From: pathak@mitre.org (Heeren Pathak)
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.programmer
Subject: Re: Win NT Dev, Conf. Report
Date: 21 Jul 92 19:22:19 GMT
Followup-To: comp.os.os2.programmer
Organization: Mitre Corporation

In article <62521@cup.portal.com>, ts@cup.portal.com (Tim W Smith) wrote:
> 
> > My biggest concern here has been the stability of the kernel.  While the
> > beta kernel looks good, you really don't know how well it works.  Before
> > somebody posts something about how it is a microkernel and thus small and
> > easy to write well, let me point out that both NeXT and OSF spend a huge
> > amount of time testing and debugging the Mach microkernel.  From what I
> > understand, the Mach kernel is now very stable but if it took time and
> > people using in commercial situtations before all the bugs were found and
> > taken out.
> 
> Yeah, but compared to the number of people who develop for Microsoft
> OSes, the number of Mach developers is insignificant.  If Microsoft
> can get a significant fraction of their developers to participate in
> an NT beta, they should be able to get kernel stability before a general
> release with no problem (assuming that any lack of kernel stability is
> due to implementation bugs rather than design flaws).
> 

Excuse me???  Please get your facts straight.

Mach has been worked on by a large number of researchers world-wide as well
as people at NeXT and companies associated with OSF.  Granted NeXT doesn't
have a huge user base but they have had a number of people spend several
years working on the Mach kernal.  NeXT has actually been shipping with a
Mach kernal for several years and it was through this commercial shipment
that many of the bugs were found.  OSF also had a number of people working
on the kernal and with OSF comes DEC, HP, IBM, and a bunch of other major
workstation vendors.  On the other hand, NT was JUST released in beta form.
 MS is planning on releaseing NT at the end of the year so that only leaves
(at most) 6 months for developers to play around with the kernal.  6 months
is actually optimistic since MS will need to make the code golden at least
a few weeks ahead of time.


> They can do what Apple did with System 7 for the Mac.  Apple made sure
> that alphas and betas of System 7 where widespread in the developer
> community.  They had many thousands of qualified alpha and beta testers.

1.  System 7 is several orders of magnitude less complex than NT.

2.  System 7 was based on an OS that has been in wide spread use for years.
 System 7 wasn't a totally new OS, it was a significant extension to a
previous version of the OS (similar to the difference between OS/2 1.3 -->
OS/2 2.0).

3.  Apple had alpha versions of System 7 in developers hand almost a year
before it was actually released.  Come to think of it, even OS/2 2.0 had
more than 6 months of pre-release testing.

4.  Despite the testing both System 7 and OS/2 had bugs.  Apple release
System 7.0.1 and two "System Tune-up" extensions (patches) in less than 6
months after release.  IBM has already release a new kernal for OS/2 2.0. 
I would be extremely surprised if NT's kernal did not have bugs.

> A system like Mach is not going to get this kind of testing until it
> gets released.

Like a stated before, get your facts straight.

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Heeren Pathak                      | Television is a device that permits
pathak@mitre.org                   | people who haven't anything to do to
Mitre Corporation                  | watch people who can't do anything.
(617) 271-7465                     |	               	-- Fred Allen
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Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.programmer