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Date: 07 Dec 2002 22:34:00 +0200
From: kaih@khms.westfalen.de (Kai Henningsen)
To: torvalds@transmeta.com
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Subject: Re: is KERNEL developement finished, yet ???
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torvalds@transmeta.com (Linus Torvalds)  wrote on 05.12.02 in <aso4kq$2ka$1@penguin.transmeta.com>:

> In article <000901c29c5d$6d194760$2e833841@joe>,
> Joseph D. Wagner <wagnerjd@prodigy.net> wrote:
> >
> >Unix (and Linux) developers are far too concerned with clinging to the
> >30-year-old outdated POSIX standard, which creates numerous problems when
> >trying to advance new features.
>
> No.
>
> Only stupid people think they should throw away old proven concepts.
> What happens quite often in academia in particular is that you find a
> problem you want to fix, and you re-design the whole system around your
> fix.

Well, yes and no.

Yes, it's usually a bad idea to do that and expect to get a production- 
level kernel out of it.

But on the other hand, there's a lot that *could* be done with OS kernels  
that has never been tried (even though I certainly couldn't give a list).  
Until someone implements one of those ideas, and experiments with the  
results for a while, it's impossible to know what it would be worth in  
practice. (I certainly wouldn't want to trust a theoretical evaluation!)

Then, *if* it looks good in an experimental OS, people still need to  
figure out how to make use of it in a more traditional kernel. Sometimes  
that's where it breaks. Sometimes not.

If you just remember that academic OSes are *research*, not production  
material, then they are fine. Unfortunately, too many people (including  
many academics) forget that.

There's a reason we have both science and engineering, and they're not the  
same discipline.

MfG Kai
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