Hi all, Well I've had a few comments back from people about the future of things on the PUPS & TUHS front. I've sat down & knocked up a short proposal which I'd be happy with. The overarching goal is to give everybody what they want :-) Anyway, send me comments and suggestions, or plain old disagreements! Thanks, Warren A Discussion Paper on The Future of PUPS, TUHS and the Archive ============================================================== Policy ------ The PDP-11 Unix Preservation Society (PUPS) goes back to being a group specifically focussed on the versions of Unix for the PDP-11 platform. The Unix Heritage Society (TUHS) will be an umbrella group to support efforts to preserve or maintain all versions of Unix that are no longer considered to be mainstream. The type of support is outlined below. Mechanism --------- The pups@minnie mailing list will remain an ``all-encompassing'' mailing list for those people who are active in, or interested in, the aims of the Unix Heritage Society. It will be renamed to be tuhs(a)minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au If enough people request it, a PUPS-specific mailing list will be set up. As part of TUHS aim of support, mailing lists on minnie can be set up for those groups who wish to come under the TUHS umbrella. One or more people from each group will be the list maintainer. If the information is not huge, minnie can offer web space for these groups, too. I'm already doing this for the Quasijarus project. The PUPS Archive will be renamed `The Unix Heritage Archive'. The top-level will contain files & information that is generic. There will be sublevels in the form platform/vendor/version. We might need some other categories for multi-platform systems like the 4BSDs. As an example, nearly all of the current archive will move under a PDP-11/ directory. But directories like Applications/ and Lists/ will stay where they are. If possible and where there are volunteers, each section of the archive will be maintained by its own maintainer. Minnie will provide disk space for all sections, so that there is a `one-stop' place to keep things. However, some groups may want to maintain a separate archive & existence. In this case, TUHS will set up pointers to their efforts. Volunteers & Mirrors -------------------- Some of the existing volunteers and archive mirror maintainers may not wish to maintain a copy of the full TUHS archive. That's their perogative. In fact, it might be useful to `name' each section of the full archive. For example, someone might only want to mirror the VAX section. Perhaps this can be called the VAX Unix Archive. I can modify the mechanism of ordering archive copies so that: + specific volunteers can nominate which archive sections they carry + requesters can order specific sections, or all, and find out how big each section is + requests will only be sent to those volunteers who can do them Copyright & License Issues -------------------------- At present, most things in the archive are protected by licenses and/or copyright. This probably isn't going to change soon. The current mechanisms to ensure access by license holders will be preserved. Given the aims of TUHS, I am prepared to keep in the archive anything that is Unix-related for antiquated or non-mainstream systems. We may not be able to release some of this due to license or copyright reasons. In that case, it will be kept hidden away in the archive until it can be released. It won't be mirrored or be available for copying in any way until that time. A Personal Note --------------- I'd like to maintain the PDP-11 archive, and initially do the TUHS stuff (including web pages, mailing lists, top-level of the archive). I'll set up platform-specific (or other-specific) levels as long as there is someone who will volunteer to maintain that area, and any web pages and mailing lists associated with them. It would also be a good idea to have an understudy or two in the wings, just in case I get hit by a bus or something. Conclusion ---------- I'm sure there are other issues (especially implementation ones) that I've missed above, but hopefully you get the general idea of my proposal for future direction of PUPS and TUHS. Received: (from major@localhost) by minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au (8.9.3/8.9.3) id SAA97124 for pups-liszt; Sat, 3 Jun 2000 18:00:42 +1000 (EST) (envelope-from owner-pups(a)minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au) Received: from anchor-post-31.mail.demon.net (anchor-post-31.mail.demon.net [194.217.242.89]) by minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id SAA97120 for &lt;pups(a)minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au&gt;; Sat, 3 Jun 2000 18:00:35 +1000 (EST) (envelope-from robin(a)ruffnready.co.uk) Received: from falstaf.demon.co.uk ([158.152.152.109]) by anchor-post-31.mail.demon.net with esmtp (Exim 2.12 #1) id 12y8pg-0008iK-0V; Sat, 3 Jun 2000 08:59:01 +0100 Message-ID: &lt;Q8wFPIAqpLO5Ew82(a)ruffnready.co.uk&gt; Date: Sat, 3 Jun 2000 08:57:30 +0100 To: wkt(a)cs.adfa.edu.au Cc: Unix Heritage Society &lt;pups(a)minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au&gt; From: Robin Birch &lt;robin(a)ruffnready.co.uk&gt; Subject: Re: Warren's Position on Future of PUPS/TUHS References: &lt;200006030158.LAA08504(a)henry.cs.adfa.edu.au&gt; In-Reply-To: &lt;200006030158.LAA08504(a)henry.cs.adfa.edu.au&gt; MIME-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Turnpike Integrated Version 5.00 U <YSkKJATYm0AxAbv6xwlBrCeVCW> Sender: owner-pups(a)minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au Precedence: bulk In message &lt;200006030158.LAA08504(a)henry.cs.adfa.edu.au&gt;, Warren Toomey &lt;wkt(a)cs.adfa.edu.au&gt; writes Sounds basically ok to me Robin ____________________________________________________________________ Robin Birch robin(a)ruffnready.co.uk M1ASU/2E0ARJ/M5ABD Old computers and radios always welcome