Date: Mon, 05 May 1997 13:50:57 -0700 From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com> To: hackers@freebsd.org Subject: One last call for a show of hands on the ALPHA port... Message-ID: <7374.862865457@time.cdrom.com>
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Even if you've sent me mail on this topic before, please check in again so that I know you're still available and interested. Basically, I've now got 4 machines on the way from Digital (3 Workstation class with single 433Mhz CPUs, one SMP/Server class with 2 CPUs) and I want to make sure that they all wind up in the right hands. A "right hand" is defined as: 1. Someone with the skill to take on the port of FreeBSD to another architecture, and a 64 bit one at that. Bear also in mind that this will require a good deal of infrastructure work before you even get to the stage of _needing to use_ the ALPHA machine, e.g. folding in the ALPHA compiler technology and making a lot of the current code 64 bit clean (which could probably be done almost as effectively with a copy of the NetBSD tree and an Intel box). 2. Someone who's into this for at least a year, e.g. the the long haul. Even making this thing come up single-user is probably the matter of 6 months worth of work, having it self-host being somewhat beyond that and a "production quality" product (which is what we're interested in or we might as well just go do something else) probably a full year out. 3. Someone who's already fairly close to the project and a trusted committer. I hate to toss this last condition into the pot but, given the degree of infrastructure work required, I don't see it working out any other way. You're going to need to be able to deal with the other committers frequently over issues of a rather sweeping architectural nature, and that requires mutual trust and experience with working in the group. Additionally, I should note that these positions are _unpaid_ for now since I still haven't got funding for the porting project quite lined up yet, nor can I promise that said funding is guaranteed to materialize at all (and I refused to promise anything until the purchase orders are physically in my hands :-). All I can say is that I'm also working on that angle, a number of people who would like to have the ALPHA port sooner rather than later know that funding is the best way of going about making that happen, etc and so forth. If you jump aboard now, it's probably best to look at the possibility of eventually turning this into contract work as a nice potential bonus but NOT a given. Like I said, I'm trying but no promises. Thanks! Jordan
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