unix 2 unix
the "bring unices together" technical and social project
Motivation
There are many different Unix versions ("Unices") out there today. As a FOSS developer I interact with many different developers, who, like me, use many different versions of Unix. Many parts of each Unix are being reinvented over and over again, which is not bad in general (things are beeing improved). The question is: Why should one Unix not use the advantages another Unix has? The other motivation is to reduce the gap between different Unices: So a Unix admin can easily use and hack for Unix B, if she only knows Unix A. Thus, if she creates a cool feature for Unix A to speedup the boot process to last only 0.5 seconds, she can submit it to developers of Unix C to Z.
Ideas
There are already many ongoing efforts in this direction (see below for examples), but this is a different idea: It's a platform for Unixers
- to exchange their ideas and code,
- to improve their Unix,
- to share cool ideas,
- to propose standards to be used among Unices,
independently of the Unix (they|you) are using!
As most Unixers like easy to use interfaces, I chose to create a new mailing list (just because I think that newsreaders suck more than MUAs). The difference to existing projects is, that it is not focussed
- on a specific feature,
- a specific version
- or a specific area.
Nor is the idea of this project to create a
- feature rich, fast development (Linux),
- everywhere running (NetBSD),
- fast (FreeBSD),
- secure (OpenBSD)
- and commercially supported (Solaris)
Unix. What this project may possibly be able to do is
- to bring people together,
- to create a spring board into the Unix scene,
- to prevent you from making the same mistakes others did before
- and to let people create real projects somewhere else.
Status
- Calling people
To make progress and bring Unixers together, there is a need to be known, so more people join and discuss their ideas.
Remember: This website is just a plattform - you're the one who has to act.
Otherwise, you may also just
- blame me for this website,
- tell me that it is (unecessary|has already been done|<insert flame|praise here>)
- and then let others know, what cool ideas you've in your mind.
- Or visit the archive.
Examples
Some projects I'm aware of, which bring together Unices:
- Xorg - Which Unix does not have it?
- GNU - Although they are not Unix
- The BSDs The fast, secure and portable operating systems
- EFSH - Nico Schottelius' proposal of a generic easy filesystem hierarchy (this is not related to LSB
- cconfig - Nico Schottelius' proposal of a configuration format
Do you know about more projects? I would be happy, if you let me know!