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-
-====
-MOSS
-====
---------------------------------
-Many User Operating System Stuff
---------------------------------
-
-:Author: Bryan Newbold
-
-Moss is a vague concept I have for an operating-system-like-system that
-attempts to realize some of the promises of distributed universal computing
-and user management, continuation-based serializable programming, persistent
-data accessibility, file and process versioning, central foreign function
-management, and code/content distribution. It'll be easy!
-
-Implementation
-~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-
-Moss would probably start as "stuff": middleware, userland applications,
-utilities, and native shell and GUI interfaces. It could also be a
-separate hosted virtual machine, a monolithic application, a kernel
-extension, or ultimately run alone over a high performance shim host OS.
-
-Distribution would be self hosting and viral: users would replicate a copy
-of the system from a friend instead of from a central server, patches
-and applications would be distributed word-of-mouth, and trust networks
-would form naturally via this distribution. Customization and feature sets
-would be passed on, which makes it likely that a user would receive a
-system already tweaked for their own needs and computing knowledge level.
-
-*Existing Projects:* Inferno, Xen, vmware, Java, GNU/*
-
-Universal, distributed file system
-~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-
-The core of the system would be a universally accessible identity-based
-operating system. Some authoritive domain would probably be required, but
-public identity brokers would allow anonymous identities. "Strong
-Cryptography" is a goal, allowing a user's content to be hosted/cached
-on third party machines in an encrypted form. The real challenge of course
-is a flexible crypto system than can be transitioned or upgraded if a flaw
-is discovered without total data loss.
-
-My dream path would look something like::
-
- /net/user@some.domain.tld/media/ledzep/tangerine.mp3
-
-From the application end there would be no concept of "local" or "remote"
-files to a particular machine, though perhaps some feedback on access time.
-So, for instance, once tokens/authentication is handled, user utilities
-like ``mv`` or ``cat`` could be applied, instead of ``scp`` or ``rcat``.
-
-Versioning, write locks, etc would have to be considered.
-
-*Existing projects:* OpenAFS, freeNet, ssh, kerberos, git
-
-Serializable Programs
-~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-
-The state/continuation/environment of a running program or chain of
-programs should be a "first level object": a bundle of data like any other
-that can be transmitted, copied, and stored away for later. A user should
-be able to drag an entire application running on a desktop computer
-onto their laptop when then need to travel, or from laptop to workstation
-if then need additional computing power. Distributed computing could be
-implemented by bundling up applets that are shot off to a cluster or
-higher performance computer for processing, and the result state of the
-program would simply be bundled back to the requesting client. Such bundles
-wouldn't be very large: data would be stored on the distributed filesystem,
-which appears identical (*exactly?*) to every node on the network.
-
-Properly written, such a serializable system could also lead to performance
-and power consumption savings by swapping idle programs and processes to
-disk, or let low-usage nodes shift their processes off to other nodes
-and power down.
-
-*Existing Projects:* Lisp, Stackless
-
-Foreign Function Management
-~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-
-It would be nice to see a move away from the library model for shared
-code to a more flexible/dynamic foreign function interface that would
-allow any appropriate code to announce its availability to other
-applications regardless of version, platform, coding language, etc.
-This would be a high-level feature, not intended to replace kernel level
-operations (read/write) but to make package/library management easier
-(it doesn't matter if an image conversion function is coming from a video
-editing package or libpng as long as it reads a raw array and returns
-a binary stream).
-
-There's room for dynamic optimization here: if program
-realizes it's native string manipulation library sucks for 5meg+ datasets
-it could look through the library and see if there's a better one.
-
-*And,* this too could be distributed, allowing super easy access to
-distributed computing resources; underutilized nodes could make their
-functions available to nearby nodes, or a machine with tons of matrix
-crunching silicon (eg high end video cards) could swap work units
-with a machine with a dedicated crypto chip or 64bit+ processor.
-
-*Existing Projects:* Script-fu from the Gimp
-