[cgl_discussion] Linux Streams project update

Mika Kukkonen mika at osdl.org
Wed Jun 25 10:20:45 PDT 2003


On Wed, 2003-06-25 at 09:45, Stephen Hemminger wrote:
> Are there any latent IP issues here?  Given that Streams is an SVR4 thing.

"Before Linux was available, Dennis M. Ritchie designed STREAMS for the 
 ninth edition of UNIX (see Resources 5). Since then, the STREAMS
 concept has been improved and revised by different operating systems. 
 Variants ranging from UNIX SVR4 STREAMS (see Resources 1) to Plan 9
 Streams (see Resources 3) exist today.

 Unfortunately, SVR4 complicated the neat and clean design of the ninth 
 edition's STREAMS mainly to add new features, such as atomic 
 gather/scatter writes and multiprocessor support. 

 [...]

 Most UNIX features have been available in source form for people to 
 read and use. STREAMS was a notable exception. Therefore, even though
 we could have designed LiS to support just the STREAMS interface, we
 also tried to follow its design. If SVR4 STREAMS code had been
 available, the project could have been reduced to a simple port. As a
 result, the design guide was a mixture of a couple of books showing how
 STREAMS work

 [...]

 LiS is licensed using the GNU Library Public License so that companies
 can port their existing SVR4 proprietary STREAMS drivers to LiS and use
 them in Linux without having to publish their source code.
"

Quotes from http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=3086

--MiKu





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