Re: [MiNT] FreeMiNT history...

["Howard Chu" <hyc@highlandsun.com>]

Man, was it really so long ago? Apparently...

Yes, Eric R. Smith wrote MiNT originally as a freeware project. I glommed
onto it early on, having done a bunch of ST-Minix and MicroRTX up to that
point. The feature set (system calls and such) was modeled after BSD
services, but it's not based on FreeBSD in any way, it's all original code
written from scratch.

Eric got hired by Atari, that's how they "got hold of it"...

MultiTOS is a package consisting of MiNT and MultiAES. When you talk about
"MultiTOS" it's this combination that you're talking about. The kernel all
by itself is just MiNT.

  -- Howard Chu
  Chief Architect, Symas Corp.       Director, Highland Sun
  http://www.symas.com               http://highlandsun.com/hyc
  Symas: Premier OpenSource Development and Support

> -----Original Message-----
> From: mint-bounce@lists.fishpool.fi
> [mailto:mint-bounce@lists.fishpool.fi]On Behalf Of George Crissman
> Sent: Sunday, May 05, 2002 10:08 PM
> To: mint@fishpool.com
> Cc: strads@tmisnet.com
> Subject: [MiNT] FreeMiNT history...
>
>
> Hello Adam,
>
>
> AK> This may be a bit unusual...
>
> AK> Can someone tell me how exactly MiNT becomed opensource? Was it Atari
> AK> decision, or there was just "leak" from laboratories?
>
> AK> --
> AK> Adam Klobukowski
> AK> atari@gabo.pl
>
> If I remember correctly, MiNT ("Mint is Not TOS") was
> originally a project by Eric R. Smith ... and once he
> got it going, he posted it and said others could work
> on it if they wanted.
>
> Atari apparently got ahold of it ... changed the name
> of the acronym ("Mint is Now TOS") and adopted it.
> I do not know if it's the same as MultiTOS or not.
>
> MiNT is (apparently) based on FreeBSD Unix, which
> explains why it is so robust and has so many unix-like
> utilities and applications.
>
> That's my best shot at an explanation!
>
> George Crissman
> strads@tmisnet.com
>
>
>