[Info-vax] Userland programming languages on VMS.

[Johnny Billquist]

On 2022-02-01 02:36, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
> On 1/31/22 19:48, Johnny Billquist wrote:
>> On 2022-01-31 18:39, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
>>>
>>> The same is probably true of just about any OS.  All it takes is
>>> access to the source and a desire by someone to do the work.  Why
>>> do you think I would still like to see the source to RSTS released
>>> into the wild.  RSX which was very PDP-11 specific now has a version
>>> running on later Z80 family processors.  I have it running here at
>>> my home and it works quite well.
>>
>> The Z80 RSX implementation has pretty little to do with the PDP-11 RSX 
>> sources. So I think it's pretty incorrect to claim you need the 
>> sources of X to do some implementation giving similar functionality on 
>> different hardware.
> 
> That's true, but it would make it a lot easier.  All you really need
> is very good documentation of the internals (which is what I assume
> the writer of RSX-120 used).  I have never seen even that for RSTS
> or RT-11.

It might make things easier, but then again, I suspect you are putting 
to much faith into that idea. When you get down to it, and actually 
start writing code, you realize how much you need to throw out.

A bit like what I figured when writing my TCP/IP for RSX. A lot of 
common networking API concepts I had to throw out the window. But it 
took some time to figure things out.

>> But you are right that it does require the desire to do the work. 
>> Linux is an example of this. Linus wanted something Unix like, but 
>> couldn't use the existing software, so he rewrote it based on the 
>> public APIs. User applications compile and work fine (usually) on both 
>> Linux and Unix, even though the internals sometimes are rather different.
> 
> Yeah, I never understood his reasoning.  The BSD lawsuit was well
> known to be DOA and development of BSD never paused.  And then there
> was MINIX with source published and even available on floppies.  I
> still have both my disk sets as well as the book.

There is some quote from Linus somewhere about if BSD (I think it was) 
had been free at the time, he would never have started Linux. But right 
at that time, the whole lawsuit was going on, and Linus certainly did 
not have access. That was all that was needed.

   Johnny