Talk:Multics

As an amusing aside, in the late sixties I was convinced that it was feasible to write a portable OS in a high level language (PL/I being the best candidate at the time). It was (and still is) my estimate that (except for device drivers, whose plethora makes up the bulk of Linux) some 60% of an OS could be written in a HL language, the other 40% requiring Assembly. For example, the code to do scheduling is architecture independent, the code to implement scheduling decisions (start/resume) a process is architecture dependant.

Until the mid eighties, when Unix became well known as a viable, portable, OS, nobody I knew agreed with me. It was for this reason that for many years I did private contracting/development under the name "Blue Sky Enterprises". See blue sky project. --Buz Cory

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Well, that's enough for now. It needs to be improved somwhat n the History section, but it's mostly there elsewhere, I think. Now I gotta write all those articles about Corby, Jerry, etc, etc, etc. Noel 10:02, 17 Aug 2003 (UTC)

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Neither the [http://www.mit.edu:8001/afs/net/user/srz/www/multics.html MIT Multics site], nor the [ftp://ftp.stratus.com/pub/vos/multics/multics.html Multics Repository at Stratus Computer] ("Last Updated 9 April 2001") have been updated in quite a while, and also don't contain much information that's not on Tom van Vleck's Multics site. If anyone is looking to make the entry shorter, those are candidates for editing out. Noel 14:26, 3 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Try drilling down into the links on those sites, and you'll discover a lot of Multics material. The sites may not have been changed recently, but then again, neither has Multics. Also, there is benefit in getting a variety of sources of information, especially non-mirrored Web sites that can occasionally have problems with their hosts being unavailable. Bevo 06:51, 4 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Yes, there is a lot of stuff - but almost all of it's also on the Van Vleck site. E.g. the only paper on the Green site is also on VV's site. Most of the MIT content is earlier versions of stuff VV wrote. Etc, etc. But about the redundancy - I was just thinking yesterday "Goodness knows what we'll do when Tom's gone!" :-) I'll have to look into getting the MIT-LCS Library to take it over.. .Noel 14:54, 4 Nov 2003 (UTC)

TSO, MTS, etc

What's the point to adding those systems to Multics' "See also"? You could add just about every modern operating system. (In fact, that's not such a bad idea - I'll add List of operating systems instead.) Noel (talk) 20:33, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I felt Time Sharing Option (TSO), Michigan Terminal System (MTS), and MUSIC/SP were all especially worthy of "See also" listing under Multics because they were all contemporaries, and they all had historical significance in the time-sharing revolution. True, Multics also had influence on other operating systems, especially as the inspiration for UNIX, but historically those other three are (I think) worth specific mention. -- User:166.153.174.134 17:01, 11 Dec 2004

TSO? I can't see that one (nor the others either, although let's focus on this one for the moment). Yes, it got a certain amount use (and is still in use today), but what was the relationship between TSO and Multics? None, as far as I know. At least with CTSS and CMS there's a tie, but TSO and Multics? There's no connection at all (in fact it's an anti-connection - with OS/360, IBM went in completely the other direction from Multics, causing the rupture in the previously close IBM/MIT relationship that never was overcome). Other than being rough contemporaries (and the same can be said of literally dozens of other systems), there's nothing special about TSO as it relates to Multics, is ther? And as for "historical significance in .. time-sharing", what technical features did it have that influenced later systems? Again, none that I can think of. So, again, I fail to see the case that there's any relevance to mentioning TSO in the context of Multics. Yes, it would be relevant to a History of time-sharing page, but that's not what this page is about. Noel (talk) 22:12, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I think you make good points. Maybe it would make sense to have a subsection that lists "Other Early Time Sharing Systems" or something like that. I'll make an attempt along those lines in the article.

Ah, that would still be somewhat off-topic for the Multics article. However, an article on Early time-sharing systems would be a good place for it, and a link to said article would definitely be appropriate in the "See also" here. Noel (talk) 23:59, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I went ahead and moved the "others" to time-sharing (and cleaned up that article slightly while I was at it, including mention of Multics). I think everything is in pretty good shape now. -- User:166.153.174.134

Sounds good, moving further comment there. Noel (talk) 18:31, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)