From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Message-Id: <200006161440.PAA09802@cthulhu.dircon.co.uk> Subject: Re: [9fans] SPARC Port of v3? In-Reply-To: <200006161343.JAA22831@cse.psu.edu> from rob pike at "Jun 16, 2000 09:43:35 am" To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2000 15:40:02 +0100 From: Digby Tarvin MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Topicbox-Message-UUID: c14634fc-eac8-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025 > I was disappointed to find no sources for a Sparc kernel. > > We don't have any modern Sparcs around here, so the old Sparc > kernel was not kept up to date; the only thing we have is five > years old. More important, we negotiated with Sun back in 1994 > to be able to release those sources under the old license terms. > We'd need to renegotiate to release them under the new terms, > and that's always a lot more work than it seems it should be. > (Releasing OS sources gives away details of the hardware.) > Given that the sources are out of date and for obsolete hardware, > it doesn't seem worthwhile. If someone can get permission from > Sun and promises to update the kernel, I'll let them have the > source. > I too would be disappointed to lose the ability to utilize my old Sparc hardware. I had taken it for granted that that would be there in the new release :-( I take it the source you refer to here just the version I already have with the 1995 release ? Is there anything in there that is not already public knowledge by virtue of the Sparc version of Linux or NetBSD? Or would support need to be re-developed from scratch by someone who had not signed a non-disclosure with Sun before you would be free to distribute? Havn't had a chance to look at the source for the new release yet (still have to get hold of a free PC with the right hardware so I can do the cross compiling), but I was wondering how much the driver level stuff has changed. Is there a lot of work involved in moving support for an architecture/machine from 2nd and incorporating it into the 3rd release system? Regards, DigbyT -- Digby R. S. Tarvin digbyt@acm.org http://www.cthulhu.dircon.co.uk