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diff --git a/software/MOSS b/software/MOSS deleted file mode 100644 index 4de6d23..0000000 --- a/software/MOSS +++ /dev/null @@ -1,98 +0,0 @@ -==== -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! - -.. topic:: 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/* - -.. topic:: 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 - -.. topic:: 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 - -.. topic:: 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 |