Microsoft Singularity Now "Open" Source

Alex_Ionescu writes "Microsoft's Singularity operating system (covered previously by Slashdot) is now open to the public for download, under a typical Microsoft academic, non-commercial license. Inside is a fully compilable and bootable version of what could be the basis for the future of Windows, or maybe simply an experiment to demonstrate .NET's capabilities. Singularity, if you'll recall, has gained wide interest from researchers and users alike, by claiming to be a fully managed code kernel (with managed code drivers and applications as well), something that would finally revolutionize the operating system research arena. The project is available on CodePlex."

Comments

Stability?

[spectrokid]

If this is super-stable-hacker-resistant then there must be some uses where performance is not really an issue: ATM's, Kiosks,... Does anybody know what software exists for this thing? Does it run IE?

Re:Stability?

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a list of the applications here

No IE, but it has Pong!

Re:Stability?

[wiggles]

Ars Technica says it all.

This OS doesn't really run any applications at all. It's not intended for commercial use, and will not be the next Windows. All it is, is a test bed for future technologies. Think of it as an IT equivalent of a concept car. It doesn't really run, but it's nifty to look at to get ideas for future projects.

Re:Stability?

[parvenu74]

MSFT never intends to turn Singularity into a marketable product. It's simply a RESEARCH project, a breeding and proving ground for advanced O/S concepts. If they learn valuable things from the project -- like SIP, for example -- those ideas might find their way into the Windows code base in the future.

Re:Stability?

[sm62704]

"super-stable-hacker-resistant"

"Does it run IE?"

Not if it's super-stable-hacker-resistant. If it lacks active-x it is at least more crhacker resistant and stable, though.

Re:Stability?

[TheRaven64]

I looked at Singluarity a while ago, and all of the 'innovations' I saw had been in JNode years earlier. Since JNode is LGPL and actually capable of running (Java) applications, what is the attraction of Singularity?

Re:Stability?

[sgt scrub]

what is the attraction of Singularity

IMHO it has a company behind it with enough money to market it. The reason to market it is so the technology gained from the people "learning from it" can be usurped by the marketer. btw. thanks for the link.

Re:Stability?

[Neil Watson]

It's not intended for commercial use, and will not be the next Windows.

Have you ever worked with those folks from marketing?

Re:Stability?

[dwiget001]

Sorry, but MSFT used in connection with "advanced O/S concepts" just does not compute. To MSFT, it is only an "advanced O/S concept" if it means further lock-in for *customers* and lock-out of un-desirables (i.e. anyone or any product *not* towing the MSFT line).

Re:Stability?

[sgt scrub]

those ideas might find their way into the Windows code base in the future

Interesting. Do you think any of the things learned will be allowed to make it in other products? Better yet. Do you think things believed to be learned from it might be at risk because it would give Microsoft the ability to claim something was evolved from Singularity?

Re:Stability?

[Eli Gottlieb]

[W]hat is the attraction of Singularity? Why don't you walk into the event horizon and find out?

Re:Stability?

[suggsjc]

This OS doesn't really run any applications at all

Which is the key to having a perfectly stable OS!

Re:Stability?

[nuzak]

> does not compute

What an apropos phrase. Reminds me of those androids in that Star Trek episode, where Kirk poses a very simple logical puzzle to them, and their hardwired inflexibility of thought causes those stupid computers to go up in smoke at the very thought.

Man, even gun nuts and gear heads will latch onto *some* technical detail to lambast the products from some manufacturer they don't like. The discussion here is ... well I guess this is what political geeks sound like.

Re:Stability?

[Luke Dawson]

This OS doesn't really run any applications at all. [snip] It doesn't really run, but it's nifty to look at to get ideas for future projects.

So nothing like Vista then? >:)

Re:Stability?

[jrothwell97]

This OS doesn't really run any applications at all. Neither does a Unix, with a base install. All Singularity consists of at the time of writing is two bootloaders (don't ask me why they can't do away with the 16-bit loader and just start natively at 32 bits), the hardware abstraction layer, the kernel and a shell. Somewhat like GRUB/LILO, Linux and Bash. Of course it won't run any apps until you write some for it.

Re:Stability?

[Matrix14]

Singularity is a research project out of Microsoft Research. It's not intended for a actual use, but is more of a experiment to see if such a thing can be written, as well as a testbed for a variety of blue-sky ideas that may, someday, maybe, see use in a commercial product.

Re:Stability?

[Matrix14]

Microsoft Research projects have little to do with the rest of the company. MSR actually produces tons of good research, most of which Microsoft as a whole has no intention of turning into actual products for external use (although, apparently a lot of their bug catching tools see heavy use internally).

Re:Stability?

[rtb61]

Singularity is just a M$ fishing expedition, a means by which M$ hopes to suck the greater community into giving away ideas, and concepts for free, which M$ can turn around and patent, of course claim as their innovations.

Sorry but not thanks, nothing to M$ for free and to be honest I would rather give it away to the FOSS community that sell it to M$, let alone be stupid enough to give it away to M$ so they can try to charge me for it in the future.

Re:Stability?

[xZgf6xHx2uhoAj9D]

I don't understand what you mean. If I were to sum up Singularity in one idea, it would be its use of static analysis to ensure the stability of its components. Where does JNode use static analysis?

Re:Stability?

[EMN13]

It's fully managed nature is merely one of the interesting aspects. The static verification, and the notable lack of hardware memory mapping and so-called "protected mode" are also very interesting, since they might allow running it on simpler, faster chips, and in a more secure way. The projects kernel design itself is also interesting.

Jnode etc. are only superficially similar. Their aims are very different, and the result isn't really comparable. JNode is meant to run existing programs in a focused Java environment, whereas Singularity is intended to explore what OS's might do were we to start from scratch. Notably, Singularity won't run any normal current C# program which use certain non-verifiable calls.

And you never know, some aspects might even turn out to be useful - perhaps not in a new OS, but in a super-safe VM for untrusted programs? Who knows, and that's the point, it's research, not development.

Re:Stability?

[Scorillo47]

In comparison, Singularity _does_ run, but it's missing many elements from a real OS. It's like a running concept care without air conditioning, radio, airbags or emission catallytic filters. OK, maybe with missing doors and windows as well.

I guess nothing stops one to port Firefox or the entire GNU suite to Singularity ...

Re:!free

[Carrot007]

Congratulations you pointed out something that was clearly not in the summary. Thank you for a worthwhile addition to the discussion. Your mother must be proud.

wharrrt?

[russ1337]

In today's news

"Microsoft releases open source operating system"

"Mans head explodes from intense confusion after reading news article about Microsoft releasing Open Source OS"

Re:wharrrt?

[HiThere]

Not really.

To me there appears no surprise here. You can't use it except in certain carefully isolated ways. And it's hardly a complete OS.

It's no threat to MSWind. It's an attempt to keep developers from even looking at Linux. ("You want to study an OS? OK, study our toy model.") I'm not saying it's technically crippled. It may be, but I'm not going to check. It's legally crippled.

This is just another one of those things that you're safer ignoring. Did you expect more from MS?

Re:wharrrt?

[sm62704]

"Mans head explodes from intense confusion after reading news article about Microsoft releasing Open Source OS"

Minor nit: you misspelled "Asplodes". From the link:

Use By Noobs
N00bs use the term asplode as a form of 13375p33k. For example:
Non-Noob: Lol I pwnt u with a rocket launcher!
Noob: Oh teh noes!!! I am asplode!!11!eleventyone!!
Non-Noob: Wtf?

A splode: the command prompt
Micro$oft secretly enabled a splode as a DOS command. Opening the command prompt and entering C:\asplode would start a countdown which would, when finished, cause your hard drive to a splode. Entering D:\asplode made the CD drive a splode. And entering A:\asplode would would make the floppy drive a splode. If you have a B:\ drive, you can a splode it by entering B:\asplode. Usually this makes the 5.25" floppy drive a splode! If you enter this into a Linux shell, it a splodes all computers within a 5-mile radius that run Window$. If you loved your PC, you would have entered this DOS command.

(Note: drive letter may vary between PCs.)

It is unknown whether the Singularity OS incorporates this useful command, but it is assumed that a singularity asplosion would release vast quantities of something not real nice.

Re:wharrrt?

[CrazedWalrus]

Pick up the pieces, Humpty Dumpty, it's not Open Source.

Re:wharrrt?

[grayNOISEeffect]

It seems someone just took a picture of what the 'Microsoft Way' street sign looks like now.

Re:!free

[moosesocks]

Can't you look past your own ideology to see that this is actually a remarkably good thing, even if it possibly could be better.

Kurzweil was right!

[Reverend528]

The singularity is here!

Re:Kurzweil was right!

[rbanffy]

And, like every singularity, it sucks.

Software Isolated Processes

[parvenu74]

Singularity, if you'll recall, has gained wide interest from researchers and users alike, by claiming to be a fully managed code kernel (with managed code drivers and applications as well), something that would finally revolutionize the operating system research arena. The impression I got by looking at what was known about the project a year ago is that it was of lesser interest that the OS was written in managed code and it was far more interesting that they had solved some problems of inter-process communication in a micro-kernel OS. As you can read at Wikipedia:

Singularity is a microkernel operating system; however, unlike most historical microkernels, the different components do not run in separate address spaces (processes). Instead, there is only a single address space in which "Software-Isolated Processes" (SIP) reside. Each SIP has its own data and code layout, and is independent from other SIPs. These SIPs behave like normal processes, but do not require the overhead penalty of task-switches. Protection in this system is provided by a set of invariants, such as the memory-invariant which states there will be no cross-references (or memory pointers) between two SIPs. Communication between SIPs occur via higher order communication channels managed by the operating system. These rules are checked during the installation phase of the application, and must be fulfilled in order for Singularity to allow the installation (note: in Singularity, installation is managed by the operating system). The promise of Singularity, as I understood it, was the possibility of constructing an O/S kernel with all of the modularity advantages of a microkernel without all of the process communication issues typical to this kernel type.

Re:Software Isolated Processes

[downix]

Reminds me a lot of the old Amiga exec kernel in that regards.

Re:Software Isolated Processes

[parvenu74]

This sounds *really* cool actually, but I wonder if anything will ever come of it on the desktop? Perhaps in Windows 7. Like I replied on another sub-thread of this discussion, Singularity isn't intended to ever go to market. Rather it's a breeding and proving ground for advanced concepts that might find their way into the main Windows code base at some time in the future. I think it's something like the advanced technology/racing teams inside of the major car makers who create interesting ways of solving difficult problems: some of these advanced concepts (like ABS, traction control, etc) from the racing and research teams find their way into the cars we actually drive on a day to day basis.

Re:Software Isolated Processes

[EvanED]

Yes. On the other hand, it's not unthinkable that there could be a compatibility layer to the Windows API if MS were to turn around and want to use it (which they won't, at least for a very long time). Mach also presents a very different interface, but it speaks POSIX because there is a Unix subsystem.

Re:Software Isolated Processes

[smallfries]

It sounds like a very interesting project. The idea that screams out from the wiki summary is static analysis and verification. There is a really good rundown in one of the wiki links. The really big difference from previous work is not just the use of managed code, but splitting the entire system into either trusted, or verified code. The trusted component is a tiny core, which they are working on verifying. The design of the rest of the kernel and the SIPs is a good one: instead of doing arbitrary verification, change the language design so that you can only write verifiable code. Then see how much of an O/S you can write. The progress is astounding.

For the IPC they have made some strange choices, receiving is synchronous (as in process calculi) but sending is asynchronous. As they are writing the lowest level parts (such as the schedular) in this code it may be an implementation difficulty with synchronous sends. The cheapness of the IPC seems to be routed in the transfer of ownership that communication implies. In essence you can't alias, you can only pass by value - but the low-level runtime can modify this to pass more efficiently by reference because it can verify there are no dangling references. This would (if it works over a large enough code base) solve the performance issue with IPC in a microkernel. It is (as another reply pointed out) similar to providing the semantics of heavy-weight communication to the programmer in a way that can be implemented with cheap co-routines.

Having done some (well, little) work in this area I'm really impressed by what they've achieved already.

Re:Software Isolated Processes

[diabolikmachine]

The only reason this can 'solve' the problems of a micro-kernel is because of using managed code. They're using software based security for user threads, rather than the traditional hardware based security. This probably creates more overhead. The only real advantages of this is that it isn't prone to hardware based exploits, and binary drivers can be cross-platform assuming things like pci buses are abstracted from driver code in a sane way.

Re:Software Isolated Processes

[fm6]

This sounds *really* cool actually, but I wonder if anything will ever come of it on the desktop?

Absolutely not. The desktop computer market is driven by the need for backward compatibility with the huge base of existing apps. That's how Microsoft came to dominate the market in the first place.

Re:Software Isolated Processes

[benjymouse]

SIPs are actually already represented in .NET where they are called AppDomains. It is leveraged in both desktop and ASP.NET applications. In the latter an application pool is a pool of processes+threads shared by web applications. Multiple applications can share a process and its threads. When the server handles a request is does so in the context of the AddDomain. So, even though different sites/apps share process (and thus memory space) the managed .NET execution environment ensures the isolation (which is why pointers are disallowed).

Re:Software Isolated Processes

[spitzak]

"Software isolated Processes" and "managed code" are different names for the same thing, aren't they?

Re:Software Isolated Processes

[Bill Hayden]

I think you may have missed the point. The reason they are able to sidestep all of the process communications issues is precisely because it's fully managed code. Instead of a hardware memory manager making every process stay "in bounds", the compiler does the checking beforehand. Without managed code and a special compiler, this would not be possible.

This problem is that this system would never take off. "Any langauge you want, as long as it's .Net" is not going to attract the developers. Plus you have no existing base of apps to build on.

Re:Software Isolated Processes

[jjohnson]

Whether or not it takes off is an interesting question. I wouldn't be surprised to find that, in five years, Singularity is the origin of the next Windows kernel. It sounds like development has gone far enough that secondary research groups in MS could start looking at what's involved in porting the standard stable (Office, IE, mail) to it--which might just end up being reimplementations of the existing feature set.

I imagine an intermediary step would be porting the .NET libraries to Singularity; if they do that in a reasonable time, and if Singularity really does solve the basic microkernel performance problem of interprocess communication, then a lot of the work is already done.

Mainly, I would expect that a lot of people in MS are hoping to avoid another Vista death march, and looking around seriously for a whole new architecture.

Re:Software Isolated Processes

[jjohnson]

I don't know. I can see a release path:

1. Singularity is developed to the point where the core .NET libraries run on it.
2. That gives you the desktop experience and basic system management.
3. Re-implement Active Directory on it.
4. That gives you something you can deploy as a networked server co-operating in a Windows domain.
5. Re-implement IIS on it.
6. That gives you an application server on which you can deploy existing applications.
7. Sell it into the corporate server space as the replacement for Windows Server 2008.

If you get that far, you've got a profitable, marketable product, and that buys you the time to extend it back into desktop space. MS has already figured out that they have to differentiate their product lines, that "One Windows to Rule Them All" doesn't work.

Re:Software Isolated Processes

[yahyamf]

FYI, ABS originated in aircraft, and was widely used in regular street cars, before becoming popular in Formula1 and other race cars

History of ABS

Re:Software Isolated Processes

[fm6]

Did you miss the word "desktop"? Servers are a completely different marketplace. Application lock-in is less of an issue there. That's why Linux has done so well in the server space, even as desktop Linux struggles to get a foothold. There are even lots of servers using x86-incompatible processors, a class of computer that's pretty much disappeared on the desktop, even for MacOS.

Re:Software Isolated Processes

[TheNetAvenger]

The promise of Singularity, as I understood it, was the possibility of constructing an O/S kernel with all of the modularity advantages of a microkernel without all of the process communication issues typical to this kernel type.


This is underplaying its role; it is an OS slate with solid ideas that can be used to pound new OS theories through without having to deal with any lineage to prior models.

However the microkernel issues that you are referring to are ideas that Microsoft tackled 16 years ago and is a corner milestone of Windows NT. Singularity does build on these concepts, but this aspect of the OS is old theory from NT that Microsoft has also made a design aspect of Singularity.

So if you are 'now' looking for an OS technology that has microkernel modularity without the performance and communication issues, then you need to go look at Windows NT, since this is how NT was designed. (When I say Windows NT, I am talking about the core kernel architecture that sits under Win32/Win64 etc.)

NT is not classified as a true microkernel, and is best described as a hybrid kernel or a client/server kernel due to the layered kernel API isolation that doesn't have monolithic multi-tasking issues and doesn't have the overhead of a true microkernel due to the light and layered kernel API.

I'm surprised that people with some interest in OSes to this day don't realize simple concepts like this about NT. You can argue than the Win32 subsystem sucks, blah, blah, but very few, if any OS engineers or theorist would make fun of the NT kernel/architecture itself.

NT for its time was the best of theory that currently existed in 1992, Singularity is Microsoft's Research team throwing out new OS theory ideas for the entire industry, and unlike NT, you can learn from what they are working on, read the code, and even be inspired to develop your own OS based on their theories and concepts. With NT, Microsoft only presented the concepts of what NT was doing and how it implemented concepts and theories, especially the hybrid kernel concept, but beyond this, we never got to the actual code, so Singularity is a nice move for Microsoft to enrich the entire computing world, even if you can't take the code line by line and redistribute it.

Re:Software Isolated Processes

[Spy Hunter]

It's unlikely that anything significant from Singularity could make it into Windows 7, more's the pity. The important parts of Singularity rely on the "software isolated process" concept, but you can't run C++ in a software isolated process because you have to be able to guarantee memory safety. IMHO what Microsoft needs to do for Windows 8 is turn Singularity into a hypervisor running legacy Windows in virtualization. The unsafe and bloated C/C++ legacy of Windows could be contained inside the VM and Microsoft would be finally free from the shackles of maintaining compatibility all the way back to Windows 3.

Since Microsoft owns Windows and would be designing Singularity specifically for virtualization of Windows, they could do plenty of user-friendly integration between virtualized and native applications; much better than what Parallels can now achieve. The virtualization could also support legacy device drivers and have very little performance overhead. Near-perfect compatibility could be provided in the VM for eternity with little effort, while new development (both inside Microsoft and elsewhere) could move to the modern Singularity environment over a period of tens of years, with incentives provided by new libraries and development tools not available in legacy Windows.

Re:Software Isolated Processes

[LizardKing]

Good points, and it's worth noting that NT was a new kernel with the Win16 and Win32 APIs on top (the former running in an emulation of DOS).

Re:Software Isolated Processes

[master_p]

The other solution for the problems of microkernels which no one looks for is to add in-process modules to CPUs. It's a very cheap solution, the only thing required is to add a map of addresses to modules and the relevant cache (the flat address space need not be sacrificed). I don't understand why it is ignored by CPU designers...

Re:Software Isolated Processes

[smallfries]

It's not. If I understand what you mean properly then you're describing Sun's approach right through to the Niagra.

Re:Software Isolated Processes

[master_p]

No, I am talking about something simple (and it's amazing people don't understand it!): in order to separate a flat address space to modules that can not touch each other unless the O/S allows it, put a module index in the page descriptor and a module table describing each module's access (by other modules) rights...then one module can't access another module, and the flat address space is not sacrificed.

A 32 bit page descriptor has 20 bits for the page frame, 1 bit for the page-present/non-present information, and 11 bits for anything else. 11 bits is enough to store an 11-bit index, i.e. a number from 0 to 2047. 2048 modules per process are more than enough.

When a program tries to access memory, the CPU checks the module id of the destination page against the module id of the current page. If the module id is the same, nothing happens. Otherwise, it checks the destination module access bits and raises an exception if the specific access (read, write, execute) is not allowed.

A module descriptor can be 4 bits: 3 bits for read/write/execute access, 1 bit custom data. The whole table of 2048 entries takes only 1024 bytes and can be cached fully into the CPU.

Finally, in order to protect from wild jumps, a special jump destination instruction should be the first instruction allowed after a jump. This prevents jumps into the middle of public subroutines.

It's simple, it's efficient, it requires very little electronics, it can be implemented very easily by the CPU designers, it takes 0 time to perform the checks, and it will protect each module from another module.

Different pages can belong to the same module; for example, the video driver can have its code at page FF0000 and can be the only module to access the video ram at address range AA0000 - BB0000.

The module with id = 0 can be the kernel module, i.e. it has access to everything else.

Re:Software Isolated Processes

[smallfries]

That's much more simple that what I thought you meant. It's a really nice idea, never come across anyone proposing it before but it would software a hell of a lot more robust. You should really spend some time pushing this scheme onto the right people because it would be a great deal for software reliability.

Re:Software Isolated Processes

[master_p]

Thanks. Who are the right people and how do I contact them?

It's open source because...

[Gabest]

... they couldn't make it closed. Being written in a managed language means it's easily reversable.

Re:It's open source because...

[tehshen]

Is there a difference between "managed code" and "interpreted code"? They seem like two words for the same thing.

Re:It's open source because...

[Ctrl-Z]

Have you ever seen an obfuscator? Run your code through one of those and see how easily reversible it is.

Re:It's open source because...

[insomniac8400]

Not true: http://acmascis.net/bloggers/haytham/2008/02/code-protector-stop-net.html

Re:It's open source because...

[nuzak]

Unless you burn it into silicon, technically everything's interpreted.

Dr Von Neumann, please pick up line 1.

Re:It's open source because...

[ushering05401]

IIRC last Fall's 2600 had a basic intro to reversing obfuscated code (using Java example I think).

There are several websites out there that deobfuscate code in realtime to advertise their services... if I was actually interested in the issue I might still have a link, but you will have to google if you want to research this further.

The basic Visual Studio toolset has everything you need to reverse any managed code manually, obfuscated or not, providing you are willing to put in the time.

Anyhow, C# currently pays for my meals, so I'm not trolling here... but be careful about making assumptions about the privacy of any managed code that you release. Hell, same goes for any code, the 'managed' aspect just lower the bar for crackers a bit.

Re:It's open source because...

[clintp]

Is there a difference between "managed code" and "interpreted code"? They seem like two words for the same thing.

IANA Microsoft Language Lawyer, but this is what I think the distinctions are:

Managed Code is code intended for a virtual machine (like MS's CLR or Sun's JVM) that abstracts the hardware instructions away. Instead, the instruction set for the virtual machine is used. The Virtual Machine will provide "devices" and "memory" in a (hopefully) safe and portable way and take care of all of the dirty hardware business itself. Some VM's will actually take the VM instruction and turn it into actual hardware instructions as it's being executed (JIT) for speed, but that's not necessary.

Which isn't to say that Managed Code is a new thing: The USCD-Pascal p-code machine is remembered fondly by many, and the Zork games ran on a Z-Machine.

Interpreted code is a little stickier because it's been around a lot longer and has picked up some additional meanings. It can mean anything from the "Managed Code" described above to parsing (and possibly re-parsing) text lines of BASIC as they're run to process them in a giant state machine which "runs" the program.

Usually, interpreted code implies that there's no abstracted fully virtual machine underneath running the code, but possibly just a big jump-table pointing at native assembly-language (hand-coded or compiled) routines. Perl and Microsoft BASIC (basis of many of the old 8-bit BASICs) are two examples of interpreted code.

Re:It's open source because...

[Johnno74]

Bollox.

Firstly, they didn't have to release it at all, even in binary format. And there would be very little point in them releasing it in binary, because there isn't much you can do with it.

Secondly, if you FTFA you'll see they wrote their own C# compiler, in C#, which compiles directly to native code, no CIL.

Thirdly, even if they were releasing CIL images, if you decompile them yes you do get fairly close to the original code, but you lose variable names and comments. If they ran the binaries through an obscurfator first then the decompiled code is very different from the original as well.

Re:!free

[Brian Gordon]

I completely agree. So what if you can't actually modify the code and use it for commerical purposes, the source is open and it's a great educational tool.

Quick, Slashdot!

[Goaway]

Spin this into something bad! Your honour is on the line!

Re:!free

[Marcion]

Indeed. Non-commercial is not "open source" or free software. It has to be free to use for any purpose, commercial or non-commercial. If you can't resell it then it is not open source or free software,

Re:!free

[Smackheid]

Forget the ideology. What I want to know is, has anybody here installed it/used it and what are their opinions?

NOT open source

[john-da-luthrun]

The licence only allows non-commercial use, and therefore does not meet the requirements of the Open Source Definition.

Given MS's propensity for muddying (or FUDdying?) the waters as regards open-source/free software (with terminology like "shared source"), a site like /. really shouldn't be doing their work for them...

Advertise

[William Robinson]

Singularity, if you'll recall, has gained wide interest from researchers and users alike, by claiming to be a fully managed code kernel

Yeah...Rare kind of advertisement...The question is, will it work on slashdotters?

Why are people excited about this?

[Compholio]

... claiming to be a fully managed code kernel (with managed code drivers and applications as well) ...

Someone please explain to me why someone would want this. I've been programming for the past 14 years now and every time someone comes up with a new abstraction layer to "reduce bugs" it's been total BS. Sure, some of these layers have made things easier or faster to code but they have not reduced bugs and they have definitely made applications built with them run a hell of a lot slower. There are always bugs, and there will always be bugs unless there is careful and tedious checking by a lot of programmers. So, I ask you - why on earth would someone want to run their entire kernel like this?

Re:Why are people excited about this?

[garett_spencley]

I'm not an expert on the subject, and everything I know I read just this morning (I hadn't even heard of Singularity before this slashdot article), but it appears as if everything runs inside of a SIP (software isolation process) which runs in ring 0 of the kernel's address space. Thus the creation of SIPs is extremely cheap, even less overhead than hardware enforced protection domains.

You're right, this will not eliminate bugs. But it will prevent applications from "stepping on each other's toes". SIPs can not modify their own code or write to other SIP's address space. I don't see this as so much of an abstraction layer as just a different way for the kernel to manage processes and address space.

Besides, every kernel implements abstraction layers anyway. Heck, you could even consider the kernel to be one big abstraction layer to the hardware. So abstraction layer does not always equate to "more overhead". And this isn't an abstraction layer on top of an existing high-level system. This is an entirely new kernel that implements processes and memory management in a completely different way.

Re:Why are people excited about this?

[sm62704]

There are always bugs, and there will always be bugs unless there is careful and tedious checking by a lot of programmers.

Every program should have careful and tedious checking by a lot of programmers. This is where open source really shines, and is a large reason why open source OSes and apps are so much more secure than closed source.

Instead, the way most commercial software is written it appears that the code is given a cursory glance, run ("tested") by a few people, shoveled out the door for other people to run and betatest, and then shoveled in to store shelves to annoy and frustrate users.

Re:Why are people excited about this?

[mypalmike]

Why all the angst? Singularity is an OS with a process isolation model based on software verification rather than allowing the loading of arbitrary code and using hardware to enforce process separation. It rules out certain things like code generation and shared memory, but by imposing these specific limitations, it can enforce process isolation more efficiently than the standard hardware-based approach. Where's this awful, slow abstraction layer you're complaining about?

Re:Why are people excited about this?

[Allador]

No one wants this to run in the real world. Thats not what its for.

It's a research project. It's there to test and prove some new ideas in operating systems.

My guess is that they used a .net language variant (C#/Spec#/Sing#) due to productivity gains possible. Also, the Spec#/Sing#, at least as I understand it, provides a great deal of language level contracts, verifiability, and provability.

Again, for a research project, that stuff is important.

To your more general point ... people go to new runtimes/languages/platforms because of the tradeoffs. What is commonly called 'managed code' helps to eliminate several entire classes of bugs, but also has a cost. The common cost is in performance, or at least potential performance.

For certain types of projects, having a platform that allows contracts as first-class-citizens, and is more inherently verifiable, or provable, can be quite nice. Other types of projects do better with a looser language, like a modern scripting language, Python or Ruby, etc.

Re:Why are people excited about this?

[HermMunster]

There are other true open kernels besides this one. The kernels of other OSes are available for people to learn from. How does Microsoft releasing an "opened" source code kernel impact the learning of the few thousands that could potentially learn from it? First, you have the kernels of the BEOS, BSD, Linux, etc. There are many other worthy kernels that others can learn from. Since this really isn't of much use other than to look at those involved in learning kernel programming would be better served by learning the kernel of Linux instead. As Linus T. said, the concepts of kernel development have been fleshed out 40+ years ago.

So one must ask the real motivation behind this. I suspect it is moreover an attempt to muddy the waters regarding long standing definitions to terms as a single battle in a greater war than it is a research project. Yes, it may have begun as a true research project internally in Microsoft, but later became a dead end and they decided to toss it out to taint and muddy.

But the good news is that we have supporters of the terms that have been in use for a long time and are well established. As well, no one except a company decidedly focused on killing "open source" (where they made public statements that they would kill open source) and is a convicted monopolist, has challenged that definition.

Those that created the concept get to define it. People can challenge it all they want but the OSI definition is really the only true definition. Come up with a definition of the term established before the OSI definition (which really has never been challenged in many years of use). I'd suspect there isn't one. To date theirs is the only definition and it really has not been challenged. Let's not perpetuate this logic that flies in the face of reason.

Re:Why are people excited about this?

[shutdown -p now]

With verifiable managed code (i.e. the one that doesn't use pointers and such), it is possible to statically prove that it will never access the address space of another process. Once you've done that, you don't need to isolate such processes from each other. This property is already used in .NET with something that MS has called "AppDomains", which allow you to isolate different parts of a single managed process from each other. I would imagine that it can also be useful in a kernel.

Re:Why are people excited about this?

[owlstead]

Drivers that cannot cripple other drivers do sound very interesting to me. Total BS? Have you even looked at the number of bugs that are there because of buffer overruns?

They've also solved a large part of inter process communication. Something you really don't want to do with pipes or (yuk!) sockets.

Your argument does simply not hold water. The less bugs you have to check, the better. I've seen an array implementation that was programmed by a very experienced programmer. 4 guys which I would call very *very* knowledgeable had a good look at it. Last month we found another big overrun.

Such a thing would never happen within a managed environment.

Besides that, their whole method of handling threads and processes hinges on the fact that the inter process communication is free of side effects, something that is not possible without managed code. it also discusses why their method is much faster than the standard way of e.g. handling memory the normal way. So what slowdowns were you talking about?

Re:Why are people excited about this?

[Jaime2]

It won't reduce actual "business domain" bugs, but it can drastically reduce blatent programmer screwups like forgetting to deallocate memory or using memory after it has been deallocated. It turns out that most of the security vulnerabilities in the wild aren't cases where someone forgot to enforce a rule, but they simply screwed up coding the thing.

As for your comment about performance -- Not all managed implementations of everything are slower than native implementations. Read the article to see that they did manage to make some features of Singularity faster than current operating systems. Speed wasn't even one of their design goals and they still got decent results.

Twenty years from now, no operating systems will allow arbirtary code to load and run without that code first describing what kind of interactions it is going to want to have with the outside world. Microsft simply wants to test the waters and see what the challenges will be when that day comes.

Re:Why are people excited about this?

[dido]

The idea is not new, nor originated by Microsoft. It was actually pioneered by Ken Thompson and company at Bell Labs when they designed Inferno. Like Singularity it too is a "managed code" OS, but with Plan 9 as its base. User applications under Inferno are generally not run as native code, but as bytecode executing under the Dis Virtual Machine, because all native code runs with kernel privileges. This was done mainly to allow Inferno to run under embedded microprocessors that may not have many of the hardware features that OS designers have come to expect, with all memory protection, process scheduling, and the like provided in software by the Dis virtual machine which is at the heart of the Inferno kernel. Perhaps Singularity is intended to be a similar OS, geared mainly for the embedded market.

Re:Why are people excited about this?

[HermMunster]

I know exactly what I'm talking about. I know Microsoft's history and know their motivation to not release any development code. If this had any hope other than say prototyping something which in the end helps no one, then they'd have kept it for themselves.

Microsoft is an organization that is after profit from closed software. We can't get them to even release the API of DirectX, so why would they want to release this unless they had some other motivation.

Again, this has been chopped up by many in this thread showing that these concepts are not new though they may be newly implemented by Microsoft.

Considering their prior behavior and the obvious motivations one must constantly be vigalent against anything that could possibly taint. It is best to be safe than sorry when it comes to dealing with Microsoft.

Remember Microsoft is the company that states that Linux infringes 235 patents but refuses to say which ones and they do so in a way as to create FUD, which generally only affects business and developers. It is not a far stretch to say that they are simply using this as a way to muddy the waters to attempt to redefine what open source is so that they can take ownership of the term and redirect businesses focus onto their endeavors.

So, some crap kernel is released that demos some obvious but more modern concepts. The product wasn't going anywhere and won't help anyone. The concepts of kernel development were fleshed out years and years ago. This is no benefit as a product to Microsoft. There are other products that have failed or are no longer feasible so why release this? Why not release the other stuff as well.

People shouldn't care about this product. It is a dead end, as has been demonstrated by their own decision to release it. Yet, we must also acknowledge that is has hopes of being used for some other purpose and academia is not it, not fully and not truthfully..

So, unless you can say more than I have no idea what I'm talking about maybe you should self-reflect.

Re:It's a microkernel

[moderatorrater]

The name appears to indicate some level of suckiness. On the contrary, it indicates that the awesomeness of this kernel has grown so much that it's reached critical mass and now become a singularity.

Oh wow!

[AKAImBatman]

Managed code! Look at that! Microsoft has managed to prove...

What OSS developers already proved years ago. :-/

Actually, I'm still pretty happy about this. Regardless of whether Microsoft was first or not, they're going to manage to market the concept far better than a conglomeration of OSS developers ever could. (Sorry, guys!) If everything goes well, perhaps the public impression of managed code being "nothing but an interpreter" can finally get turned around and Computer Science can keep moving forward. :-)

Re:Oh wow!

[VGPowerlord]

JNode's own site mentions Singularity two and a quarter years ago. Singularity is not new.

I love the name

[sm62704]

However, considering that Vista has become something of a "black hole" for them, I think they were a little late with the "singularity" moniker. Is the next Windows going to be called "Event Horizon?"

That black hole has surely sucked in a few dollars of mine, and sucked in a lot of little companies that were pulled apart by Microsoft's huge gravity well.

-mcgrew
(Apologies for the lack of journals lately)

Re:I love the name

[nategoose]

It'd be a more appropriate name if it was a monolithic kernel.

Re:I love the name

[BotnetZombie]

Just don't make fun of its dark matter. The dark energy will suck the life out of you...

Re:I love the name

[rbanffy]

Singularity happened when the original Longhorn codebase got so extense, so massive, so mind-boggingly big, unimaginably huge, truly, really and absolutely humongous, it collapsed into its gravity well.

It became a very small, but incredibly dense OS. It really serves no useful purpose besides the promise of being the perfect embedded OS for write-only storage devices.

In the meantime, the survivors had to start Vista from scratch and this catastrophic event is what really delayed Vista's launch date. All the fancy features shown in 2003 were carefully removed as not to provoke another collapse of the codebase.

What?

[Robber Baron]

Singularity? Did Ballmer finally disappear up his own ass and create one?

Re:What?

[RiotingPacifist]

Even a chair thrown at c couldn't escape.

Mod parent up, is not troll

[john-da-luthrun]

A non-commercial, academic license is not "open source". Parent makes a perfectly legitimate point.

Re:Mod parent up, is not troll

[MagicBox]

Open source is a set of principles and practices on how to write software, the most important of which is that the source code is openly available
------


Project Description

The Singularity Research Development Kit (RDK) is based on the Microsoft Research Singularity project. It includes source code, build tools, test suites, design notes, and other background materials.

The academic/non-comercial use may have to do with the stage at which the software is at this point, not with the "final destination" of the software.

Re:Mod parent up, is not troll

[RingDev]

Open source is a set of principles and practices on how to write software Close, but not quite. Open source just defines that the code is available. Open Source on the other hand, is a proper noun that refers to the set of principles and practices you are talking about.

-Rick

Re:Mod parent up, is not troll

[HermMunster]

Because of the fact that Microsoft stated last year that they were going to kill open source. Following this was the fact that they attempted to redefine with Open Source meant in hopes of confusing business and taking over the concept for themselves. If they get Business believing that their use of the term is the proper one then busienss will believe in Microsoft's and the true open source will be obfuscated. Not only that, there are other Kernels with the appropriate source code that these individuals can look at and learn from. The Linux is just one of them. BEOS? BSD? Others? So, to introduce their training kernel is sort of crazy.

Linus Torvald already dumped on Microsoft's kernel model a couple of months ago. He essentially stated in the past that the concepts regarding kernel development had been sufficiently fleshed out and defined 40+ years ago. He also stated that Microsoft's implementation was insufficient and monolithic in that it tied developers to multiple APIs (as each one is modified down the road you have to retain the old API too or you break lots of things from 3rd party developers).

What is being said here is that their offering is meaningless. It is an attempt to do nothing more than to get people looking at their code for reasons not entirely obvious to everyone today. I'm saying that there are other Kernel source code projects that are tight and secure that these individuals could learn from instead of potentially putting themselves into the "Microsoft" mode of development.

We don't want a company known to threaten others associated with Open source because their offerings could do nothing but taint the waters.

Re:Mod parent up, is not troll

[drsmithy]

Linus Torvald already dumped on Microsoft's kernel model a couple of months ago.

While it is indisputable that Linus is a good programmer, one has to take any of his comments on new designs with a grain of salt, given that his main claim to fame is reimplementing other people's ideas.

Linus is not an authority on OS design, especially the field of new OS design, and even more so when talking about anything that isn't like UNIX.

Re:Mod parent up, is not troll

[Russ Nelson]

Do you think that if you repeat nonsense enough, it will become true? Try claiming that microsoft doesn't mean the same thing as Microsoft. Good luck convincing a judge of that. "But your honor, I was just referring to small software! A Redmond-based corporation cannot take two words like "micro" and "soft" out of the language just because they use them in conjunction".

Sheesh. And to think ... you probably get to vote. It turns the stomach.

Re:Mod parent up, is not troll

[andreyw]

Ah. So another guy said something and you're talking it for the holy writ. Let me guess - you know next to nothing about OS and kernel internals, right?

David Cutler was responsible for DEC RSX-11M, DEC VMS and Windows NT. He designed and wrote 3 operating systems, not just cloned an existing one. Now, that doesn't make him necessarily the lead-all authority on the subject matter, but Linus is pretty much talking out of his ass.

Now, keep in mind that all the lead kernel hackers out there like to talk out of their ass and are incredibly full of it - it doesn't really matter if it's Theo, Linus or David. If you were to put all of them (add DJB to the bunch as well.. for kicks), the world would probably explode from their egos colliding. Their intelligence doesn't say much about their social skills, and you would be an idiot to take everything any one person says to be the absolute truth.

The problem with debating with people like you is that you know next to nothing, but are very zealous, idealistic and fervent... and are very open to other peoples' and organization's FUD, which they too spread for their own nefarious goals. The FSF there isn't much different from other companies and organizations in that regard.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:!free

[C3c6e6]

I'm sorry but if you can't modify the code and redistribute it yourself, then I don't consider the source to be open. Still, I agree, it could be useful as an educational tool.

Re:!free

[pak9rabid]

open source = source code is made available
free software = source code is not only made available, but you are free to use that source however you wish, assuming you abide by the guidelines presented in the free software license, assuming there are any

Open Source != GPL

[RingDev]

Definitions of open-source on the Web:

        * Of or relating to source code (eg, computer code) that is available to the public.
            plan2005.cancer.gov/glossary.html

        * of or relating to or being computer software for which the source code is freely available
            wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn It is Open Source. It is not public domain, GPL, CC, or under any usable license.

All Open Source means is that the source is open. We want Dibold to Open Source their black boxes, not so that we can change the code and sell it, but so that we can review it and audit it.

Re:!free

[cube135]

Read the license. You can. You just can't use it in a production environment.

Re:It's a microkernel

[jim.hansson]

so by adding bloat to my applications i can make them zip them self

Re:!free

[Azarael]

That's also fine, until Microsoft decides to go after you once you've reviewed the source, but happen to work on a parallel product, say Linux. This may be a cynical analysis, but the fact remains that this could be a trap, and slashdot previously covered similar problems with the source code releases of XP to Gov't, etc staff.

All I want to know is ...

[garett_spencley]

will it run Linux ?

Re:All I want to know is ...

[nonsequitor]

will it run Linux ?

No. Beyond the event horizon of the singularity, Linux runs You!

Re:All I want to know is ...

[Saint Gerbil]

it cant run much so probably not.

the open source definition, right here:

[erlehmann]

http://opensource.org/docs/osd

also, STFU when you clearly have no clue.

Re:!free

[encoderer]

no.

there is a thing called the open source definition

[erlehmann]

http://opensource.org/docs/osd

also, repost is repost

Re:!free

[peragrin]

your right. Now compare Minix and Linux. One has a license for you too look at the source code and the other one allows you to actually use the source code and ideas in it.

It's not Open Source until you can use it. BSD, MIT, Apache, GPL, allow you to actually use the code.

Re:!free

[pembo13]

In your opinion (I haven't formed one myself yet) how is this a "remarkably good thing" ?

No, it really is !free

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you meant:
shared source = source code is made available

Re:No, it really is !free

[A.K.A_Magnet]

Grandparent didn't mean anything. Grandparent is the kind of poster who does not know what he is talking about. Maybe he is a politician IRL. As a matter of fact, I think a lot of Slashdotters are in politics or would be great at it, considering how they talk non-sense with the utmost ease.

Re:No, it really is !free

[pak9rabid]

shared source = source code is made available No, shared source is Microsoft's highly-restrictive framework for sharing source code.

Re:NOT Open Source

[A.K.A_Magnet]

Fuck off. I'm really tired of you OSS fascists. You don't have a clue, you can't actually comment on the news because Singularity is so over your head, yet you're the loudest idiots on slashdot. OMG OPENSORS FTW!!! Idiots.

Actually working in CS research in a related field, I do have a pretty good idea of what Singularity is, how it works and how nice it is. It doesn't make it Free/Open Source by any mean and so the headline is misleading.
I know very well that Microsoft Research and Microsoft are very loosely-coupled, however the article was submitted by a Microsoft proponent (judging by his account history) which "has signed an NDA with Microsoft" and one can very well see how this benefits to Microsoft (they're working hard to make everyone think they do "Open Source" too with their SharedSource initiatives and such -- btw they do have a few projects under true F/OSS licenses afaik).

Microsoft (as well as other proprietary software companies) is (and has been) very interested in spreading FUD regarding Open Source (such as "if the source is available then it must be Open Source", obviously using a flaw opened by the Open Source Initiative which put the emphasis on the openness of the code rather than on its freedom from the start), and with such an headline on a site such as Slashdot (ie, where a lot people go but don't browse further than the main page) I'm sure to take a coffee next week with someone who will tell me about Singularity now being Open Source... Is that your definition of "news"?

Singularity is a great research project but it's not Free/Open Source by any means. So grand-parent is right (as are others), and you are just as much as a fascist than the F/OSS zealots you criticize since your critics are based on them being OSS fascist and not on the facts being right or wrong. Let's call a cat a cat. Open Source is a well-defined term (just like "Windows-compatible" and nobody would like to see the Wine project tout itself of that feat unless it's 100% true), so let's respect it.

It's a nice system. Is this abandonment?

[Animats]

Very nice. It's sad, though, that Microsoft is making it available as open source, because that means it's not going to become a Microsoft product.

Singularity is an interesting system. Most of the individual ideas aren't new, but the combination of them is well chosen. It's a message passing microkernel, like VM and QNX, the OSs that actually work reliably. The storage management and of enforcement of process separation at compile time comes from the ALGOL compiler for the Burroughs 5500, circa 1960, for example. They recognized the problem of interaction between interprocess communication and the scheduler and dealt with it; QNX probably has a better solution, but the one in Singularity is OK. Singularity tries a bit too hard to avoid interprocess copying; so did Mach, and it made things worse.

There's a reasonable design-by-contract language. The language knows about marshalling for interprocess communication, which encourages its use. That's borrowed from Mesa. In most languages, a subroutine call is much easier to code than an interprocess call, which encourages bloat of individual processes.

Drivers aren't in the kernel and aren't trusted, although drivers that can do DMA still present a security problem. This is a problem with insecure PC hardware; IBM mainframe channels have DMA that goes through MMU checking. That could be fixed, especially since most new peripherals are on USB or FireWire ports. Add-on boards are on the way out.

Makes me wish I was still doing OS R&D.

Re:It's a nice system. Is this abandonment?

[abigor]

Would you happen to know how Singularity does multiprocessing? Does it support threads, or does it use some sort of tuplespace thing, or message passing like Erlang?

Threads are the source of so much pain that an os that supports some other model for multiprocessing (from the ground up rather than as a library) seems way overdue. Since the various Singularity "processes" run in the same actual process space, a shared memory model for multiprocessing seems like it would be practical and very fast.

Re:It's a nice system. Is this abandonment?

[Animats]

Would you happen to know how Singularity does multiprocessing?

RTFM.

Re:It's a nice system. Is this abandonment?

[WittyName]

interprocess - what is this about? You can run the whole thing in one context.
So all calls can be local. Yes, thier latest stuff can force hardware context boundaries, but with a language that is checked (checked asm, too) that is not much of a plus. They demonstrated hardware enforced boundaries are MUCH slower than SIP's, AKA software enforced boandaries.

The kernel is tiny, hard to call it a kernel in todays nomenclature.
Not trusted? They are in managed code. You don't follow the contract, you can not link to it.. Don't like the contract, well - open source, change it..
If you don't trust your own code, with a bunch of language supported contract enforcement, zero race conditions (one owner for each object), type safety, then, well pay somebody else..

Not sure why you perceive DMA as a problem. Data is data, code is checked, etc.
You CAN NOT load arbitrary code in this OS. There is ZERO support for add-ins.
Follow the contract, or no compile.

Other than logic bugs, it is hard to see how it could NOT be secure.

Re:It's a nice system. Is this abandonment?

[renoX]

[[Drivers aren't in the kernel and aren't trusted, although drivers that can do DMA still present a security problem. This is a problem with insecure PC hardware; IBM mainframe channels have DMA that goes through MMU checking. That could be fixed, especially since most new peripherals are on USB or FireWire ports. Add-on boards are on the way out.]]

Well given that one recently disclosed vulnerability[1] is caused by FireWire which can access all the memory (the report is for Windows but as far as I understand, there's the same issue for Linux, MacOSX..), I don't think that FireWire solve the 'DMA hole'.

[1]:
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/03/04/1258210

Re:It's a nice system. Is this abandonment?

[cnettel]

Threads are the source of so much pain[....]a shared memory model for multiprocessing seems like it would be practical and very fast.
I know about such a model - threading.

Re:It's a nice system. Is this abandonment?

[alan_dershowitz]

Just because they offer the source code under a noncommercial license does not preclude them from offering a commercial product based on that kernel. Microsoft is a smart company when it comes to making money, and if they think it will help and not hurt them to have their kernel open source, they will do it. Tons of people on Slashdot say this all the time, that to truly understand the system you need to have the source, and that there is not really a business downside to making it available. I believe this is true IF the source is basically good. The Windows source code is probably a liability because, from all accounts I've heard, the code is pretty embarrassing. I could definitely see Microsoft writing a next-gen kernel from scratch, commercializing it, and open sourcing it to keep developers happy.

Re:It's a nice system. Is this abandonment?

[abigor]

Haha, yes, but it's not a very good model at all, really. I was actually referring to tuplespaces or an Erlang-like thing. There's a reason why Erlang doesn't use threads, and yet is also the most stable language environment there is.

I refer you to this IEEE article: http://www.computer.org/portal/site/computer/menuitem.5d61c1d591162e4b0ef1bd108bcd45f3/index.jsp?&pName=computer_level1_article&TheCat=1005&path=computer/homepage/0506&file=cover.xml&xsl=article.xsl&;jsessionid=HTWQvFsBn0gtqDQ3qVPNjzgwTkN18fKLvrhlJk02snyhs53jvx2C!935834109

Re:It's a nice system. Is this abandonment?

[abigor]

Okay, point taken, and yes, I read the stuff about message-passing and channels and so forth, but it wasn't clear to me if this was intended for a truly parallel system or not. I guess so, since in my (brief) overview, I saw no mention of threads. I just wonder how a given app would synchronise its processes - an OS-based asynch event system? Tuplespace? There must be OS primitives to support this. Anyway, pretty interesting stuff for sure.

Re:It's a nice system. Is this abandonment?

[ralphbecket]

Singularity runs as a collection of Software Isolated Processes (SIPs) that (normally) run in a single address space. Each SIP appears to the kernel as a thread. SIPs can have multiple threads. SIPs can provide their own memory management and thread management. SIPs communicate through a shared-memory message passing interface where precisely one SIP has ownership of a shared memory block at any given time.

Re:It's a nice system. Is this abandonment?

[abigor]

Singularity runs as a collection of Software Isolated Processes (SIPs) that (normally) run in a single address space. Each SIP appears to the kernel as a thread. SIPs can have multiple threads. SIPs can provide their own memory management and thread management. SIPs communicate through a shared-memory message passing interface where precisely one SIP has ownership of a shared memory block at any given time. Right, so it supports both threads and a tuplespace-type mechanism (by the sounds of things) - interesting. Thanks very much for that explanation, I appreciate it.

Re:It's a microkernel

[erlehmann]

awesomeness ? the name merely implies that it probably sucks in epic proportions.

Re:!free

[Hatta]

It's not an ideological point, it's a practical one. Why should anyone spend any time learning and working with this tool if their efforts cannot be used commercially? It's not a bad thing that they allow people to look at their source, but it's hardly a "remarkably good thing" either.

Does this mean Microsoft is abandoning Singularity

[presidenteloco]

because it is too good and would make their current stuff look like ****?

Seriously, I guess this means it isn't in their mainstream OS roadmap,
which seems like bad news for those who would hope M$ might eventually
produce and sell a simple, safe, easy to use non-strongbad product.

Open Source != open source

[ShatteredArm]

It's kinda one of those things where a term with a very obvious semantic meaning was hijacked, politicized, and became something entirely different. It may have been the case that at one point, before all the lawyering or whatever, availability of source code actually meant you could do whatever you want with it. Thus, "open source" implied free use, redistribution, etc. And clearly, people who support Open Source support those ideals, even if open source code does not necessarily imply that anymore.

It's kinda like Democratic vs. democratic. One is a political party with lobbyists, fake politicians, etc., and the other is a type of system where the people make the decisions.

Re:Open Source != open source

[Machtyn]

I wouldn't say they are fake politicians... they are politicians. It just happens that politicians are also fake.

look into the actual definition at OSI's:

[erlehmann]

http://opensource.org/docs/osd

disclaimer: repost is repost

Re:look into the actual definition at OSI's:

[Allador]

And as others have posted several times so far in response to you and this same silly meme: a non-profit group based in california doesnt 'own' the two words used together: 'open source'.

It's a descriptive phrase that has perfectly valid and understandable meaning without your religious overtones.

Let me repeat it again, so that its clear: OSI does not own, copyright, or have the trademark to the phrase 'open source'. In addition, that group is not in a position to unilaterally re-define what those two words mean for the entire human race, and thereby trump all other definitions.

If you cannot tell the difference between a descriptive phrase like 'open source' and a voluntary label used by a california non-profit that people can use as a marker that a software's LICENSE meets a certain agreed upon criteria ... then you probably shouldnt be commenting on it. Particularly not in such a self-righteous tone.

Re:look into the actual definition at OSI's:

[HermMunster]

What it actually means is that the term has been used for a very long time, and in being so, has a well established meaning. It is so established that the term "open source" has been written down in order to better establish for others precisely what it means. This is not the only organization that essentially supports their definition. In fact, up till your posts (and it is your posts that have been repeatedly made in this thread) the true ownership of the term and its meaning even by opensource.org has not been challenged. So, for years this definition has stood without challenge and today we have you attempting to help Microsoft redefine the true meaning of the word.

I think I'll take the opensource.org definition of the term over you and over Microsoft (which has a long history of "embrace, estend, extinguish"), and of being a convicted monopolist. To top that off, if anyone from any other organization that has been involved in "open source" were to give a better definition we could examine and debate its true meaning. But as we well know that Open Source is not a new term, and this term and definition has been accepted for years, and no other entity has attempted to supplant the definition of the term (except for the company that claims they are going to kill open source and has a history of "embrace, extend, extinguish", and is a convicted monopolist) one can only conclude that upon reflection the term as it is defined by the opensource.org is the only correct (and true) definition.

You are saying you can come in and redefine a term that has long been established and defined. There is little to no evidence that anyone else has challenged that opensource.org term definition.

NOT Open Source

[John Hasler]

This is not open source. It's just another "you can play with it but don't you dare do anything real" license.

Re:!free

[Smackheid]

Don't be lame.

You ever think that maybe I don't exactly have a lot of room for an extra OS partition due to all the porn on my HD?

Seriously, some of us have actual jobs and don't have oodles of time in mom's basement to wank around with stuff like this.

free is important to have more OS devs

[emj]

Everything you do on this project, whether just asking a question on a forum or posting a small patch will give MS more momentum, and takes away the same momentum from true free software. So you are not only giving your time away for free, you are also adding value too a commercial research project.

I'm sure alot of people will be very excited about this, I mean almost everything is done in c#. Looking at the build instructions it goes something like this:

• compile C#
  
• convert C# into x86 binaries
  
• dump headers for C++ and assembler
  
• make a 16/32 bit bootstrap
  
• boot
  

That looks sweet to me, and it would be perfect if you want to develop an operating system without doing bit masking on stuff from a obscure bus.

Re:free is important to have more OS devs

[nuzak]

Everything you do on this project, whether just asking a question on a forum or posting a small patch will give MS more momentum, and takes away the same momentum from true free software. So you are not only giving your time away for free, you are also adding value too a commercial research project.

Microsoft finally innovates something, and this is the response.

Of course people who are actually interested don't much care for your tribalist attitude. Hey maybe in 20 more years the open source world can reinvent another Unix.

Re:free is important to have more OS devs

[deanlandolt]

Hey maybe in 20 more years the open source world can reinvent another Unix. Perhaps by that time, Microsoft will have finally finished theirs...poorly...

Microsoft hate

[electrosoccertux]

I'm afraid stuff like this is reducing my hate of MS. For several reasons, I am finding MS products less and less frustrating.

1). Open sourcing weird stuff like this.
2). Silverlight is pretty good.
3). I disabled UAC in Vista. Now Vista is just like XP, but it has a prettier (albeit inconsistent at times) UI.
4). Realizing that as much as I may like free as in freedom with Linux, in XP, my stuff just works, and it's fast and snappy and doesn't get bogged down (of course I'm not doing stupid stuff like using IE visiting sketchy websites that install things). It works great for all my games, etc. Solid OS; I just had to get over my Linux vigilatism to notice it.
5). I just found the speach recognition built into Vista 2 nights ago. For just about everything but typing, it works flawlessly. As much as I love my mouse; sitting back, relaxing with both hands comfortably unbound from a keyboard and mouse, feels absolutely wonderful. So instead of clicking minimize/maximize/close, alt+tab'ing until you see the window you want, clicking start, etc; you just say into your headset "Minimize" "Maximize" or the name of the window you want to use. So to change focus back to Firefox, I would say "Mozilla Firefox". Then you can say things like "Bookmarks" and it opens the menu for your bookmaks. Say the name of the bookmark and it selects it, then "ok" or "enter" to open it. If you've got several bookmarks it thinks you're saying, it highlights all of them with a transparent bar that you can see through, and places a number in the middle of that bar. So if I say "Slashdot", it highlights the 8 slashdot bookmarks I have, and then I say "7" and it opens the one under the bar labelled "7". "Scroll Down", "Scroll down 10", "Press control w" to close a tab. If you have a list of sites you usually like to go to, and have them all bookmarked (for me they're all in the bookmarks toolbar folder), then browsing your favorite sites that you check daily is easy. "GM [gmail]" "Reddit" etc. Since I have all these bookmarks on the toolbar, it automatically finds them and clicks them. When you're surfing the net, just say the name of the link on the page and it opens it for you.

The Start Menu works nicely too. Just say "Start" and then the name of the program you want to open. Then it opens it. If it thinks there's several things you could be referring to, it shows these in the search results pane and uses the same number scheme to select which one you want. You can access windows here as well; after saying "Start" say "Show numbers" and then the number of the window you want to restore.

This is the same tech they're putting in Ford/Lincoln/Mercuries for the GPS and music system that you've been seeing commercials for lately. After using the Vista version for just about 30 minutes, I've quickly gotten used to it; the commands are very intuitive. Gotta say it's really cool stuff. Yes I know OSX has had this since who knows when, but meh, OSX can't play my games. It feels much closer to what I'm thinking I want to do, because there's no physical motion besides just speaking what I want to do and it does it. Seems like they're progressing towards the synergy between brain and computer control very nicely.

Re:Microsoft hate

[ShatteredArm]

If they would actually allow me the ability to actually terminate a runaway process through the task manager, I might upgrade them to "mild disdain."

Re:Microsoft hate

[Dasher42]

Sounds like your reasons for keeping Windows all boil down to playing games. A solid OS for playing games is a different thing from a solid OS for development or server duty. I for my part have been an OSX/Linux guy for work needing to be done for years.

So we're back to those games. Something's got to be done about that. We need more and better open source games, and with engines like OGRE and all the content that modders put out, we really could be doing better. 'Tis a shame, because modders are contenting themselves with second-class status.

Re:Microsoft hate

[V!NCENT]

"start, shutdown"
That must be so wierd...

Microsoft will never be able to do microkernel

[IGnatius T Foobar]

Microsoft has proven time and time again that they don't have the discipline to do a properly layered operating system.

When they had OS/2 available to them, they switched back to DOS and stuffed everything into Win16.

Then when they had the original NT microkernel available to them, they stuffed everything into the Win32 layer, where it didn't belong.

Do you really believe Microsoft when they say, again, "This time we're going to design it properly" ??

Re:Microsoft will never be able to do microkernel

[Your.Master]

The Microsoft of today barely resembles the Microsoft that got a hold of OS/2. I don't get people who say this.

Why don't you just try Singularity instead of arguing that it sucks from a position of ignorance? Maybe it sucks from a position of knowledge. I don't know. I sure haven't used Singularity.

Re:Microsoft will never be able to do microkernel

[Tony Hoyle]

My guess is it's named appropriately...

Singularity: Sucks so hard it won't even let light escape!

Anyway, this isn't an OS. You can't write an OS in something (.NET) that requires a fully fledged windows installation to run! At best it's a shell.

Re:Microsoft will never be able to do microkernel

[shutdown -p now]

Say what you like, but there are plenty of smart guys in Microsoft Research that know their computer science. Do you know that quite a few developers of GHC Haskell compiler are Microsofties, for example?

So, yes, I do believe Microsoft Research when they say, "This time we're going to design it properly."

On the other hand, bits and pieces of neat stuff from MR find their way into mainstream products eventually (witness F# -> LINQ), so, while we might never see something like Singularity being marketed as a mainline Microsoft product, it may well contribute towards some good in the future versions of Windows.

Re:NOT Open Source

[El Lobo]

Hmmm.. and how is that bad? I love Pilsner bear and i don't know the formula. I enjoy it anyway. But if they could give out the formula for me to check out how it is done I would be overjoyed. Knowledge, my friend is the real treasure, not the often overrated Open Sources "liberties".

Noun VS Adjective

[RingDev]

You're confused. Open source is an adjective that describes a piece of software as having the original source code publicly available. "Open Source" is also the name of a marketing campaign and licensing lobbying movement. So this release is open source as the code is being made available. It does not comply with the desires of the "Open Source" movement though. The two are entirely different.

-Rick

Re:Noun VS Adjective

[MightyYar]

And open sores are just gross.

Re:Noun VS Adjective

[martyb]

Open source is an adjective that describes a piece of software as having the original source code publicly available. "Open Source" is also the name of a marketing campaign and licensing lobbying movement. So this release is open source as the code is being made available. It does not comply with the desires of the "Open Source" movement though. The two are entirely different.

Agreed. Here's another way of stating it:

• closed source == "object code only"
• open source == !(closed source)
• Open Source !== (open source)

Early in my career, I remember when hardware was EXPENSIVE(*) and it was hard to justify to the bean counters that such a significant purchase was worthwhile. Software was given away by the manufacturer, and freely extensible, as a means to help justify the expense of the hardware. Manufacturers were keen on building demand so they could sell more computers. The more the community could help in the development of software, the more marketable the systems became. (cf SHARE and DECUS.) Over time, the cost of hardware went down, and the capabilities of the associated software increased.

Along this continuum, others discovered that as more and more computers were sold, there was a growing market for the software itself. They made investments, produced software, and sold it at a profit. But, if they gave away the source with the software, some people would just make copies for free.

Hence, software started being shipped as "closed source", in contrast to the common "open source" distribution. Later still, the "Open Source" movement (F/LOSS) started.

(*) IIRC my high school paid $25K for a PDP/8 back in the early 1970's.

Re:Noun VS Adjective

[RingDev]

No, I am trying to point out that despite the better efforts of a hand full of evangelist, OSI, while a respectable organization, is not capable of redefining the English language. Any confusion here is at the feet of OSI who took a popular meaningful IT term and applied to to a lobbyist movement.

OSI's definition of "Open Source" applies to their "Open Source Initiative Approved" (tm) slogan. In this case, "Open Source" is a proper noun. It is the name of a movement. OSI is a NFP organization with a political goal, there for, it is critically important to differentiate between their message and fact.

"Open source" is an adjective. Note the distinct lack of the capital 'S'. (which I did screw up in an earlier post, my apologies for that.) The 'O' remains capitalized as it is the first word of the sentence however. When used as an adjective the words only have the meaning of their descriptive value. Which means the "source" is "open". Neither of these words have any implication on licensing or redistribution.

For another obvious example, look at the difference between the Democratic election process and the democratic election process. One is a political party and refers to a set specific set of rules and standards, the other is a political ideology with an entirely different set of rules and standards.

-Rick

Re:Noun VS Adjective

[HermMunster]

I don't agree, this is Opened Source, not Open Source. The definition is the one used by those that created it to begin with.

Microsoft stated last year that they'd be killing Open Source. This is an attempt by them to redefine the term. We had this discussion last year about how Microsoft's use of the term hurt the definition and how business would react to those terms. Our discussions mean nothing to Microsoft, so they have simply continued in hopes that the legions of ill informed could further their redefinition. History is written by those who win the war. This is an attempt by Microsoft to win the war.

Open Source is precisely what the Opensource.org says it is.

Microsoft has simply opened the source. It is not Open Source in any remote way.

Re:Noun VS Adjective

[harmless_mammal]

Nooo...

"Publicly available" is an adjective phrase that describes source code that is available to the public.

The phrase "Open Source" (capitalized or otherwise) was not widely used before folks like Eric Raymond and OSI started promoting it. The term has a specific meaning within the context of software development that you are attempting to re-define.

Re:Noun VS Adjective

[RingDev]

I beg to differ. The term open source was used, although "widely" is debated as using the term in the early/mid 90's prior to wide spread adoption of the internet means that the scope of it's use is slightly harder to identify. Raymond and others used the term in the late 90's to describe Netscape's code release. Prior to and ever since the establishment of OSI, the term "open source" has continued to mean software with publicly accessible code, and a much wider subset of code-released software than the more narrow view point of the OSI definition.

-Rick

Re:Noun VS Adjective

[Russ Nelson]

the feet of OSI who took a popular meaningful IT term "Popular" is a wild exaggeration. A few people had used it for its current meaning (software you are free to modify and share) previous to 1998. Nobody used it differently (that we can find, but please, introduce facts to back up your groundless opinion).

Re:Noun VS Adjective

[IntlHarvester]

I'm sure you're fully aware that "open source" was taken from the intelligence community, where it definitely has a "read only" connotation.

We were always at war with Oceana

[BigJClark]

Seriously though, I wonder how long it will be until Ballmer will be throwing chairs at closed-source solutions. I can see MS doing quite well with this new model, and any move to go back to the closed-source will result in fits from Ballmer.

Re:!free

[fictionpuss]

Forget the ideology. What I want to know is, has anybody here installed it/used it and what are their opinions? Why don't you, uh, have a clue and download it yourself and look at it? Its 60MB compressed and compiles in 40 seconds. Don't be lame. It's a research project, focusing on designing reliable, dependable, secure and low-overhead systems. You get code - written in C++, IA-32 assembly and Sing#. I don't want to be lame. But I can't compile it, and I don't want to have to install a toy OS just to play with Singularity. What are your opinions of it, other than anyone who doesn't already run windows is lame?

Re:!free

[zotz]

"open source = source code is made available"

http://www.opensource.org/

They may have coinded tghe term, they certainly promoted it and made it polular. They disagree.

all the best,

drew

http://zotzbro.blogspot.com/

Re:!free

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

Can't you look past your own ideology to see that this is actually a remarkably good thing, even if it possibly could be better. If you can "look past" your values based on circumstances, then I daresay that they're not worth very much.

Call me when...

[UncHellMatt]

FTA: "Haptic technology has uses ranging from remote medical breast checks and exploring distant lands, to recreating the feel of fabrics."

Yes, but when can I remotely feel and explore distant breasts?

Gotta have priorities, mate.

Get... Get your hand away from that moderation button, you! Don't mod me, bro! It's a legitimate, technical and inherently geeky question of a viable, important and distinctly boob related issue that I'm sure I'm not alone in... Oh bugger, you modded me down, didn't you?
smeg.

Re:Call me when...

[ColdWetDog]

Ah hello? A bit off on the thread button this AM? Or has Slashdot scrambled things again. Either way, remote boob exploits and the new MS OS don't seen to have much in common but maybe after a few more cups of coffee it will make sense.

Or maybe not.

Re:Call me when...

[UncHellMatt]

Oh (!**#*!@&&!*#((!*@

/me hangs head in shame...

indeed, this is so. Too much saki last night.

technically not open source

[aepervius]

From the ars technica link below :

QUOTE:"Although the Singularity research development kit (RDK) is available for download, it is not technically open source. The source code is distributed under the terms of the restrictive Microsoft Research License rather than one of Microsoft's two OSI-approved open source licenses."

ars technica

To be "open source" you need a tad little bit more than having the source readable in plain text, IMHO.

Re:technically not open source

[gbjbaanb]

Surely Open source is one where you can see the source. Free Open source is the other, much more useful beast that you are descibing.

Re:technically not open source

[Bruce Perens]

I think the phrase you want for this is disclosed source. The fact that you can see it doesn't mean it's open. The license makes it useful mostly as an academic curiousity and a source of litigation if you try to do anything real with it. I guess you could say that it's open in the same way that a glue-trap is open for a mouse :-)

Real Open Source satisfies all of the terms in the Open Source Definition, which includes things like the right to modify, the right to distribute, no discrimination, etc. Without those things the software is neither open nor very useful.

Bruce

Re:!free

[dosius]

Come out from under that cave... last I checked Minix had been BSD-licensed for several years.

-uso.

open source != Open Source Initiative Approved

[SEMW]

http://opensource.org/docs/osd
also, STFU when you clearly have no clue. In fairness to the GP, there is an argument that a Californian non-profit organisation can't suddenly spring up and decree that the words "open source" suddenly have whatever meaning they say they have. The OSI is neither a standards organisation nor a dictionary. Nor are the words "open source" a trademark (or, indeed, trademarkable, since they're descriptive).

What is trademarked by the OSI is the phrase "Open Source Initiative Approved", and you (and the OSI) would have a perfect right to object to anyone describing Singularity as Open Source Initiative Approved, since it isn't. But the same, I'm afraid, does not apply to a non-trademarked, commonly used phrase such as "open source", any more than Microsoft could set up a non-profit organisation that gives its own definition of "secure" and hire people to tell anyone who describes Linux as "secure" to "STFU when you clearly have no clue"...

Re:open source != Open Source Initiative Approved

[Sebastian Reichelt]

Technically, you are probably right. That doesn't make the headline any less misleading, however, since a lot of people will assume "Open Source" means "Open Source according to the OSI". Not all, maybe not even the majority, but a lot.

Then again, seeing the words "Microsoft" and "Open Source" in the same sentence did make me somewhat suspicious from the start.

To be fair, it is nice of Microsoft to make this "freely available for academic non-commercial use". This seems to be more of an academic experiment than a product, made for people to learn from it. For that purpose, a FOSS license may not even be such a big advantage.

I'm just wondering if there are any patents involved...

Re:open source != Open Source Initiative Approved

[Cyclops]

STFU Microsoftie.

Re:open source != Open Source Initiative Approved

[HermMunster]

If people want to learn about modern secure kernels they can look at the real thing. The Linux kernel's source is freely available, can be freely modified, and distributed.

Microsoft's offering is meaningless in that context. As has been said in prior posts here in this thread, it is possible that just looking at the source and learning form it and then using it in a competing product could cause situations where the legal scumbags use it against any true attempt at open source.

Re:open source != Open Source Initiative Approved

[HermMunster]

I tend to conclude that he is some shill of Microsoft and he's attempting to redefine what has long been established--the meaning of open source in the true sense of open source. The term Open Source was not coined yesterday or last year by Microsoft. It has been a term in long standing use without challenge for years.

Microsoft will soon say that they own the trade mark "open source" and challenge everyone on the issue in the years to come.

Honestly, all this bantering about is actually in support of "Open Source" as it will show a prior history, a long standing us of the term, and of course the ideas being it. There's no reason not to debate but to put out butt ugly confusion in order to further the convicted monopolist is just wrong.

Re:!free

[alan_dershowitz]

Why should anyone spend any time learning and working with this tool if their efforts cannot be used commercially? Two reasons: Because it is, allegedly, a highly modern kernel design that (I've read) implements a next-generation security model that is conceptually too different to be bolted on conventional modular monolithic kernels. With an academic, noncommercial license you can use it to to learn about kernels. If you're not interested in or learning about kernels, only potentially using them, then yeah, I concede your point. However, secondly, an academic noncommercial license to the source doesn't preclude Microsoft selling an OS based on that kernel commercially, in which case having the source does have practical value for programmers even if it cannot be modified.

Re:!free

[happytechie]

why can't you compile it? I haven't looked at the RQMs but I'm guessing they are all freely available from MSDN? As a research tool aimed at people actually looking into OS and compiler developent this is a usefull tool. If you're not interested don't just flame MS because you think that all code should be open for re use. It is free (as in beer) it just isn't free to be re used and re sold in comercial tools. MS have spent many many (expensive) man hours developing all this and I for one think it's a good thing to have the code and the thoughts in the open.

Please fix the title!

[Omnifarious]

Won't someone fix the title? It's just plain wrong. A non-commercial license is not Open Source.

Re:Please fix the title!

[nvrrobx]

There's nothing to fix here - move along.

Well, move yourself to the Slashdot home page and note that every headline is capitalized in the same way.. You know, as headlines in newspapers and such typically are.... Back to English 101 with you!

Wouldn't be surprised...

[sltd]

...if a bunch of the concepts in this thing are patented.

Stop propagating missinformation!

[RingDev]

To continue fighting this redundant spewage...

Open Source != Open source.

Just because some guy with a political agenda picks a common word loosely related to his goals as a name, doesn't mean that the word changes it's meaning to match that guy's goals.

There is a world of difference between Democratic process and democratic process.

Real life runs on *nix, case is sensitive.

-Rick

Re:Stop propagating missinformation!

[Russ Nelson]

Errrr, nobody honestly believes that Open Source means that you can see the source. The people who SAY that it has that meaning are either Free Software Zealots, or proprietary software shills. Which one are you?

BTW, even RMS understands that Open Source means that use, modification, and sharing must be open. He simply prefers Free Software because he wants people to keep the word "Free" in their heads.

Re:Stop propagating missinformation!

[Marcion]

Just because some guy with a political agenda picks a common word loosely related to his goals as a name, doesn't mean that the word changes it's meaning to match that guy's goals.

It does if they trademark it. Open Source is a trademarked term, software has to meet the Open Source definition in order to be open source.

Re:Stop propagating missinformation!

[RingDev]

Open Source is a trademarked term Close, but not quite. "Open Source Initiative Approved" is a trademarked term. "Open source" is a descriptive wording and is not eligable for trade mark. It would be like appling for a trade mark on "really big" or "very hot".

-Rick

Re:!free

[Digi-John]

Admiral Ackbar would be cautious.

Exactly, it's a trap

[Bozdune]

the fact remains that this could be a trap

If you are a large entity, revealing your source via restricted license has become one of the best ways to cause your ideas to be protected, since you can argue that anyone else who had access to your source code, and then subsequently wrote something competitive, has "stolen your intellectual property." Even if you don't win the case, or the case is weak to begin with (as was SCO's), at the very least you can make a lot of trouble for a competitor, mire them in an expensive multi-year court case, and cause Casper Milquetoast prospects to avoid a "possibly infringing" solution.

This could very well be Microsoft duplicity at its finest. It is built-in protection for Windows 7. Let's assume that software patents are overthrown by the SCOTUS, Microsoft's SCO friends die the zombie death they so richly deserve, and that Microsoft is forced, kicking and screaming, to obey standards by the EU and others -- in other words, all of Microsoft's existing weapons to maintain its monopoly position are defused. This strategy becomes a key defensive position.

Do not look at this code. You must be able to answer, "I never saw it," under oath, if you ever expect to build something competitive.

Re:Exactly, it's a trap

[pyrbrand]

The same thing applies of course to commercial or BSD software developers and GPL code, or any code that is not truly free (BSD style is truly free, not GPL style as RMS admits) including client and partner code that there is no license/waiver for. "IP taint" is a two way street.

Re:Exactly, it's a trap

[Bozdune]

IANAL, but I believe you are confusing copyright with IP infringement. The GPL is copyright-based. Copyright doesn't cover ideas, it only covers the form of the implementation of the idea. So you can read GPL code all you want. You mustn't copy it or use it verbatim (unless you GPL the result), but you can use its ideas freely.

Re:Exactly, it's a trap

[pyrbrand]

No, IP infringement is an umbrella term for not complying copyright and patent laws (or potentially leaking a trade secret corporate espionage style I suppose). Copyright covers the expression of a work as well as "derivative works" (meaning I can't make a Mickey Mouse hat even if it is different from the one's Disney makes since that would be a derivative work from Mickey Mouse cartoons and merch). Ask anyone you know who works for a commercial software company (like me) - legal will not let you even download GPL'ed source (binaries are ok) unless you agree not to work on a related area for at least a year (depending on the policy at the company) so that if a lawsuit does come up, you can swear in court you haven't seen any source.

Re:Exactly, it's a trap

[Bozdune]

I suspect that the reason legal doesn't let you download GPL'd source is because legal is afraid you'll copy the source and violate the copyright. Bluntly: you are in a large company and they don't trust you. Which is part of the problem of working for large companies -- they don't trust you, and you don't trust them. Not that small companies are necessarily trustworthy either, but at least maybe you get to meet the CEO and the senior managers and have a chance to make your own decision as to whether they are sleazeballs or reasonable human beings.

I'm actually pretty sure that there is no danger whatsoever in looking at GPL'd code, as long as you ensure that you don't copy it. Implementing the same idea with different code is not covered by copyright. It is not possible to copyright an idea (as opposed to patents, where it is).

Too bad we can't ask Pamela Jones -- she'd settle this quickly!

Re:Exactly, it's a trap

[pyrbrand]

I am absolutely sure that derivative works is a concern in looking at any source code. Do five minutes of googling starting with "derivative works ip taint source code". Most of the hits you'll get are related to the SCO case or BSD vs GPL stuff.

Your large company diatribe is kind of misguided. Really, lawyers jobs outside the courtroom are to manage risk. If someone comes and sues you (like SCO did with Linux) for making a derivative work of their product, if you can say "sorry, I've never seen your product, so I can't be deriving my work from it", they lose. If you have seen their source it's harder to make that case. It has nothing to do with trust. It has to do with the practical aspect of saying "sorry, there is no possible way my work can be derived from yours."

Acronym?

[mikiN]

My first try:

Since It's Not Gnu Us Linuxers Are Redmonded I Tell Ya.

DMA

[samael]

Of course, Firewire also does DMA - which is the source of the security hole which appeared on /. a couple of days ago.

100% managed code?

[Digi-John]

To hear my Microsoft-employed friend talk about it, going to all managed code was a Mistake (yes, with a capital M). Here's what he said to me some time ago:

[MS-employee]: C++ has warts, but it is also insanely powerful, and the good far outweighs the bad
I would not give up lots of power to have slightly fewer warts
The only things I envy in C# are its libraries
Sucky, managed libraries, but they do some cool stuff
[me]: like which ones?
[MS-employee]: Interop is freaking obnoxious, though
All the new UI stuff is managed because MS forgot about native code for about 5 years
We're awake now, but it's going to suck for a while before it gets better
[me]: So are you moving back to native, or fixing managed?
[MS-employee]: I have never done managed
If "you" means MS, then it seems like we're trying to do both
We're supporting managed for the VBers and native for the big software development places
Which is really should it should be

Any other opinions on managed code out there? Preferably from people who have actually used it?

Re:100% managed code?

[PRMan]

Yeah, about 10% slower code, about 90% fewer bugs...

Re:100% managed code?

[vux984]

Any other opinions on managed code out there? Preferably from people who have actually used it?

Managed is like Java, only with more language syntax options, because it supports multiple languages.

Your "microsoft employed friend" sounds like he's just been taken out of context. After all sure there are places where managed or java doesn't belong, and sure its possible MS tried to use it in places they shouldn't have, and that would be a 'Mistake'.

But hanging onto managed for 'VBers' is just absurd. Java is -very- enterprise and 'big development places' friendly, and so is managed code. I'm not sure why anyone would claim otherwise.

Re:100% managed code?

[ShatteredArm]

Exactly. I like when people say managed code is totally useless because it doesn't have the level of control that C++ has. But the majority of software programs can do just fine with a generic memory management system, and a garbage collector isn't going to kill you. Obviously you wouldn't use managed code for a processor-intense game or graphics application or whatever, but if you're doing a point-of-sale application, or a web application, etc--in that case you'll be losing months of precious development time fiddling around with basic foundational crap before even getting around to the actual application itself.

I think the tradeoff is performance and control vs. development effort, and in many situations, performance and control aren't important enough to warrant spending the extra resources that are required to achieve that.

Re:100% managed code?

[gbjbaanb]

WRT Java, I know it is 'enterprise', but I have never even heard of a company that managed to get an enterprise Java system set up without half a dozen servers, or a mainframe running it. Enterprise Java has EJBs and the like, that doesn't make it good at all. I don't know whether its the memory usage model, or the 'lazy' programmer model that makes it suck, but it does even though it should work perfectly. (its a bit like Arnold Schwarzenegger - he's tall, strong, rich, powerful. He *should* be a babe magnet but .. somehow it doesn't pan out like that when implemented in the real world)(sorry for the mixed metaphor)

MS has gone C# in a big way over the last few years, they have concentrated on it to the exclusion of all else to drive it to market, yet the program manager for Visual Studio has said that they're done with that now and the next big push for them is unmanaged C++;
Vista for all its modernness has a tiny amount of managed code in it (and the bit that is managed - Aero - is the bit that requires 2Gig to run acceptably, its not a issue with fancy graphics, its an issue with managed-ness). Has Robert Grimes done a more up-to-date analysis of Vista's use of managed code - the last one he did showed Vista is made of only 3% managed code.

(note: to see what I mean, read the comments on here where they describe the new Office controls like the Ribbon being made available for MFC developers. Someone asks, "but will they be available for us C# devs?" and is told "we plan to make this available but we don't have a date we can announce" - ie not for some time).

This is why I think the MS-friend is right, .NET is not a tool for every job, but MS likes to hype stuff up way past a sensible level so everyone thinks you cannot program anymore unless you're using Windows Workflow Foundation to drive a Best-Practice Application Block through Windows Presentation Foundation gui all written in C#. Now they're moving on to something else, expect more hype but in a different direction.

Re:100% managed code?

[shutdown -p now]

Pretty much the same here. It's not just less bugs, though. C# is better supported by the IDE code completion and refactoring features (because it's fairly easy to parse, while C++ with moderately complex templates and macros is a mess). Also, debugging support is much better - this is mainly so because managed code is JITed at runtime, and Microsoft .NET VM has this neat option which disables optimizations in JIT compiler when a debugger is attached; contrast this with debugging a release build of a C++ application, where you often can't see 3/4th of locals in a function at any given point of time, because they were loaded in registers, and were all overwritten by now (my favorite is when it happens to this).

One neat thing about C# in particular is that it actually gives you opportunity to write code pretty much as efficient as C, if you ever need to hand-optimize a given bit of code (which the vast majority of business applications these days simply don't need): the trick is to use structs, pointers, and stackalloc. JIT inlines function calls nicely, and as long as you don't use GC-managed refs and arrays, you don't incur nullness checks, so you can end up with stuff just as good as what a C compiler spits out. Even better, sometimes, because JIT can inline across DLL boundaries. GC is still there in the background, of course, so you still pay; but then again, I've seen (and wrote) C/C++ applications that also use a GC (typically Boehm), and .NET GC is generally considered one of the finest - it was about 25% faster than Sun's JVM one in my simple tests.

Re:100% managed code?

[SuiteSisterMary]

And this exact conversation was had with 'assembly' and 'c', and then again with 'c' and 'c++', and so on.

Re:100% managed code?

[Digi-John]

Well, I haven't seen many conversations where somebody says, "Our company really invested heavily in C, but we've realized our mistake now and will be moving back to assembly where we can." That's why I was asking people who know more about managed code than I do to share their experiences.

Where is the damn ISO file?

[jameskojiro]

I wanna try it out on their Virtual PC product to see if I like it better than the millions of other Linux distros out there....

Re:!free

[pak9rabid]

They may have coinded tghe term, they certainly promoted it and made it polular. They disagree. Well, GNU and the FSF beg to differ.

Re:!free

[lanc]

people 'wanking around' with stuff like this move things on. You know, the stuff you're only using. Yes, those lifeless curious nogood hax0rgeeks. Damn them for wanting to understand/improve things.

Re:NOT Open Source

[A.K.A_Magnet]

Shamelessly replying to myself.

A note about the article submitter being a Microsoft proponent: my point is that I think (or hope) he knows fairly well what Open Source means since he is the main kernel hacker on React OS (the project to code a Win32 F/OSS clone). Yet I have always been dubious about the project and why would someone who knows about what Open Source is present such a license as if it were?

Re:!free

[Timothy Brownawell]

My understanding is that the security model is actually pretty old, and has been around since at least 1979.

Re:NOT Open Source

[Digi-John]

Pilsner bear! Guaranteed NOT to rip your face off when you open the bottle!

Re:!free

[andreyw]

Judging from his self-proclaimed "pr0n collection", the only one "wanking around" is the GP.

Re:!free

[Drinking Bleach]

Does it compile with Mono? I don't want to download 60MB to find out.

Re:NOT Open Source

[John Hasler]

I didn't say it was good or bad. I said that the headline is wrong.

Re:!free

[Billhead]

free software = source code is not only made available, but you are free to use that source however you wish, assuming you abide by the guidelines presented in the free software license, assuming there are any No, free software means it doesn't cost you anything.
Just because it is free software doesn't mean they have the source available.

Re:!free

[fictionpuss]

why can't you compile it? I haven't looked at the RQMs but I'm guessing they are all freely available from MSDN? I don't run Windows. It can't be described as "freely available" if I need to buy an OS and invest the man hour to install it, before I can compile it.

As a research tool aimed at people actually looking into OS and compiler development this is a useful tool. For sure it might be. This is why I am on this thread actively soliciting opinions of it from people who, seemingly, can't say why it is so useful.

If you're not interested don't just flame MS because you think that all code should be open for re use. Agreed. There are a lot of better, more specific, reasons to flame MS. However, I don't think I was at this particular moment in time.

It is free (as in beer) it just isn't free to be re used and re sold in commercial tools. So, say you were kind enough to create a binary image for me which I could use in a virtual machine and put it on your website.. if you run something as innocuous as Adsense, then you are redistributing it commercially and can expect a call from an army of angry MS lawyers.

No part of that is free, hence the !free title of this thread.

MS have spent many many (expensive) man hours developing all this and I for one think it's a good thing to have the code and the thoughts in the open. Nope - if you read their license, you'll see that it claims that there "might be" patents in there, but they are not stipulated and there is no patent protection clause.

Thoughts in the open is a good thing(tm). Unfortunately Singularity is not an example of this.

Re:!free

[SQLGuru]

I think you mean:

gscb_hungarian_use = FALSE
(global static constant boolean)

Layne

Screenshots!

[NicerGuy]

Singularity Installation Tips & Screenshots at singularityos.blogspot.com

Re:!free

[pak9rabid]

No, free software means it doesn't cost you anything.
Just because it is free software doesn't mean they have the source available. free (beer) != free (speech)

Re:!free

[IamTheRealMike]

Singularity and Linux are so completely different that the chances of successfully prosecuting somebody for "stealing code" or even ideas is zero. Not only is Singularity written in a custom derivative of C# rather than C, but it has very different concepts of what a process is, what a kernel is, how system components communicate, and so on.

I, for one, am very happy to hear this and will definitely be checking it out. Singularity is probably the most interesting research OS out there right now, in multiple dimensions. The main challenge they have to tackle next is one that most microkernels never really reached (because their performance was too poor to make it worth bothering with) - once a component does fail, how can you rewind the system to a safe recovery point? I emailed the Singularity guys about this and got back a very nice reply, which basically said "we don't know, that's still a research problem we need to investigate".

Anyway. Good on MS Research. Let's see if anything interesting comes of this. It doesn't have to be useful, mind you, just interesting.

Capabilities?

[ka9dgx]

I see a lot of stuff about "managed code"... the myth that signing code makes it somehow safer.... which just isn't so.

You should never be forced to trust any program to do what it's told. The OS should make sure it stays within the boundaries you set for it... or better yet... only gets to use the capabilities you offer it.

Hopefully they'll get over the fixation in time, before a random mix of computer virii and malware "mate" and produce a sentient rootkit that takes over the internet. (I'd estimate we've got 10 more years before this is going to happen)

Re:Capabilities?

[Eli Gottlieb]

Hopefully they'll get over the fixation in time, before a random mix of computer virii and malware "mate" and produce a sentient rootkit that takes over the internet. (I'd estimate we've got 10 more years before this is going to happen) Well I dunSHUB-INTERNET LAUGHS AT YOUR PUNY HUMAN MIND'S INABILITY TO COMPREHEND THE TRUTH.no, it'll probably take a pretty damn long time.

Re:Capabilities?

[ray-auch]

I see a lot of stuff about "managed code"... the myth that signing code makes it somehow safer.... which just isn't so.

Code signing has nothing to do with managed code. Maybe you need to actually read some of the "stuff" you see.

Re:Capabilities?

[Eli Gottlieb]

Hey, where'd that all-caps sentence in the middle of my post come from?

ME, N00BLING!

Re:Capabilities?

[jjohnson]

"signed code" and "managed code" aren't the same thing. The point of Singularity just is "The OS should make it stays within the boundaries that [it] sets for it." SIPs and contractually defined communications provide just the security that you're saying is needed.

Re:Capabilities?

[digitalEric]

A recent email thread on the cap-talk maling list (set up by Jonathan Shapiro, the author of the linked article) recently discussed Singularity as a capability system . Summary: it is a capability system but does not take advantage of the fact very well.

As others have pointed out, "managed" code refers to the use of automatically managed memory allocation rather than manual use of malloc/free. By combining that with type safety and array bounds checking, many classes of C/C++ bugs are eliminated or reduced. The penalty of course is that you need to run a garbage collector.

Re:It's a microkernel

[stiggle]

And now its a singularity - its sucking everything else in around it and consuming it.

Yup - its a Microsoft product with a viral license :-)

Sometimes tin foil is just a cigar

[fm6]

It's an attempt to keep developers from even looking at Linux.

Give me a break. OK, MS is evil, but not everything they do is part of a grand conspiracy. Nobody is going to be stupid enough to stick with Windows just because MS is playing with a research OS that's not even backward compatible with existing software. And nobody at MS is stupid enough to think that anybody will be that stupid.

This is just another blue sky project from the Microsoft Research, a division that is tasked with coming out with cool stuff without regard to commercial viability. Every big high-tech company has such a division. My own employer, Sun, has Sun Labs, which is always coming out with interesting stuff that mostly has nothing to do with our business model. I think it's mainly a prestige thing, to convince folks that you're a cutting-edge company.

Re:Sometimes tin foil is just a cigar

[r606]

" ...Microsoft Research, a division that is tasked with coming out with cool stuff without regard to commercial viability."
~

So these guys probably had a lot of time on their hands?

Re:Sometimes tin foil is just a cigar

[wrygrin]

commercial viability. Every big high-tech company has such a division. My own employer, Sun, has Sun Labs, which is always coming out with interesting stuff that mostly has nothing to do with our business model. I think it's mainly a prestige thing, to convince folks that you're a cutting-edge company.

I think it's more than that.

Considering the security/stability abyss where Windows is situated, Microsoft needs some salient models for reliable computing to aim for. They don't have to switch over to the things that implement the pure goals, or even migrate there - but they must have some implementations of those goals so they know what the realities of a reliable OS would be.

Note, too, that they don't have to be the ones owning the whole model, since the thing they'll eventually be selling will be far removed from the model implementation. Thus they can afford to foster external research in developing the model, by publishing their findings - including the code. (Maybe "published source" is a better term for their limited limited openness?)

Re:Sometimes tin foil is just a cigar

[earlymon]

OK, MS is evil, but not everything they do is part of a grand conspiracy. That's exactly what they want us to think. It's all so clear if you take the time to look. The truth is out there.

Did I remember to post anonymously?

Trademarks do not make an ontology

[Noksagt]

We can object to anything we want. We just won't get very far in a legal fight without trademark protection. But communities do adopt ontologies that make the use of even non-trademarked words consistent within that community.

to a non-trademarked, commonly used phrase such as "open source"

By and large, the way the slashdot community (and, indeed, all of the Open Source Developer's Network sites) uses the term "open source" is that it is free/libre/open source software that conforms to the definitions set forth by the DFSG, FSF, and the OSI.

For an article to be posted that does not conform to this is a bit unsettling, which is why you see so many valid and reasonable posts here stating that this is NOT open source.

Already done.

[dragisha]

Something to see, and it's done far far ago. For extra safe kernel believers.

And efficient, too :).

tip o' the ice berg?

[psbrogna]

Perhaps 60 Mb is only the portion of the code base that resides in our universe. The rest of the O/S could be running on a cluster of quantum computers beyond the event horizon which communicate via a wormhole with the instance on the user's PC. Hence the name. Microsoft's future OSes running in an alternative universe is a win-win as far as I'm concerned. In fact, I'd be thrilled if they moved their HQ there. Can we vote them off the planet? Sorry, sarcasm and ideology aside (and assuming there's no nefarious agenda which there may well be), I think it's great that they've established a group to experiment with new OS concepts. Welcome to the '90's MS.

Re:!free

[pak9rabid]

I tend to go with the definitions that were there first. FSF was founded in 1985, whereas the OSI was founded in 1998.

Re:NOT Open Source

[Allador]

The term 'open source' is a descriptive phrase that to most folks will mean the source is viewable or available.

But you're confusing whether the source is open or available, with whether it has an OSI approved open source license.

The two are not the same. OSI does not own the term 'open source'.

And only a tiny, tiny, extremely miniscule fraction of the population is so caught up in these near-religious issues to be confused by this.

'open source' != software licensed under an OSI approved license

They're not the same thing.

And neither of those are the same thing as the broader community and set of principles generally labelled FOSS. Though even that is so broad and ripe for different interpretations as to be specifically meaningless.

Re:NOT Open Source

[Hatta]

What good is knowledge if you can't use it the way you wish? To use your beer analogy, what if your favorite brewer published their recipe, but said you couldn't use it. It would be worthless information. But if you have a recipe you can use any way you wish, that's empowerment.

Re:!free

[drerwk]

...the chances of successfully prosecuting somebody for "stealing code" or even ideas is zero...
The odds are never zero on this matter, and are dependent in large part on how much money you are willing to spend and how long you wish to try doing so. Success by the plaintiff may not equate to a court decision in their favor. The plaintiff may be happy enough to cause the defense to have to put up a costly defense. And you only have to look as far as the $100 million recently invested in SCO to know that the truth may set you free, but not before you've gone broke.

The Point?

[Hythlodaeus]

The supposed advances are:
1) It's a managed-code OS
2) It's a microkernel design but with faster interprocess communication

However,

1) In order to be an OS its compiled from VM bytecode (the definition of managed code) to machine code, so it is not in fact managed code.
2) Interprocess communication is fast because everything actually runs in the same context and is basically on its honor not to screw with other bits of the system. (Marketing name "Software-Isolated Processes") Basically a monolithic design and not a microkernel.

So, what was the point?

Re:The Point?

[Hythlodaeus]

I've figured out the missing piece. The operating system manages the software installation process to verify the software follows its rules. It's stealth research in the Trusted Computing Untrusted User field.

Re:The Point?

[jjohnson]

Interprocess communication is fast because everything actually runs in the same context and is basically on its honor not to screw with other bits of the system. (Marketing name "Software-Isolated Processes") Basically a monolithic design and not a microkernel.

No, everything is not on its honor. Yes, everything runs in the same context, but the kernel provides total process isolation, and all communication between SIPs is by a verifiable, contractually defined communications channel. In other words, by enforcing a verifiable contract for communication betweens SIPs or the kernel, it's safe to put it all in the same context and get the performance benefits.

Re:!free

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

I'm sorry but if you can't modify the code and redistribute it yourself, then I don't consider the source to be open.

I think you're confusing "open" with "free" (as in freedom). Generally, free software means it can be freely used and open just means you can view the source code.

Re:NOT open source

[Allador]

I am appalled at how many people dont get this, but I'll say it again.

The US California non-profit organization OSI does not own, copyright, or hold a trademark on the term 'open source'.

They are also not a government or dictionary in that they get to arbitrarily redefine words and mandate that they are the new definition for the entire human race.

The term 'open source' has been around alot longer than the OSI org, and had the same meaning then as it does now. It means the source is availble to read/view.

For a pretty substantial portion of our industry, the term 'open source' used in this context is accurate.

Re:!free

[Hatta]

And what happens when you take some of those ideas you learned with this academic license, implement them in your own OS, and release it for free? What's to stop microsoft from bullying those who looked at this code from ever working on an open source operating system again?

Re:!free

[Sir_Lewk]

I don't accept diluted tyranny.

Re:NOT open source

[Methuselah2]

Thanks for that link. Yup, having looked at the Singularity license, it clearly it does NOT meet the requirements.

This appears to be a PR attempt by Microsoft. Where have we seen them "enhance and extend" before?

This is as OpenSource as their "Open" ooxml is Open.

Doesn't quality

[HermMunster]

That doesn't even remotely resemble open source. It is NOT open source.

This is Microsoft's attempt to redefine what Open Source means. It is an aberration of their "embrace, extend, extinguish". They are trying to confuse the market into a non-understanding of what open source means.

That license is not even close to the GPL. People who develop for open source need to understand and spread the word that this is simply a matter of intentional obfuscation of the ideals behind open source and what it attempts to achieve. Giving up is giving in, so don't give up on spreading word.

useless and not open source

[nguy]

"Academic, non-commercial" is not "open source".

Technically, Singularity is intellectual masturbation; ignore it.

Re:useless and not open source

[nuzak]

> Technically, Singularity is intellectual masturbation

I'll take that over the anti-intellectual masturbation going on throughout 90% of the responses to this article.

Re:!free

[Smackheid]

Why yes, my job does suck. We can't all be hackers, you know.

On the upside, nice to know there's still some of these fabled know-everything unhelpful geeks out there. You must be their mascot.

Re:!free

[nuzak]

There's an RFC floating around from 1970-ish that announces an OS based on channel abstractions, which is effectively capabilities security.

And no, Singularity doesn't work like that. Far as I've heard, it's based on safety through proofs, themselves based on advanced type theory. Nothing like KeyKOS, which basically had to arbitrate everything through the MMU with page faults (or maybe that's just EROS).

Re:!free

[HermMunster]

The definition blew your whole argument out of the water. It is obvious you hadn't an iota of understanding of what Open Source means.

Wouldn't it be nice if...

[serviscope_minor]

So, it's managed, and won't let you do things like access outside the bounds of an array, etc. So I suppose that there's some software that checks these things and essentially kills your program if it misbehaves.

Sounds slow to me. Maybe someone can invent some hardware implementation of this. It could be a little managing unit which you build in to the CPU. Since it's managed and it's memory accesses, you could give it a cool name, something like managed... memory...unit? Maybe? That doesn't sount quite right, but you get the idea.

NOT OPEN SOURCE

[krelian]

I don't really care, I just want the free karma.

Re:NOT open source

[john-da-luthrun]

It is certainly true that "open source" is subject to some semantic unclarity (which is one reason why I personally dislike the term, preferring "free software" - albeit that has problems of its own, of course).

However, that doesn't mean that the likes of MS should be allowed to get away with their bait-and-switch tactics of attempting to gain the perceived kudos and good marketing karma of promoting "open source" (in the OSI sense) and then turning around and saying, "Oh, we only meant it was 'open source' as in 'the source is available, on restrictive terms'". Nor that, as I said in my original comment, /. should be adding to the confusion over the term.

My guess is that the original submitter didn't appreciate that "non-commercial" takes the licence outside the scope of the OSI's definition of open source - not that they meant to use "open source" in some broader sense of "source is available".

Re:!free

[Timothy Brownawell]

And no, Singularity doesn't work like that. Far as I've heard, it's based on safety through proofs, themselves based on advanced type theory. Nothing like KeyKOS, which basically had to arbitrate everything through the MMU with page faults (or maybe that's just EROS). Sure, but my understanding is that it still uses the same basic model. Whether other processes and your capabilites are protected by type theory or an MMU is an implementation detail. A very cool one with nice effects on performance and maybe portability, but still just an implementation detail.

Re:!free

[zotz]

From the first link:

"While free software by any other name would give you the same freedom, it makes a big difference which name we use: different words convey different ideas."

And from the second:

"While free software by any other name would give you the same freedom, it makes a big difference which name we use: different words convey different ideas."

That is about calling "Free Software" "Open Source Software" and why they think that is not the right thing to do. It is not about them being different things license wise.

"The Free Software movement and the Open Source movement are like two political camps within the free software community."

"The relationship between the Free Software movement and the Open Source movement is just the opposite of that picture. We disagree on the basic principles, but agree more or less on the practical recommendations."

The FSF will not likely be recommending any software with a license that fits the definition of open source that you gave without fitting the definition of the OSI definition any time soon.

This is the OSI definition of Open Source:

http://www.opensource.org/docs/osd

The is the FSF's definition of Free Software;

http://www.fsf.org/licensing/essays/free-sw.html

Compare if you will. You will see why the FSF can work with the OSI camps in practical ways.

all the best,

drew

*yawn*

[WhiteWolf666]

Frankly, this is stupid.

The "vaunted" MS Research team has put out a "concept" OS that doesn't run _any_ applications, and cannot be used for any commercial purpose, and has no indications that it can be licensed. It's only claim to fame is that its an MS OS; there have been 100% managed code OSs before.

Just last month Arstechnica had an article about two similar OSs, except they are written entirely in C#, without the C++ HAL in Singularity.

Both are REAL opensource. As is jnode.

In short, who gives a flaming f**k? As usual, MS is a day late and a dollar short, which is impressive considering that the "research team" working on singularity seems to be 30-40 people.

Re:*yawn*

[shutdown -p now]

The "vaunted" MS Research team

Make no mistake, MS Research is a well respected organization, and it does actually work on some very advanced "real Open Source" projects. Have a look.

Re:*yawn*

[Heir Of The Mess]

The "vaunted" MS Research team has put out a "concept" OS that doesn't run _any_ applications

Just been looking at it, has a graphics frame buffer, a text interface, and a C# compiler. Seems to me that it can run applications. The C# language seems to be a bit different to the one on Windows but it looks rather cool. It looks so interest I can't help but try it out. It's definately a real O/S. Doesn't have a window manager though, it's temping to write something like the Amiga window manager to sit on top of this, as the code to the video card divers is there, so it could be easily augmented.

"Open Source" has a standard definition (OSI's)

[dwheeler]

The normal meaning of "open source software" is the one given in the Open Source Definition: http://opensource.org/docs/osd This is the normal, common meaning of the term; a Google search on the term quickly proves this. Therefore, Singularity is not open source software; please don't confuse people, and submit to the Microsoft marketing engine, by incorrectly saying otherwise.

Instead, use another term when you mean "you can read the source code". I suggest "source available".

Re:!free

[rapierian]

I would point out that there are a couple other microkernels out there that have reached that point. The main one I'm familiar with is BeOS, which is currently being reborn in Haiku.

No spin required: it's kernel Erlang

[Morgaine]

Singularity also introduces a software-isolated process (SIP) mechanism, which makes it possible for lightweight processes to coexist safely with their own sealed code environments in the same memory space. All communication between SIPs is conducted through channels. The use of SIPs effectively eliminates the overhead traditionally incurred by context-switching in conventional microkernels.

In other words, Microsoft finally discovers Erlang.

While I wouldn't go so far as to say that the guys at Redmond lost the habit of inventing anything new a long time ago, the above concepts have been in industrial use in Erlang-powered PTT exchanges since the dawn of time.

Re:NOT open source

[Lorien_the_first_one]

Thanks for the clarification. I'd like to add that this is not "free software", meaning free as in freedom, not free as in beer. If the code from this project could be put to use commercially, as in, could be used for any purpose, then it would be free software.

Until it is compatible with the GPL, I wouldn't consider it to be "free", but it is open source software.

Re:NOT Open Source

[El Lobo]

There is no worthless information. NEVER. I may not be able to reproduce the beer formula or use it, but the knowlegge about how a certain beer is made will be very useful to me. Believe me: I made my own (tasteless) beer.

copyright infringment

[bamwham]

The name seems awful close to the math program "Singular" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SINGULAR

To see the point

[jjohnson]

Read this PDF: http://www.research.microsoft.com/os/singularity/publications/OSR2007_RethinkingSoftwareStack.pdf

What's cool isn't that it's C# or managed code, it's that they've established some fairly rigorous design principles that gain you a lot of security and reliability guarantees that you don't get just by writing an OS on .NET. Performance doesn't seem to be a huge problem given the ground up implementation.

It's actually not written in C#, it's written in Sing#, an extension of C# that supports the principles they're trying to implement: full process isolation in software, communication by contract, and full memory management.

MicroSoft Research not commercial whore (yet)

[peter303]

Remember this comes out of the research lab of MicroSoft. They arent expected (though it would be nice) to produce commercial products that corner the market. In this way they resemble Bell Labs and Xerox PARC which were attached to less-reputable parent companies.

Re:yes but...

[Z34107]

Do we have the same understanding of the time needed to compile a 60Mb+ file / You are using Distcc on a Top500 cluster / I really should upgrade my personnal server)

Nope, he's running Vista x64. ^.^

Re:NOT Open Source

[HermMunster]

No one said they were. But as the OSI definition is the longest standing and it is a definition that really has ever been challenged except by proponents of close software, the attempt to redefine results in confusion as the the real meaning of open source and foss and the GPL. It is like working away at the chink in the armor. Sooner or later it'll bust unless you have knowledgeable folks repairing it.

OSI is not some random organization that popped up and created a website. Proponents of open source are not fascists. There's no religious ferver here. The individuals are simply protecting their homes. This is where they live when it comes to their community spirit. Soon you'll be redefining their definitions of terroristic toward Microsoft. It is insanely stupid to do so but once you attack and the open source folks defend sooner or later the battle will get much more heated and we'll begin to see terms like terrorism used in software because one party wants to ensure that their homeland is safe.

This is not an open source project and doesn't meet the established definition, one which has been long standing for years and has not been challenged except by a company that has stated they are hell bent on destroying "open source" and is a convicted monopolist. We aren't going to get a court ruling on the term "open source" and those that established it are the ones to define it. Just as I write the book I have the right to name it. BTW, did the court give Websters the right to define words? Or Blacks? I think it is that these were the first entrants and they have been accepted for years. They didn't form some world wide standards organization to create their dictionaries (legal the Blacks law dictionary, or Websters for the English language).

You can't redefine it because you disagree with the meaning given to it by those that invented it.

Re:NOT Open Source

[Hatta]

Knowledge you can't legally use is close to useless. In fact, it might be worse than useless, because it could end up getting you sued.

A Look At Microsoft Singularity License

[jjzeidner]

A Discerning Look At Microsoft Singularity License

"Opening up my newsreader today and being exposed to cacophony of news bits about Microsoft's Singularity platform, and seeing all the likely PR mouthpieces like Om Malik blogging about it, I decided to take a closer look at their license agreement."

Re:!free

[Florian Weimer]

open source = source code is made available By this criterion, Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office are open source.

And even by Microsoft's standards, the Singularity code release is a non-event as far as licensing is considered. Microsoft has been publishing software under free licenses for years, and pays for more free software work than your average company at a Linux fair.

Re:!free

[alan_dershowitz]

Yeah, but the monolithic kernel ring model is even older, isn't it? This isn't remotely my field of expertise.

*Who* has an agenda?

[mkcmkc]

Your agenda notwithstanding, the term "Open Source" has a specific technical meaning that most of us understand. The title is misleading in that regard.

I'm somewhat agnostic on the question of whether or not Open Source is a good thing, but it does us no good to have someone call any license their cat coughs up "Open Source".

Re:*Who* has an agenda?

[RingDev]

Your agenda notwithstanding, the term "Open Source" has a specific technical meaning that most of us understand. The title is misleading in that regard. I'd agree with you on the title issue, but the minor limitation of the English language technicalities in this matter should have been pretty easily overcome by the tiniest amount of critical thinking and RTFS.

Knowing that "Open Source" is a proper noun and that "open source" is an adjective, I can understand having a momentary thought that Microsoft had released an application that was "Open Source Initiative Approved". But after that moment had passed, I would expect most people with the intelligence of an average /. reader to think, "woh, why the hell would they do that? They must just mean open source." And indeed, the summary and article shows that they did indeed release the project as open source, NOT Open Source/OSIA.

My bone to pick here isn't with MS's release or with open source/Open Source software, both have their own strengths and weaknesses. It's with the people who can't differentiate between a proper noun and an adjective, and the people who are trying to make every appearance of the words open source equate the requirements of the OSI's OSIA stamp.

I'm somewhat agnostic on the question of whether or not Open Source is a good thing, but it does us no good to have someone call any license their cat coughs up "Open Source". The license is completely irrelevant to it's status as open source. The license is however directly tied to it's ability to get Open Source Initiative Approval. Unfortunately, OSIA is rather long to say, so "Open Source" is becoming slang for "Open Source Initiative Approval".

-Rick

Re:*Who* has an agenda?

[Russ Nelson]

Rick, please stop disseminating your confusion. When you don't know what you're talking about, stay silent. "Open Source" is the adjective. It is a trademark. "software" is the generic noun. Thus, you apply the trademark "Open Source" to the noun, "software" to produce "Open Source software". "OSIA" is the Open Source Industry Alliance. Software is only Open Source if it is licensed under an OSI Approved Open Source license.

Re:NOT Open Source

[K-Mile]

It's still open source, just not 'free' software.

Re:!free

[wolverine1999]

If the source can't be modified, it's not open at all...
No thanks

Re:!free

[pak9rabid]

By my definition, they are...but not free (gratis or libre).

Re:!free

[Russ Nelson]

And how open is that? If somebody held an open house, and then excluded black people, how open would that be?

Re:!free

[Delkster]

open just means you can view the source code.

Depends on whose definition you follow. While I agree that the words alone mean no more than that, practically when talking about "open source" people mean something akin to the Open Source definition by OSI, which is closer to free software. A license prohibiting commercial use is also not open source according to that kind of a definition for the term.

This has also been done with Java

[arthurp]

There is a similar project that is a Java based kernel. It is called JX and is truly open-source (GNU GPL).

I think this is a very neat idea. Just one more step on the progression of languages down the software stack. A while back no one would have dreamed of writing OS code in anything but assembler. Now the Linux scheduler is written in C. Times change. Maybe a managed OS will be future. Garbage collection is really nice to have.

Re:Just a thought.

[Allador]

You've got it backwards. A design like this is intended to be almost perfectly resilient to crashing individual processes and the like.

It's not clear to me by the reading I've done what the parallel is to explorer.exe in Singularity, but given the micro-kernel approach, I feel pretty confident saying that it would not bring down the whole machine.

Re:!free

[Russ Nelson]

Uhhhh, nobody actually believes that "open source" means "source code is made available". The only people who SAY that are free software zealots who are attempting to destroy "open source". Basically, STFU troll.

Re:NOT Open Source

[El Lobo]

Well, don't read any book then. Almost everyone of them is copywrited.

Re:NOT Open Source

[Hatta]

Books don't come with a "no commercial use" license.

MS is 17 years behind...

[ovz_kir]

So they have some prototype of the OS kernel, releasing it under non-commercial free license?

It has just occurred to me that a guy named Linus Torvalds did the same back in 1991, releasing an OS kernel called Linux under a free, strictly non-commercial license. He later got the clue and changed it to GNU GPL.

Apparently Microsoft is 17 years behind; will they get the clue? I doubt it.

Re:!free

[infonography]

You insensitive clod, you posted that on the internets, now you've offended all native speakers of Hungarian Notation, and their chances of Independence from Hungarian Proper have been set back 100 years.

Re:How can I digg this inaccurate?

[doom]

"non-commercial" is not Open Source. I thought the advantage of Slashdot over Digg was that there were editors to fix things like this before going live,

No, no, the advantage of visiting this site is to giggle at CmdrTaco for getting the definition of "Open Source" wrong.

But he's just a newbie, so don't laugh too hard.

(Proof positive: OSX rots your brain.)

Re:!free

[that_itch_kid]

I think he meant "Compare (Linux and Minix) to (Singularity)"

On the future of Microsoft

[Khopesh]

Singularity looks like testing the waters of an OSS kernel. This is (IMHO) a direct result of the pressure applied by PC vendors deciding to ship Ubuntu and friends. Microsoft sees the need for a move, and as you put it, the "concept car" is there to be scrutinized rather than realized.

It is in Microsoft's best interests to get the hell out of the kernel business. I don't understand why this isn't plainly clear to their executives. If they want to kill Linux, they should jump on board some other train ... probably a BSD. Sure, purposeful incompatibility would be in the mix, so it won't be so interchangeable with other BSD incarnations like OS X or FreeBSD, but it would solve many of their security issues right off. This would move Microsoft's OS team from competing with Red Hat and Ubuntu to competing with GTK+/Gnome and Qt/KDE, which is wise because the BSD and Linux kernels beat the pants off of the Windows kernel, whereas it's a far closer race in the desktop environment arena, and Microsoft has the office suite battle pretty much in the bag (so this line of logic would suggest an official Linux release for Office further down the line).

There is also pressure on the mobile front, with MS solutions looking like they will lose to Google's Andriod (Java), Nokia's Qtopia (C++/Qt), and FIC's OpenMoko (C/GTK+). C# isn't half bad, so if they start developing something along the lines of an Andriod/Qt/GTK+ killer that also fuels their desktop GUI, they stay in the game. Otherwise, their mainstay will fade into X-Box, Office, and perhaps Visual Studio.

Alternatively, they could use their obscene wealth to flat-out buy Google's biggest competitor... *shudder*

As a note ... I could never have imagined myself writing this two or more years ago. I was as anti-Microsoft as they come ... but my fear and hate for them is transitioning to Google (see http://www.google-watch.org/ and http://www.gmail-is-too-creepy.com/ for reference). We'll see how a corporate mantra of "don't be evil" works for a company in the business of being evil.

Re:!free

[AndrewHowe]

It can't be both global and static. Error detected. Hungarian wins.

What Singularity Is Not

[Matrix14]

A large number of people are missing the point. Singularity is not meant to replace any version of Windows. Singularity is not meant to be competition for Linux. Singularity is not meant to be open source in any useful sense of the term.

Singularity is a research project. It's meant as a testing ground for new and interesting ideas about operating systems. It's especially a project to see what you can do with an OS if you control the entire software stack, particularly the compiler and runtime system. It's not meant to be an OS anyone would actually use for anything; instead it's meant to give people an idea of what's possible in such a setting, and what problems you can solve in new and interesting ways.

So, why are they releasing it? Probably for a few reasons. The first is that Microsoft Research is a research lab, and Singularity is an academic research project. MSR is interested in advancing the state of the art in computer science, and operating system design is one of the things that they particularly care about. Singularity is part of this effort, and so MSR wants people to see it, understand how it works, and use that understanding to push forward new ideas about how operating systems could someday be written. Go to http://research.microsoft.com/os/singularity/#publications ; you'll find a dozen or so technical academic papers describing the workings of Singularity, so that other researchers in the field can know about the advances made by MSR.

Another reason is that, as MSR is mostly unconnected from the commercial sections of Microsoft, they have no reason to hide their work from competitors. I'm sure the people involved in Singularity are happy that the project is now in a place where they can show others all of the details of the awesome stuff they've been working on for a few years.

I'm also sure they have little interest in building a community of developers. They have that; dozens of people at MSR work on singularity. They don't care about receiving patches from the community, or other people pushing the project in new directions. It's their project, and they want to continue working on it themselves. They are more interested in showing off their work than in recieving contributions to it. There's no intention for it to be "open source," as /. understands the term.

Finally, all the Microsoft bashing going on in this discussion is entirely missing the point. MSR has little connection the rest of the company. They have no interest in producing commercially viable projects or crushing competition. Their job is to push forward the state of the art. Remember Xerox PARC and Bell labs? It's the same idea. They give Microsoft ideas about future projects, generally increase the amount of knowledge in the world and give the company some academic prestige (as someone pointed somewhere in the discussion earlier).

So all of the MS bashing and confusion over whether this is intended on being true open source or a product is misplaced. It's neither. It's an experiment, to see what can be done.

Err, Trademark Infringement maybe

[JSBiff]

I'm not sure, but when it comes to names, I don't think copyright law applies, but instead, trademark / service mark law.

Re:NOT Open Source

[imtheguru]

Link to the license agreement. http://www.codeplex.com/singularity/license

Website claims to be the "Open Source Project Community" but the Singularity project's license is earmarked "Custom License".


Finally, quoting the text of the license for those who don't even want to visit the website.


License: Custom License
Microsoft Research License Agreement
Non-Commercial Academic Use Only

Singularity Research Development Kit (RDK)


This Microsoft Research License Agreement, including all exhibits ("MSR-LA") is a legal agreement between you and Microsoft Corporation ("Microsoft" or "we") for the software or data identified above, which may include source code, and any associated materials, text or speech files, associated media and "online" or electronic documentation and any updates we provide in our discretion (together, the "Software").

By installing, copying, or otherwise using this Software, you agree to be bound by the terms of this MSR-LA. If you do not agree, do not install, copy, or use the Software. The Software is protected by copyright and other intellectual property laws and is licensed, not sold.

SCOPE OF RIGHTS:
You may use, copy, reproduce, and distribute this Software for any non-commercial academic purpose, subject to the restrictions in this MSR-LA. Some purposes which can be non-commercial academic are teaching, academic research, and personal experimentation. You may also distribute this Software with books or other teaching materials, or publish the Software on websites, that are intended to teach the use of the Software for academic or other non-commercial purposes. Notwithstanding anything to the contrary herein, you may only use the tools included in the Software to build the Singularity system, or build applications that will run on Singularity.

You may not use or distribute this Software or any derivative works in any form for commercial purposes. Examples of commercial purposes would be running business operations, licensing, leasing, or selling the Software, distributing the Software for use with commercial products, using the Software in the creation or use of commercial products or any other activity which purpose is to procure a commercial gain to you or others.

You may create derivative works of the Software source code and distribute the modified Software solely for non-commercial academic purposes, as provided herein.. If you distribute the Software or any derivative works of the Software, you will distribute them under the same terms and conditions as in this license, and you will not grant other rights to the Software or derivative works that are different from those provided by this MSR-LA. Your license rights to the Software (or any Microsoft intellectual property associated therewith) does not include any license, right, power or authority to subject the Software or derivative works thereof in whole or in part to the terms of any license that requires as a condition of use, modification and/or distribution of software subject to such license that the software or other software combined and/or distributed with such software be (A) disclosed or distributed in source code form; (B) licensed for the purpose of making derivative works; or (C) redistributable at no charge.

If you have created derivative works of the Software, and distribute such derivative works, you will cause the modified files to carry prominent notices so that recipients know that they are not receiving the original Software. Such notices must state: (i) that you have changed the Software; and (ii) the date of any changes.

In return, we simply require that you agree:

1. That you will not remove any copyright or other notices from the Software.

2. That if any of the Software is in binary format, you will not attempt to modify such portions of the Software, or to reverse engineer or decompile them, except and only to the

Re:NOT Open Source

[imtheguru]

OpenSource.org, the authority on OpenSource, disagrees.
http://www.opensource.org/docs/osd

Spew less crap over the Internet.

Cheers.

Re:NOT Open Source

[El Lobo]

Oh no? Try slighty modifying "Harry potter" and selling your new book comercially. Good luck.

Re:!free

[imtheguru]

"open source = source code is made available"

http://www.opensource.org/

They may have coinded tghe term, they certainly promoted it and made it polular. They disagree.

all the best,

drew

http://zotzbro.blogspot.com/ From the same website you've linked. [http://www.opensource.org/docs/osd]

In short:
"Open source doesn't just mean access to the source code. The distribution terms of open-source software must comply with the following criteria:" ... followed by a 10 point list of compliance criteria.

I must say, i'm crushed. I expected more from a lowid slashdotter.

Cheers.

Anther reason I don't like MS

[Tracy Reed]

I found out about this a day or two before it hit slashdot via programming.reddit.com or something. I was the second post on the singularity site. Right after the current first post "I'm glad Singularity has been released. When I first read about the project a year or so ago, I wondered what would become of it."

I said that this isn't open source and that this is why I prefer Free Software and that the confusion of Free as in freedom vs free as in cost is better than the confusion over open source you can't actually do anything with.

They have deleted my post. Bastards.

The current second post which says "Please do not worry about the "free software" demands. I'm very pleased to see the source of the (hopefully) next windows kernel." was in reply to my post about free software.

Sleezy. Just sleezy. And this is why I don't do business with them.

Re:!free

[alan_dershowitz]

I don't think you can ever prevent that anyway, with the intellectual property situation the way it is. Microsoft is doing this to Linux right now regarding patents, and Windows isn't even open source. I guess it comes down to trust as to whether or not you take a look at the source. I sure don't trust MS' word on the Linux/patents thing, I don't trust that they are acting in good faith on the OOXML thing, so maybe I'm dumb for trusting them on this. But I think they are legitimately putting their toe in the water with regards to open source and how they are going to run the company in the future.

Re:Stability? Fool?

[davidsyes]

Some fool took me literally....

Re:!free

[zotz]

"open source = source code is made available"

That part was a quote from the parent I was replying to.

""Open source doesn't just mean access to the source code. The distribution terms of open-source software must comply with the following criteria:" ... followed by a 10 point list of compliance criteria."

Yup, I agree, So the MS offering is not open source in my book. Even though I prefer to speak in terms of Free Software and not in terms of Open Source Software.

So, open source is much more than just "open source = source code is made available". Do we agree? I think we do and you missed the fact that I was quoting something to disagree with it.

all the best,

drew
http://zotzbro.blogspot.com/

Re:It's a microkernel

[Profane MuthaFucka]

On the bandwagon? I've been using Linux since 1993. I am DRIVING the bandwagon. When I was a kid, the bandwagon resembled the bang bus. That was a really fun bandwagon, way back then.

Re:!free

[kylehase]

Use it as an educational tool but if you use your education to develop something completely new you'll be violating 235 of their patents.

Explain to me...

[Brandybuck]

Someone explain a concept to me. I am not a kernel developer, so to my mind this is all black magic. How the frak do you get a managed code kernel? Is this a pure virtual machine? If not, then who the hell is managing the kernel? Who's running the environment that's running the kernel?

Re:!free

[Almahtar]

This screams "Patent litigation opportunity."

Open your source to everyone, disallow it to be used commercially. Now you can patent cop every person you think "may have" been influenced by your source. Yay.

Bell Labs Inferno

[dido]

From what I know of Singularity, it's basically Microsoft's attempt to replicate the Inferno OS, but using C#/CLR instead of Limbo/Dis. At least the people behind Inferno had the balls to use real Free/Open Source licenses for their stuff. Sheesh, does anyone else find it a coincidence that Stephen Hawking applied the phrase from Dante's Inferno: "Abandon all hope, all ye who enter here" when describing black hole singularities? Or perhaps the designers of Singularity were well aware of the work done in Bell Labs by Ken Thompson and the like that led to the design of Inferno, and chose the name consciously?

Re:!free

[masterzora]

It can't be both global and static.

What? Since when?

Re:!free

[steelbr2]

Yeah you're right a micro kernel is such a revolutionary idea :) late i know.

Re:NOT Open Source

[A.K.A_Magnet]

HermMunster's reply is very accurate imho, I'll just add one thing. Before the OSI made up the "Open Source" term, we would simply call the fact that the source of a program is available (whatever the license) "available source code" and not "Open Source" (especially not with capitals). The proper headline would be "Microsoft Singularity code now available for download". Regardless of anyone's views on F/OSS, the fact is that Open Source now mostly (99%) refers to the Open Source Definition by the OSI.

Now, I have myself always been in the Free Software side of the Force (considering the Open Source term only for business related matters) and I agree with Richard Stallman that having the emphasis on the openness rather than the freedom of the code could only lead to the current misunderstanding. Since the Open Source term was coined to avoid the free (as in beer)/Free (as in freedom) ambiguity I find it rather ironic that the Open Source term now suffers from it too -- but let's just keep in mind that it is so only because closed source companies either want to surf on the Open Source wave or spread FUD.

Then again, there is no solution because we can't trademark everyday words unless we're extra rich (then, we can trademark words such as windows or apple! but well) so whatever the term chosen to define the underlying concept behind any new idea that makes rich conservative people afraid, they will try to discredit it by calling their own, non-compliant products, the same way. We still have people, whom after having been explained the concept 20 times, will say "Who are you redefine the meaning of 'free', I have the right to call my 'freeware' 'free software' if I want to". According to my dictionary, these people are typically what we call "morons" ;). Words and expressions are meant to carry concepts, and Free Software (with capitals) as well as Open Source (with capitals) carry two (slightly different) concepts; those expressions were not used anywhere as much and with capitals before their respective inventors (RMS & the FSF, & the OSI) introduced them. So really, your argument is moot and imho such way of thinking (shown in other comments too) only slows down the debate and general awareness.

Re:NOT open source

[pimpimpim]

I think you mix up the difference between the fact that you can download the full source code and read it (open source), with the different ways of distribution and licensing available. Say, if you use a piece of (scientific) software, you will need to know what it does, and maybe change it for yourself, or recompile it if you want to run it on special hardware, so just having the source available is a necessity.

Being able (or being forced!) to redistribute that changed source is a whole different issue, and complicated by different licensing schemes.

Minix 3 is under a BSD-esque license

[Sits]

Minix 3 has a BSD style license so it does not preclude looking and using the source. Versions released prior to 2000 were under a more restrictive license (personal copying only, no redistribution with your changes already merged in, non-commercial use and so on).

I would not consider Singularity to be under an Open Source license myself though. It is more in the vain of pre-2000 Minix (educational/academic use). However the technology in it is interesting and Google's Mike Hearn has a good series of blog entires giving an overview of the ideas within Singularity.

What would be the point?

[encoderer]

1. What would be the point of having a global, static variable?
2. Of course, the original post also threw-in "Constant" which, of course, makes the other designations moot anyway.

Re:What would be the point?

[masterzora]

I don't disagree with the pointlessness. I disagree with the part wherein it was stated that you can't do it.

I don't care...

[mulhall]

...if you dismiss me as a grammar nazi.

"Doesn't quality"

Doesn't qualify

"They are trying to confuse the market into a non-understanding of what open source means."

They are trying to confuse the market into misunderstanding what open source means. ...and so on.

Your post was good, great points, a valuable contribution, but reading it made me feel like my brain was being whipped with a spatula.

Is this UNG?

[bentob0x]

Is this their first official UNG release? Maybe they should have called it SiUNGlarity ...

Open source or not...

[AndyMiles]

Who cares if something is "Open Source" or not?

It's like talking about "Chiquita(TM) bananas are better than non Chiquita(TM) bananas"!

Maybe a bad example... all I want to say is that I don't give a f***k whether something is original or not! Anyway... it depends on what you define as original, commercial or non commercial.

Sorry, but this discussion leads us to nowhere... When I find something free to play, modify(is Singularity modifiable? I don't know, but it sounds interesting), educational, maybe constructive for taking some ideas for own projects, then I spend a bit of my time on it. For my part... I'll take a look into singularity. If I like it, I'll continue playing with it. If not, then I'll ignore it.

Liking or disliking was and is a matter of taste. Does anybody know if he/she likes something without trying it first?

I don't think the first hackers considered about from who a product came from... It was the passion of creating and modifying things in another usable creative way.

Discussions were really about technology... not about flaming somebody else's work. If I don't like something, I just give a constructive comment and then I ignore it. In case it gets better, *then* maybe I'd touch it again.

I'm programming and playing around with linux or other unix derivates (because I like it... I love it... *yeah*)... At work I'm (unfortunately) programming in .NET.

Managed or not... Micro$oft or Open Source or any other thing depending on how you name it... Everything has positive and negative sides.

Just take the best of everything and give the world something better.

No... I'm not a religion guy who separates the good from the evil! *lol*

It's just my opinion...

Greets and thanks for reading,
Andy

P.S. Dammed my first post in here (and almost off topic)... maybe it's a stupid reply, but I had to get rid of this! Oh... and sorry about my english.... I'm not a native english speaker.

Re:!free

[TheoMurpse]

Agreed. If you can't modify and redistribute, then it's "open," but it's not "source." It's "library book."