Suggestion toword http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/MINIX

[mfil...@creative.whidbey.net]

I don't know what restrictions there are, but it seems to me that the content of the paper

    Reorganizing UNIX for Reliability

would be a good start at filling in the details.

$0.02,

-Mike

[johnswolter]

Mike,

Wikipedia articles are not advertisements.  This is a pet-peeve for Wikipedia's staff .  See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Policies_and_guidelines

Look at the section titled, "Not part of the encyclopedia".

I see many articles identified as advertisements like Microsoft's CRM  for example at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Dynamics_CRM    It was tagged with "This article appears to be written like an advertisement".   

QNX, now owned by RIM and a commercial micro-kernel MINIX3 competitor,  has been tagged about not summarizing the article A.K.A. it's advertising.  It's just focused on getting the name in front of people.  The exact words are "This article's lead section may not adequately summarize key points of its contents".  

QNX holds a US patent 5,745,759 (PatentStorm site)  "Transparent Distributed Processing", or TDP.   It expires in 2015.   Maybe that should be added to the Wikipedia QNX article.

Some vendors have assigned  editors to delete information from articles that conflict with there Branding.  Any negative information or links to competitor's articles or article comments with differing views are deleted.  You can search these web stories yourself, there are many.

Since MINIX3 is open source, an accurate and useful part of that might put it within a historical perspective of all micro-kernel OSs.  Its article could also be a touchstone for everything that is micro-kernel and embedded.  Make it a Wikipedia article that is a positive and constructive resource not an advertisement.  Think of each typical section as an opportunity to inform the reader in the context of MINIX3.   

Don't forget to translate the article for as many languages as possible to help spread the words.

I find the best Wikipedia articles containing many references and are cross referenced to other articles.  The top of the list for me are those that include the negative or alternative aspects of any article's subject.

I hope this is of some help.

Cheers,

John S Wolter

[mfil...@creative.whidbey.net]

Hi John,

Thanks for the info, but I am not sure where you are coming from here.

The Minix WikiBook already exists but lacks almost everything.

The article I referenced also exists and is Copyright of its authors.  So I cannot add its text into the WikiBook without its authors permission.

The Reorganizing UNIX for Reliability article does contain good descriptions of the Minix system which would fill in a lot of what is needed in the MINIX WikiBook.

I suspect that copying text from the article into the WikiBook constitutes giving up the Copyright.  This is up to the authors.

It would be good for the WikiBook readers.

Just a suggestion.

-Mike

[johnswolter]

Mike,

I'm coming from the perspective of being an engineer but also having marketing and some automotive journalism experience.   You might not of guessed with my many typos.  I'm seeing the suggestion of a WikiBook as not focused on immediate market results.  Wikipedia is for many a first briefing on something in this case MINIX3.

A WikiBook is something that's needed.  It should become an often used reference by system integrators, software developers, and those improving MINIX3.  A WikiBook by this description has a long development time-frame.  It is expected to be updated through out its lifetime.  Updates being one cool feature of online books.

MINIX3 needs understandable articles that explain its workings in terms of applications.  I think MINIX3 has much potential but more people need to read about it.  Articles that help readers evaluate MINIX3 or better try it are a step forward.  Academic papers will continue to play key technical development roles.

Since the paper is copyrighted, the author(s) can choose to place it into the public domain.  One option is the Creative Commons licensing with attribution.  You can choose to use cover the same issues with a new article with original work.  

Reading that article I can see other ways to explain MINIX3's underlying concepts in a more popular format yet a technical way.  This is a form of marketing.

Marketing using Wikipedia is balancing act.  A similar balance is needed for most social media networks.  Well in this case means that the Wikipedia articles need to fit that culture and policies.  Doing that gives readers more confidence about the presented information.  It's about emotions.

If done well, a revised MINIX3 Wikipedia article could become an often referenced item.  This drives the "page rank" in search engines much higher.  

These remarks are intended to broaden the communications from the MINIX3 community.

My current project is a MINIX3 embedded demonstrator using the Beagleboard XM.  The XM has several revisions requiring a number of variants in some software details.  New boards are appearing using ARMs CPUs that are candidates for MINIX3.   I just happen to have an XM and therefore only requires my sweat-labor to get it working.

Cheers,

John S Wolter

------------------------

LinkedIn: johnswolter

johnswolter [at] wolterworks [dot] c-o-m

USA, Eastern Standard Time, -5 GMT, -4 GMT DS 

 

[Antoine LECA]

johnswolter wrote:
> MINIX3 needs understandable articles that explain its workings

Just keep in mind that there is an additional difficulty here with
MINIX: everything which is written along these lines will undoubtedly
been compared versus "the Reference", i.e. Pr. Tanenbaum's
_Operating_Systems_Design_and_Implementation_ book.
And it is certainly a tough job to compete with the textbook.


Antoine