Essentially, you are looking at this from a traditional capitalist
mentality. We are no longer there. In the Microcosm, in the "information
age", information is the commodity and there, to some extent is an unlimited
'market space'.
You aren't here creating an operating system, per se, but informational raw
materials. From this products will be made and niches will be filled.
This may enable someone to create a product where there was no capability
before. Minix is fine, but where is it hacked and 'supported' on this
scale? And as was said before, that is just more raw material for the fire.
Linux/Elks is free to the end user and developer. That leaves the developer
and integrator free to concentrate on the end user product or system while
receiving "free" R&D.
Everything becomes faster, smaller, cooler, and cheaper in the microcosm as
it gets more complex.
-Mike
-----Original Message-----
From: Alex Holden <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: Alan Cox <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: Eli Liang <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; [EMAIL PROTECTED]
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Friday, June 09, 2000 1:23 PM
Subject: Re: Market space for a 16-bit linux product?
>On Fri, 9 Jun 2000, Alan Cox wrote:
>> 11K with tcp/ip - I've not seen that. 11K core oh and its 30K for TCP
minimum
>> but we didnt tell you until you asked I have seen ;)
>
>Have you seen WebACE?
>http://world.std.com/~fwhite/ace/
>
>It does bit-banging-serial, SLIP, TCP, IP, ICMP, HTTP, dynamically
>generated web pages, and controlling an external port based on the URL
>submitted to it in 454 instructions on an 8 pin microcontroller!
>
>Okay, so it's not exactly a general purpose OS with a TCP/IP stack, and
>the stack is far from RFC compliant (there isn't enough RAM for that), but
>it's very cool just the same (and it isn't a joke either- I have the
>source code).
>
>--------------- Linux- the choice of a GNU generation. --------------
>: Alex Holden (M1CJD)- Caver, Programmer, Land Rover nut, Radio Ham :
>-------------------- http://www.linuxhacker.org/ --------------------
>
>
