks AST!
Posted Oct 24, 2005 16:06 UTC (Mon)
by man_ls (guest, #15091)
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Posted Oct 24, 2005 16:11 UTC (Mon)
by halla (subscriber, #14185)
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Posted Oct 24, 2005 17:23 UTC (Mon)
by man_ls (guest, #15091)
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Posted Oct 25, 2005 18:41 UTC (Tue)
by arcticwolf (guest, #8341)
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To the extent that Linus can be counted as my student, I'm proud of him, too. That is, not at all? I'm not sure what Tanenbaum actually wants to say here, but I think that Linus cannot be counted as one of his students to any extent at all, unless you want to conjecture that in some way, *all* CS students are students of *all* CS teachers. Is this a hidden side blow against Linus, or a sign of Tanenbaum's hubris (in that now that Linus is famous and Linux is *the* single most successful/important FOSS OS, he's trying to claim Linus as his student)?
Posted Oct 25, 2005 21:16 UTC (Tue)
by man_ls (guest, #15091)
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Posted Oct 25, 2005 3:15 UTC (Tue)
by landley (guest, #6789)
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Posted Oct 24, 2005 16:21 UTC (Mon)
by jedidiah (guest, #20319)
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Only if you ignored the fact that Linus was a Minux user and that Hurd didn't exist then.
Although, for all practical purposes Linus did infact "work on the Hurd".
Posted Oct 24, 2005 17:44 UTC (Mon)
by man_ls (guest, #15091)
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Posted Oct 24, 2005 20:09 UTC (Mon)
by larryr (guest, #4030)
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It think its fair to say that for all practical purposes Linux performs the role of the kernel for the "GNU System", the role the Hurd was to perform.
Larry
Posted Oct 25, 2005 7:48 UTC (Tue)
by xoddam (subscriber, #2322)
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Posted Oct 24, 2005 15:56 UTC (Mon)
by AnswerGuy (guest, #1256)
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As such it was expected that readers and users would liberally comment on it and one would naturally expect their code to reflect lessons they've learned from their studies. (In other words if my code as a professional programmer bore a notable resemblance to the methods and concepts, even to some idioms in AST's code; that would be expected of any students in any field of endeavor).
So, it's been technically non-free. On a practical level it was clear that AST wasn't looking for a fight with anyone over it.
JimD
I believe it was the old minix license which was non-free...Minix 3 hits the net
A quick search suggests that he switched to the BSD license around 2000.
The license doesn't matter much if you can't find the source code. As it happens, the source is all cleverly hidden away in the Live CD image file, so that the easiest way to get to it is to boot Minix. Sneaky. Presumably somebody will mirror it eventually.Minix 3 hits the net
In fact, they did make finding the source a challenge. You can't even get at it by mounting the CD image. Why make it so hard for potential contributors to dig into the code?
Minix 3 source
Yes, you have to boot from the disc. Probably it's a deliberate way to cut down the noise level: only those willing actually to boot Minix get to see the code (at first). Anybody likely to contribute usefully must already have Qemu (or something).Minix 3 source
Not entirely correct:Minix 3 source
The MINIX 3 source code is included on the CD-ROM image file, but if you want to inspect it while running a different operating system, please click here for a bzip2 compressed tar file."
Ok, it seems that was added from "popular demand" :)Minix 3 source
It wasn't Free at the time Linus started Linux.Minix 3 hits the net
My memory is a little foggy on this but...Minix 3 hits the net
You might as well say that Torvalds would have started to work on the T^wHURD instead of writing Linux. It is evident that the goals, architecture and underlying philosophy of Minix and Linux are different; so maybe Torvalds would have started Linux even if Minix was free (GPL or BSD). After all he had studied with Tanenbaum, and even so he wrote his own kernel disregarding Tanenbaum's principles. So it is not so clear.
Linux was not similar to Minix
Linus has studied with Tanenbaum? With Tanenbaum in Amsterdam and Linus in Helsinki? I think
you're led astray by Tanenbaum saying he'd have given Linus an F if he'd had Linus in
his class -- but he never had, so never gave him his F.
Linux was not similar to Minix
You are right, sorry. Actually I was led astray by this badly remembered quote:
Linux was not similar to Minix
The most important thing I have done is produce a number of incredibly good students, especially Ph.D. students. [...] They have done great things. To the extent that Linus can be counted as my student, I'm proud of him, too.
Linux was not similar to Minix
Linux was not similar to Minix
Is this a hidden side blow against Linus, or a sign of Tanenbaum's hubris [...]?
Well, who knows; surely not the first option, probably none of them. As Landley says below, Torvalds studied Tanenbaum's book. Also, there is this famous exchange. I don't know; someone might consider herself a disciple of Stallman after having read his works, so why not.
Tanenbaum wrote the textbook Linus used to learn about Unix in his first Linux was not similar to Minix
class on the subject. (That's why Linus installed Minix in the first
place.) So Tanenbaum was one of Linus's primary sources, but not directly
one of his professors.
It's detailed at length in Just for Fun...
You might. Linux was not similar to Minix
Linux was not similar to Minix
Only if you ignored the fact that Linus was a Minux user and that Hurd didn't exist then.
Linus was a Minix user, not "Minux". It is confusing enough as it is with all the Unix, Linus, Linux, Minix. And the Hurd did more or less exist at the time, at least officially.
Although, for all practical purposes Linus did infact "work on the Hurd".
What do you mean? The Hurd is not even similar in principle, operation or license to Linux.
Linux was not similar to Minix
Although, for all practical purposes Linus did infact "work on the Hurd".
What do you mean? The Hurd is not even similar in principle, operation or license to Linux.
> And the Hurd did more or less exist at the time, at least officially. Linux was not similar to the Hurd
Your link has a timeline with the Hurd *announced* in May 1991 ("the FSF
is beginning work...") and could run gcc in September 1994. Linus began
work on Linux around exactly the same time (first recorded mention,
definitely not an announcement, was in July 1991) and already had gcc
running on it by the time it was announced on the 25th of August. By
version 0.11 (19th December) Linux was 'self-hosting' in the sense that
you didn't need another OS running to be able to install the system
and build and boot a kernel.
But read those first announcements and 'calls for volunteers' on the
Hurd. A keen-but-clueless newbie like Linus offerering his work would
have been slapped away like a flea! "You need to have an iron-clad grasp
of Unix semantics ... It's not enough that you've programmed Unix before;
you need to understand all the nits." ... bah humbug.
It used to be licensed only to people who purchased the printed text book and there were no rights granted to create derivatives or redistribute. It was clear that the author intended it primarily for its pedagogic value.Non-Free