PUPA

[Yoshinori K. Okuji]

I'm happy to announce a new project called ``PUPA''.

PUPA is a research project for the next generation of GNU GRUB. See
<http://www.freesoftware.fsf.org/pupa/>, for more information.

I and my co-worker (Akihiro Matsushima) started that project
independent of GRUB, mainly because of a problem on my intellectual
property. In detail, we are supported by Information-technology
Promotion Agency, Japan (shortly, "IPA") and they enforce us to hold
our own intellectual properties (e.g. copyrights), while I've already
assigned my copyright on GNU GRUB to the Free Software Foundation,
Inc. So I cannot work both for IPA and for FSF simultaneously.

However, our project will cease in February 2003 (that's the rule),
then we will be able to integrate our result into GNU GRUB
afterward. I'm planning to improve GNU GRUB, while being paid, in this
way.

Feel free to take part in PUPA. That's also Free Software. We would be
glad to talk with any volunteers. To discuss PUPA, we already have a
public mailing list called "pupa-devel". If you're willing to
subscribe, see our page on Savannah
<http://savannah.gnu.org/projects/pupa/>.

I have one request for you: If you want to talk about GNU GRUB, do it
on bug-grub. If you want to talk about PUPA, do it on pupa-devel or
directly to me. That's because PUPA is a separate project from GNU
GRUB - at least, formally.

I guess you now want to ask me what I'm going to do with the current
GRUB version. Ok, the answer is that I continue working on GNU GRUB as
a volunteer as I was, and I work on PUPA as a paid programmer. In my
spare time, I devote myself to making GNU GRUB 1.0. In my work time, I
devote myself to hacking PUPA and some other subprojects.

Honestly, I don't know if I can work for both projects
really. Probably... only God knows. :)

Thanks,
Okuji