Re: Linux on O2?

["Bill Halchin" <bhalchin@hotmail.com>]

This is precisely why I gave up on this project. I could not get any
documentation, no machine access (if you don't already have). In my
opinion, SGI Linux project must address this problem if they want to
attract "outsiders", i.e. people who are currently outside the SGI
user community, but what to contribute to a very interesting (!!)Open
Source project.


Regards,

Bill Halchin


>From: Ralf Baechle <ralf@oss.sgi.com>
>To: Marc Esipovich <marc@mucom.co.il>
>CC: Ralf Baechle <ralf@oss.sgi.com>, brett <brett@madhouse.org>,        
>Bruce Leggett <bleggett@sofamordanek.com>, linux@cthulhu.engr.sgi.com,      
>   linux-mips@fnet.fr, linux-mips@vger.rutgers.edu
>Subject: Re: Linux on O2?
>Date: Sun, 20 Feb 2000 00:14:45 +0100
>
>On Sat, Feb 19, 2000 at 06:30:22AM -0200, Marc Esipovich wrote:
>
> > > > Im still wainting to hear anything about the indigo i hear alot of 
>talk
> > > > about the indigo2 but nothing about the original blue boxes
> > >
> > > The problem is that the origin docs are gone by now and SGI can't
> > > just go and ship the IRIX source to hackers ...
> >
> > Wow, what do you mean gone by now?  are you saying there's no chance in
> > hell to obtain the documentation?  it can't be gone.
>
>Remember that SGI is a company that designs a large fraction of a system.
>So the designers of some piece of hardware and it's direct users, the
>kernel programmers have close to each other.  For a lot of chips
>documentation never is written or at least never the same way so it would
>be the case for chips that would be marketed as such.  It's obvious that
>this isn't good at all for Free Software where the access to high
>quality documentation is crucial.
>
>So now imagine what has happened to all the knowledge about a machine
>during the decade after it was developed?  The product's development
>finishes, it get's marketed, the OS for gets some final bugfixes and
>even later it gets phased out.  Silence.  Meanwhile the brains behind
>the machine leave the company, tapes and paper go to some dark room
>where nobody still remembers them and the machine gets forgotten.
>
>Slow death of a computer ...
>
>   Ralf

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