Imagine if you will, a world where your grand-children can use the same software that you wrote in your teens. Without change. Or simply imagine one in which your grand-mother can use the software peroid -- without repeated phone calls to you.

A world where the bitwidth of your processor doesn't matter because your operating system automatically adjusts your software to run on 32-bit or even 256-bit system. For you. Automatically.

How about having filename lengths that can begin at 2 billion characters?

And so forth....

Grail Millennium, or more properly Minimal Operating System of Object Class Interfaces Holy Grail for the Millennium -- is a project whose goal is to produce a computer operating system that is free for the mass public and whose flexibility and design will allow it to persevere for decades without continuous costly upgrades. Grail Millennium was designed...

• to require object interfaces to be well thought-out enough that changes need be made only at intervals measuring in decades,
• to run on a multitude of systems,
• for Entertainment/Gaming Software,
• for Educational Software,
• for Internet surfing,
• to be a flexible multi-media Movie player. Since it is required that all object devices support software MPEG if the hardware is not available, and is thus highly optimized for such, the system makes a nice base from which to play MPEG CDs across multiple-platforms.
• for Library and Archival database access. In other words it is for reading illustrated books, and browsing digitized galleries.

Grail Millennium has always been intended to be a main-stream operating system. Wheresoever Linux falters, frustrating the masses, Millennium will be there to lend a helping hand. It is not meant to replace Unix, by no means, but to be the operating system for all those who do not care to learn about such things.

Millennium is free to the public. And by intent and design, relatively small. Entertainment and educational software can be shipped with the Grail Millennium Operating System on the CD-ROM itself, so long as the producers abid by normal intellectual property copyright restrictions.

In the end, this is an operating system built for the common man, to be used in some form for the next thousand years.

--min/0.00/0.03/0.06/0.09/0.10 7/21/96

Yes.

Let us talk simply, and to the point. Free equates to the potentional for rapid market saturation. This is of little consequence however if the operating system

• is not useful, it's design encouraging high productively through power and ease of use,
• does not have a low retraining time for the general system and its (ported) applications,
• and lastly is not highly profitable for commerical developers to produce for.

The first two lay mostly within the domain of the systems designer and subsequent programmers. The last however is more about hype and image than anything else.

No.

I take that back.

It is more about having buggy software that continuously needs to be replaced for one reason or another. With that in mind, this project is actively leaving room for flaws in certain non-critical areas, thereby allowing third-party vendors and developers to create New! Improved! products to line their pockets.

Seriously. Though we'll deny it if anyone asks. :-)

--min/0.13 8/5/96

Mostly, I do. Min. Mostly.

--min/0.00/0.02/0.06/0.10 7/21/96

You can visit approved sites supporting or related to Grail Millennium on the World Wide Web at the following addresses:

You may also find references to Grail Millennium in the following newsgroups.

• comp.sys.ibm.pc.demos (lots of mindless chatting)
• comp.os.misc (monitored)
• comp.os.research (monitored)
• comp.ai
• rec.games.programmer

There also are unofficial sites. Try looking on the Propaganda page. Perhaps one of them will have what you are looking for.

--min/0.02/0.04/0.10 7/19/96

Officially? Not as yet.

This isn't surprising since no one has actively sought out sponsers for Millennium as of yet (with one unofficial exception). Nevertheless, long ago a list was made of a few corporations or entities with which it was deemed some form of relationship would prove benefitial.

If you work for any of the following and want to chat, feel free to send email to the founder.

The Project currently requires benevolent corporate protection, some financial backing, systems design counsel, hardware interfacing information, and jubilent (or relentless) programmers. In that order.

If you are a member of one of the Grail Millennium groups and wish to add to or remove from this list, you are also free to send email to the founder.

• International Business Machines Corporation (IBM)
• Sun Microsystems SUNW
• Netscape Communications NSCP
• Apple Computer
• NeXT Comput...err, Software, Inc. (Steve P. Jobs)
• Silicon Graphics (SGI)
• NOVELL, Inc
• FTP Software
• Watcom International Corporation (a division of Powersoft)
• Stac, Inc (formally Stac Electronics)
• Advanced Gravis
• INTEL Corporation
• Motorola Corporation
• Scitech Software

--min (the founder)/0.02/0.03/0.04/0.05/0.10 7/21/96/0.15 8/14/96

Were are we going? Hasn't that always been the question on the lips of men, mouthed mostly silently, sometimes otherwise, for every action other men make under this searing sun?

[Yes. It is true. I was once an English Major. Suffer. :)]

To be blunt, and pragmatic, the future is loosely thus:

• Reconstruct the WWW sites so everyone knows what is going on, and what they are supposed to be doing.
• Within the Core and Discussion groups, argue about some aspects of the core supervisor objects that concern the Multi-OS boot-up functions. Meanwhile, all other groups will hammer out their object class interfaces.
• Write the Multi-OS PnP/Legacy-Aquisition Boot-up program, and test it.
• While the Boot-up program is being coded and tested, all major CORE issues will be finialized within the project.
• The core documents will then be taken to draft level alpha 1.0 and passed around to others to get their reaction, comments, criticism, etc.
• After more arguing, the core documentation will be taken to a finalized beta first-draft, and coding Grail Millennium will immediately begin. Parallel to that Assembler Group will develop the first version of the assembler, as well as a small selection of necessary applications (ie, a source-code text editor).
• Once the Assembler and the Core have reached the point that code can be compiled under Grail Millennium then all other groups will begin coding their objects like mad. At this point there will be a chain reaction of progress... and we'll apply for an appropriate .ORG domain-name.
• More to come....

--min/0.10 7/21/96