I don't think RMS will succeed ... unix will be the last operating system – 1985

https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en#!topic/net.micro/no78f9cb5HE

by mr-ron • 12 years ago

6 6 12 years ago

groups.google.com

reirob• 12 years ago

From the GNU Manifesto: "Unix is not my ideal system, but it is not too bad. The essential features of Unix seem to be good ones, and I think I can fill in what Unix lacks without spoiling them. Furth- ermore a system compatible with Unix would be convenient for many other people to adopt."

I am genuinely interested what are the features that RMS in 1985 thought were the good ones. And what he thinks about having chosen to implement UNIX instead of say Lisp Machines or Smalltalk? I am interested because RMS did work on and with non-Unix environments. And he made EMACS to contain a Lisp interpreter. So he must have had already in 1985 good reasons to build GNU on Unix and not on something alternative.

Slackwise• 12 years ago

I actually just read RMS's post on his history with Lisp [1], and I find this is the closest you're going to get as an answer:

At first, I thought of making a Lisp-based system, but I realized that wouldn't be a good idea technically. To have something like the Lisp machine system, you needed special purpose microcode. That's what made it possible to run programs as fast as other computers would run their programs and still get the benefit of typechecking. Without that, you would be reduced to something like the Lisp compilers for other machines. The programs would be faster, but unstable. Now that's okay if you're running one program on a timesharing system — if one program crashes, that's not a disaster, that's something your program occasionally does. But that didn't make it good for writing the operating system in, so I rejected the idea of making a system like the Lisp machine.

Which I guess can be interpreted as:

1. Lisp is ideal when the underlying technology/hardware helps it, and at the time, a Lisp-on-common-hardware implementation wasn't going to match that ideal/performance profile.

2. Lisp machines didn't have "time-sharing" (i.e. multi-user environments).

Nowadays, 1 isn't that big of a deal, and 2 could have been done as well, just wasn't a thing at the time.

Personally, I would love to see a modern Lisp Machine.

[1] http://www.gnu.org/gnu/rms-lisp.html

derefr• 12 years ago

The Erlang abstract machine (BEAM or LING) is pretty close to what I'd expect a modern, timesharing Lisp machine to look like. I wonder whether it's be possible to translate it directly to hardware, or if you'd have to make practical concessions around e.g. reduction-counting.

kevinpet• 12 years ago

Title invented here is grossly misleading. The full quote from the thread is:

I think this quote ["Operating Systems will be removed from the realm of competition."] says it all. I'm glad that I don't think RMS will succeed. If he gets his way, unix will be the last operating system, as nobody will upgrade it for a long, long time.

He's describing a negative scenario in which de-commercializing Unix causes investment in it to stop. In other words, the opposite of what the edited title (as it currently stands) "I don't think RMS will succeed ... unix will be the last operating system" implies.

mr-ron• 12 years ago

80 Char limit screwed me up on that one. I wasn't sure how to parse that, but of the whole thread, that quote struck me as the most interesting.

Htsthbjig• 12 years ago

And he did not succeed in the "Operating Systems will be removed from the realm of competition." part.

I don't like being manipulated by titles. Where is the down voting button when you need it?

I don't think RMS will succeed ... unix will be the last operating system – 1985

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