Shawn Gordon wrote:
> again the beauty of it is that you usually don't have to, so I doubt
> they have, and it would be the rare occasion that would require you to
> modify the kernel, you could simply write some add-on utilities, just
> like all those HP shops that had some smarty pants programmer that made
> his own scheduler or whatever and he is now long gone, but you have the
> source code and you can maintain it.
>

UTC had one of those and we're still running a major application
on an advanced (for it's time) process handling messaging system
called TERMNET that Jeff Kell wrote back before message files
existed (and I hadn't even heard of an HP 3000), but then, he's
still here, thankfully.  Major parts are now even in native mode,
thanks to SPLash!.

We also have a terminal i/o package that Jeff wrote that every
application we have uses, and it's SPL with a lot of assemble
stuff that troubles SPLAsh!  It would be one of our larger
challenges if we choose to migrate existing code.  We'll have
to rewrite the thing in C.

With Open Source, a major feature is that if you use
the source to buy or build a new feature, you may contribute
it back to the open distirbution for others to benefit.  This
helps to feed the evolution of the software for all.  Back
in the early HP 3000 days, you could put it in the CSL and
that worked a good deal like open source today, but with a
much smaller crowd.  How many people worry about support
for Bouncer or Sleeper.

Richard
--
Richard L Gambrell, Senior Information Technology Consultant and
Director of Computing Systems and Networks
Information Technology Division, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
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