From: adobe!zstern@uunet.UU.NET (Zalman Stern)
Newsgroups: comp.os.research
Subject: Re: operating systems research hosed?? (Re: WINDOWS/NT)
Date: 3 Oct 1992 02:24:16 GMT
Organization: Adobe Systems Incorporated
NNTP-Posting-Host: ftp.cse.ucsc.edu
Originator: osr@ftp

lm@slovax.Eng.Sun.COM (Larry  McVoy) writes:
> Now, let me really show my bias.  Sun has done some stuff that research
> still hasn't understood.  A reasonable VM system, for one.  A
> reasonable VFS/VNODE interface for two.  A reasonable set of agreements
> between those two for three.
So this is some of Sun's original work. (Which they and many other companies  
do a lot of.) I hardly claim that everything a commercial company does is  
based on research done elsewhere. Of course it would be interesting to  
compare this to other people's work in the area so that we could learn  
something. This is how the state of the art progresses.

> Go talk to anyone that is trying to do cache consistent memory or file
> system (really the same thing if you have mmap) without a good VM/fs
> architecture.  I've looked around.  Sun's is the best there is, past or
> present.  Ask Minnich.  Ask Transarc.
I'm not really sure what you are discussing here, but the network  
consistency properties of NFS aren't that impressive. Perhaps this is just  
wonderful machinery that never gets excercised by the product you ship?  
Sounds like one of those uninteresting problems you're talking about.

> Look, I think research is great.  But I don't over value it.  My only
> objection to the earlier post was that it made it sound like research
> is all the real work.  That's pure garbage.  The real work is making it
> work right.
I did not say that research is all the real work. However for hard problems,  
research makes a significant contribution. And good research makes it work  
right before declaring victory.

> I'll give you an example.  I'm working on clusters.  I needed network
> disks.  I hacked together something over the weekend that works very
> well - I can newfs, fsck, and run over then network.  Great
> performance.  I'm done, right?  Bzzt.  This is the point where research
> quits and proclaims victory.  But wait.  The job isn't done.  What
> about error recovery?  What about name space management?  What about
> network partitioning?  Etc, etc.  Research has no interest in this
> part, that's an "implementation detail".  Maybe so.  But that
> "implementation detail" is the real work.  The "research" part took
> me a few days.  The real part will take me months.

Actually, when I worked at MIPS I used to hear the same sort of rhetoric  
about code obtained from anywhere else. NFS was a particularly good example  
of something that needed lots of implementation details ironed out. (E.g.  
incoming packets were not properly checked for integrity hence it was  
possible to send an illformed packet that would crash the kernel.) After a  
while I started interpreting such diatribes as "any code I (or a good friend  
of mine) didn't write is very suspect. And if it was written by a group that  
is out of favor (academics, the competition, or the bozos in the building  
next door) it is completely worthless." Not a productive attitude...
--
Zalman Stern		   zalman@adobe.com		    (415) 962 3824
Adobe Systems, 1585 Charleston Rd., POB 7900, Mountain View, CA 94039-7900
  "Yeah. Ask 'em if they'll upgrade my shifters too." Bill Watterson