----------------------------
	A Brief History Of NQS
----------------------------

	Generic NQS is the continuing development of Monsanto-NQS, itself
	descended directly from the original COSMIC NQS, written under
	contract to NASA by Sterling Software, Inc.

	Generic NQS incorporates enhancements from Boeing, CERN, and a large
	number of individual contributors.

	-------------------
	About NQS

	----------
	COSMIC NQS

	The Network Queueing System (NQS) was written for NASA in 1985 by
	Sterling Software, Inc.  Details of their work can be found on
	the Generic NQS web site:

	--> http://www.gnqs.org/docs/papers/mnqs_papers/mnqs0001.txt

	COSMIC is NASA's Software Technology Transfer Centre, based at
	the University of Georgia since 1966.  Their home page is

	--> http://www.cosmic.uga.edu/

	COSMIC released two versions of NQS, known as COSMIC NQS v1, and
	COSMIC NQS v2.  Due to US law, when US companies purchased COSMIC
	NQS, they also purchased full rights to the code, rather than just
	a license to use the code.

	----------
	Monsanto-NQS

	The Monsanto Company purchased COSMIC NQS v1, and John Roman
	released and maintained Monsanto-NQS up to, and including,
	Monsanto-NQS v3.36.0.  During this time, enhancements from COSMIC
	NQS v2, CERN, Boeing, and many individuals were added to the
	Monsanto-NQS source tree.  Monsanto-NQS was released under the Free
	Software Foundation's GNU General Public License.

	After Monsanto-NQS v3.36.0, John Roman moved on to other projects.
	Many thanks to John for all the work he did on Monsanto-NQS.

	The University of Sheffield secured funding from the New
	Technologies Sub Committee (NTSC) of JISC to investigate freely-
	available batch processing systems for UNIX.  Work began in October
	1994, with an evaluation of the available systems.  After
	consultation with other UK academic sites, the University decided
	to take over responsibility for maintaining Monsanto-NQS.

	----------
	Generic NQS

	In July 1995, after consultation with John Roman, it was agreed
	that new releases would no longer be called Monsanto-NQS.  It was
	felt that the new name should be site-neutral, so that name changes
	will not be required in the future when the fole of maintainer
	passes on to someone new.  The acronim GNQS was adopted, as a play
	on GNU.

	The last release of Monsanto-NQS was v3.37.1.  The first release
	of Generic NQS was v3.40.0, on 29th September 1995.  The first
	release of Generic NQS v3.50.0 was on 5th June, 1996.

	----------
	Other Versions Of NQS

	Monsanto is not hte only organisation which has released a version
	of NQS.  Other notable releases are :

	o  SGI 4D/NQS

	   This was supplied with the IRIX 4 operating system.  However,
	   it is not compatible with other versions of NQS, and is no
	   longer supported by Silicon Graphics.

	   This software is reported to run fine on IRIX 5 and IRIX6.
	   However, IRIX 6 users should note that, because 4D/NQS is a 32-bit
	   application, it cannot cope with setting resources larger than
	   4 gigabytes.

	o  Sterling NQS

	   I know very little about this product; I believe it has now
	   been discontinued.

	o  Cray NQE

	   This is stock NQS, with a significant number of proprietry
	   enhancements, sold by SGI's Cray division.  Cray NQE is highly
	   customisable, includes GUI and HTML interfaces, and is worth
	   a look if you want a well-supported commercial NQS variant.

	   Cray also published a document containing the original NQS
	   Network Protocol specification, and were kind enough to donate
	   copies to the Generic NQS project.

	o  CERN NQS

	   This is a derivative of COSMIC NQS, developed and enhanced by
	   Christian Boissat at CERN, in Switzerland.  It is freely
	   available from

	   -->  ftp://shift.cern.ch/

	o  MCC NQS

	   This is a derivative of CERN NQS, featuring enhanced support for
	   Solaris 2 and UXP/M, plus a number of extra features, created by
	   the Manchester Computing Centre, UK.  This version falls under
	   the same copyright as CERN NQS.

	If you have further information about these versions of NQS, or
	about any others, then please let me know.  URLs in particular
	would be useful ;-)

	Stu Herbert
	21st November 1999
