Re: A niche for the Hurd - next step: reality check

[Arne Babenhauserheide]

Am Donnerstag 13 November 2008 23:17:29 schrieb Michal Suchanek:
> The security model used by EROS and Coyotos uses capabilities instead.

As far as I understand Neals research paper, he's also thinking in that 
direction. 

But please see below for the timeframe. 

> However, this requires fundamental redesign of the current Hurd. This
> is why some people think that it would be also a good idea to drop the
> now-obsolete Mach and start with a modern kernel which is also
> incidentally designed to support capabilities.

While I think that this sounds interesting, it doesn't seem like a viable way 
to go in the Hurds current situation. 

When more and more people join in, so larger projects can be tackled and 
finished, this might become a good option, though. 

The Hurd is to a good deal a collection of servers and communication APIs 
after all, so why shouldn't these be ported to different kinds of microkernels 
(preferable with a compatibility layer of sorts, so developments can be shared 
easily). 

But that's for the time when the Hurd will have more than a handful of active 
core developers, and to reach that time, it first needs to reach other niches, 
since every journey still consists of many smaller steps - and every one of 
these steps has the chance of attracting additional developers. 

> > And would you join in?
>
> For me the current Hurd is not of much interest anymore. From my point
> of view the very foundation is fundamentally flawed, and I am not a
> microkernel or hardware developer so I cannot start a new one.
> Still given the Hurd development timeframes it is not completely
> impossible I would become one before the Hurd is finished.

Since that only depends on the question if you'll become a Hurd developer in 
your lifetime (an OS is never really finished :) ), I hope we can greet you 
here as developer some day. 

Best wishes, 
Arne
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