Interview with Vita Nuova CEO Michael Jeffrey 104
Little-Fat-Sheep writes: "Lots of talk on Slashdot and elsewhere lately about the future of Operating Systems being massively distributed. Well, the technology exists for years now in the two operating systems offered by Vita Nuova: Plan9 and Inferno. OSNews features today an interview with Vita Nuova's CEO, Michael Jeffrey."
Ads suck (Score:1, Informative)
Re:What about bandwidth? (Score:2)
any connection in the system can be optionally securely hashed and/or encrypted, using well-known algorithms like sha, rc4, des, or idea (among others). authentication is based on a public key model.
Umm bell labs? (Score:1, Informative)
Read the article... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Inferno? (Score:1)
Oh, I'm not asking them to change it. If a name like that already has recognition, it could be beneficial to stick with it. But why choose the hard path and work against the marketing, if you can actually go with it.. I'm just cursing the overall lack of thinking and planning beforehand and not just in this case but in many open and closed source projects I've seen.
And the word 'inferno' itself. As the dictionary says, it's a word describing a hot, hell-ish place. Use this product and see your Athlon melt, hard disks fail and your system doomed to deepest parts of heck. I'm kinda curious, how you come to thinking of fast with this word..? All I can think of is flames. Probably something to do with the movie 'Towering Inferno'.
Well, anyway, this is getting a bit off-topic already..
Re:Inferno? (Score:1)
It's not a marketing organization, it's Bell Labs Research... the same guys who named an older OS 'Unix' as a pun on Multics. If somebody happens to find their stuff useful, that's great, but that's not really why they do it or name it. Personally, I'm grateful for what they've put together over the years, it's even helped pay the bills, so go easy on them will you?
Re:Inferno? (Score:1)
Similarly 'Limbo', 'Styx', 'Charon' and certainly many other various bits of the Inferno system are references to that work.
If I remember correctly, contrary to the typical image of 'Hell', fire serves primarily as a punishment for the lustful. Perhaps this is a convoluted way of selling with sex?
Then again, requiring people to understand symbolism in medival literature probably isn't very good marketing either.
Re:Inferno? (Score:1)
The folks at Bell Labs pick names like "Plan 9" and "Inferno" for exactly the reasons you say they shouldn't. From [cs.hut.fi]
:
Fermentation... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Fermentation... (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually to clarify... (Score:1)
Re:Fermentation... (Score:2)
Because of no real killer app has been found yet. For most distributed computing work PVM/MPI is all you need. Distributing the OS is a neat concept, but, in itself, gets you nothing. It's one of those concepts that was to be the One True Solution (tm) but was proven not essential. Sort of like microkernel OS's. When Linus started Linux Andy Tanenbaum declared it a monster. He argued that at that time starting work on a monolithic kernel was an idiotic idea. He was proven wrong. Same here, I guess. Unix was supposed to be obsolete, but it has served us well thus far, and probably will for alot longer. It's nice to know we have good alternatives to take off when Unix is truly dead.
Re:Fermentation... (Score:2)
Re:Fermentation... (Score:2)
But it does. Tanenbaum predicted monolithic kernels were on their way out of the mainstream and that only micro-kernel architectures would survive. Linux is here to prove otherwise.
I think had Minix been more libre licensing slashdot geeks would be chanting Andy's name rather than Linus's.
Minix was a pile of crap. Period. It had no real multitasking, and it's cross-platform support was done by using a lowest-common-denominator aproach at the cost of performace. If all we had was Minix (no FreeBSD, no Linux), Windows would have taken over completely by now and I'd probably wouldn't be taking an Informatics Engineering course since I wouldn't have had the chance to play with an OS at such a low level when I was at the PFY stage. That's life.
:)
Re:Fermentation... (Score:1)
I think the reason for the increase in popularity is probobally due to the increasing speed of networks, and the increasing popularity of networking in general.
Evolve together... (Score:2, Insightful) third owned by the Big Blue Linux supporter. Wouldn't it be better to have a directed 2 year plan to create a merged platform ? The reality is that Linux right now is in the Bazaar and to get to that end game we need some form of Cathedral project to guide and drive. But picture the end game, a networked OS, with loads of apps, the best SMP, io, memory and domaining support you can get.
This would be the great killer platform for servers, and a kick-ass gaming platform.
Unfortunately it won't happen because the only people who could really run this successfully would be a combination of Bell Labs and Thomas J Watson. Damn that would be kick-ass, but Big Blue don't seem to want to take the lead in Linux, and the linux community probably wouldn't let them anyway.
A correction and thoughts (Score:4, Interesting)
Regarding the 'killer platform', im not sure that Holy Grail exists. However the world proves daily that implementation is more important than design, so just pick what works best for you.
Re:A correction of the correction (Score:1)
The Plan 9 release is available for free download at
It includes source of the kernel, libraries, and commands for all supported architectures. It also includes complete binaries for the x86 architecture.
Regarding implementation: You can be the judge of whether this sounds like a good idea:
Subject: What GUIs does it support?
The standard interface doesn't use icons or drag-n-drop; Plan 9 people tend to be text-oriented. But the window system, the editor, and the general feel are very mousy, very point-and-click: Plan 9 windows are much more than a bunch of glass TTYs. The system supports the graphics primitives and libraries of basic software for building GUIs.
A screenshot is available at
Subject: How do I cut and paste with a 2 button mouse?
Plan 9 really works well only with a three-button mouse. In the meantime, Shift-Right-button will simulate a middle button, but that is inadequate for Acme's chording.
Beg to differ (Score:2)
Because you can look at the code does not mean it passes the criteria of the OSD or the FSF's guidelines. Put some Plan9 code in your 'Hello World' app and im sure you will be hearing from someone...
Re:A correction of the correction (Score:2, Interesting)
- the plan nine license requires all changes be sent back to them;
- you (possibly) can't sell your code for a profit;
- lots of other problems with the license. (see here [linuxtoday.com] for Stallman's take on it.)
Re:A correction of the correction (Score:1)
The full text of the Plan 9 Open Source Licence can be found at the Bell Labs Plan 9 site. The licence is similar to many Open Source licences.
The main points are:
-You can modify, copy and distribute the source code as you wish.
-There are no royalty payments on the distribution.
I believe there is a clause, or combinations of clauses, that require you to provide Lucent with source if you distribute binaries only. Sort of looks like a semi-BSDified GPL. Please correct me if I'm wrong -- I'm not completely fluent in legalese.
Plan 9 / Open source (Score:1)
Re:Plan 9 / Open source (Score:4, Informative)
note also that the commentary you're linking to is commenting on an older version of the Plan 9 license; most (not all) of the issues have been addressed.
Re:Plan 9 / Open source (Score:2)
Umm, Plan 9 isn't [gnu.org] open source...
I'm amazed anyone really gives a shit. How many people whining about it are actually systems programmers? I'm happy that they're distributing the source at all- it doesn't bother me that I can't redistribute modified versions. RMS gets tiresome quickly- he doesn't seem to draw a distinction in moral terms between this kind of license and the MS licenses. Moronic.
Also, I'm sick of hearing RMS talk about how "I'm not a supporter of the Open Source movement." Jesus, put the bong down and join the real world, where you have to cooperate with people.
Re:Evolve together... (Score:1) last question in the interview is about the license, in which he states it is _not_ open source.
Re:Evolve together... (Score:2)
For example, the attributes that make a great gaming platform (low latency, lots of multimedia device support, good graphics libraries, easy single-user setup and configuration) are not the same as those that define the server market (high reliability, clustering and RAID, easily automated and administered remotely). Why should Linux (or any single OS) be the "One True Way" for both of these, much less for any and every potential market out there?
Personally, I'd rather boot into something like OpenBeOS [openbeos.org] (once it's ready, of course) for media work, switch to Linux when I'm doing network code development, and maybe leave a copy of OpenBSD around for the times I'm feeling paranoid.
One platform != one choice (Score:2)
See Microsoft and modular argument. Linux is modular (not that nice an impl IMO), so are the mainframe architectures. Only have one proc ? Don't install SMP. Don't need domaining, don't use it. Don't need X,Y,Z then don't use them. Having a standard OS platform from which you can build your targetted OS is the approach I was talking about. In the same way as you don't compile the ISA support into Linux if you don't need it.
OSes should be modular, the aim should be to get the best modules available from the best people to create the most flexible platform.
One size does not fit all, just look at the size of the SUSE distro.
Re:Evolve together... (Score:2)
Any OS tectbook or course will be full of lines like "but we can't say which of [x y z] is the best because it will depend on the application at hand."
This is true for scheduling algorithms, distributed deadlock detection algorithms, etc...
Something like an OS is very much intertwined with the problem you are solving. And that means that when you generalize, you lose some of the efficiency.
Re:Evolve together... (Score:2)
It does have users & applications.
It's lacking in desktop software like word processors & spreadsheets & image editors but that does not mean it's not "useful".
I have a plna9 box on my netwrok and I much prefer working on it than any of the others (FreeBSD & win2k).
It is used by non-programmers in a few instiutions for text editing and email.
The mailing list consists of about 50 active posters.
It's a research OS and the programmers that use it are happy that it is a clean sheet implementation and that it doesn't carry a lot of the hair that some of the other OS's have collected on their voyage through userland.
no exactlly... (Score:1)
the main talk lately is about distributed file system and processing power and the privacy issues... not technology issues.
JavaOS and Inferno (Score:1)
Re:JavaOS and Inferno (Score:1)
descendant with a fairly small number of targeted
enhancements.
I'd go into more detail but I loaned my docs to
someone else around here and don't have the time
to go hunt them up right now.
Re:JavaOS and Inferno (Score:5, Informative)
Open Source? (Score:1)
Re:Open Source? (Score:5, Informative)
Michael Jeffrey sums it up in one sentence (Score:4, Informative)
Or maybe not eh ? (Score:2)
Like me saying "I believe that Fluffy dinosaurs rule the world" it says more about the gullibility of the believer than the statement.
Re:Or maybe not eh ? (Score:2)
You can bet your ass taht if there *were* fluffy dinosaurs out there and they were smart enough they would rule the world. Maybe even if they weren't smart but there wre a lot of them and they were really hungry
Re:Or maybe not eh ? (Score:1)
Bit of a difference there.
Inferno Plugin (fractal program) - not a fractal? (Score:1)
If I'm wrong, set me straight and mod me down and explain fractals to me again...
Re:Inferno Plugin (fractal program) - not a fracta (Score:5, Informative)
you're reaching the numeric precision of the hardware. Most fractal viewiers out there have this problem. They may do things in 64 bit math or 128 bit math or use their own custom routines, but eventually you zoom in so far the math falls apart.
Re:Plan9 users? (Score:2)
Why do they keep ignoring us? (Score:1, Funny)
We have customers in 50+ countries in every continent, except Antarctica.
Yet another company that writes off an entire continent. McMurdoans are tired of being the niche-too-small-to-consider.
When we talk about "penguin power" down here, it's got nothing to do with cheap CDs from LinuxCentral.
Re:Why do they keep ignoring us? (Score:2)
The 'Patent pending' icon on slashdot page? (Score:1)
Re:The 'Patent pending' icon on slashdot page? (Score:1)
Perhaps they should consider creating such a topic if only to showcase the Plan9 mascot, Glenda [bell-labs.com]. By far the most [endearing|1337|funny] mascot among the open source OSes.
inferno plugin (Score:2)
Inferno Security was examined in 2600 Winter 2001 (Score:1)
Its a good read and shows that while Inferno implements encyption and other security measures, it is not very secure. The author of the article has written a login utility and password cracker for Inferno however his site seems to be down [trauma-inc.com], or temporarily empty i guess, at the moment. It doesnt really cover plan9, just a mention.
Re:Inferno Security was examined in 2600 Winter 20 (Score:2)
Doing things right. (Score:2, Informative)
Private namespaces -> Inferno gives each user/app a private namespace. If you're not allowed to see a file, it'not in your namespace, so there's no way you can even ask to see it. This is a good example of capabilities-based security. This is lightyears past the MS-DOS idea of each disk partition or network share being painfully appearant to the user.
JIT optimized VM -> DIS, the Inferno VM, is based on a memory machine instead of a stack machine (a la Java and CLR/Mono). This allows for more efficient register allocation durring just-in-time compililation. Stack machines are great for writng smpleinterpreters with small memory footprints. Memoery machines are great for easily recompiling into fast native code. If I could, I'd start on an Open Source VM based on DIS. Toasters are great, but I don't want a crippled VM just so that it's easy to run on an 8-bit microprocessor in a toaster. You guys running SPARC, MIPS, POWER, PPC, IA64, etc. CPUs should notice the performance advantags of DIS more than us poor x86 users because the x86 is pretty register starved.)
Distributed resources -> in Plan 9, there is a crippled user account without a password that pretty much can't doanything but present cryptographic credentials that prove it's doing work on behalf of a priveledged user. This would allow your dnet client to run on your CPU farm, but not actually be able to log in as you if it got compromised. As far as I can tell, the system is very similar to Kerberos with more types ofcredentials and tickets that never expire. I don't like the lack of ticket expiration , but it's better security than almost anything else out there. Most Beowulf implementations use rsh for performance, so you need to isolate the Beowulf compute nodes from anything remotely hostile, since rsh gives you a root prompt without a password based on the source TCP port number.
Features of Plan 9 / Inferno (Score:1)
The soul of these systems are the protocols 9P, (the new version will be renamed 2000P) and Styx, even more than the actual OS implementations. The protocol is a bit like raising the abstraction level from TCP "transport" layer to somewhere closer to the "session" layer, although the OSI terminology does not fit very well.
First important idea of the protocol is, that all functionality or "objects" is mounted remotedly and bound locally as directories, called "file systems" in Plan 9 parlance.
This means, that naming, user rights management, authentication, encryption and all that which f.ex. CORBA2 provides as complex badly interoperable abstract extensions are there with strict binary interoperability for all heterogenous environments. Of course multiplexing and streaming is there, because you have a set of bidirectional files or "named pipes", if you will.
Note that all this is independent of the programming language. There are C and Java libraries for accessing 9P or Styx objects.
An example: the access to TCP/IP functionality is a
The second major point is process security. The file system name spaces are per process. If you only give a process the
The third point is related to second: inheritance or "stack directories" or "union directories". You can have a base file system like
You can give the stack to the name space of any process. Now some of the original names are visible and data to them goes transparently to the original implementation process. Some names are new, and data is routed to the modification implementation. Some of that may be redirected to the original names after checks or modifications.
And the iplementations can be mounted from anywhere on the network. You can have several machines running several OS' and programming languages with 9P/Styx, and they all are mounted, bound and stacked to one directory, say "/service", for your chosen client process, which does not see the configuration of the system.
For example low level "device" file systems, see
and for higher level file example systems
or in Plan 9
Bad points of Plan 9 / Inferno (Score:1)
It is somewhat difficult to port existing Unix applications to Plan 9. There is a POSIX compliance APE environment, but its use id discouraged in the Plan 9 cimmunity. And the environment is full of diffrent "/services" that you should use instead of POSIX system calls to integrate well.
Inferno VM is currently heavily oriented to one programming language, Limbo. There are projects to run Java on the virtual machine, but they are not exactly production quality or marketable. And the philosophies again clash: you should use the existing "/service" components, not the extensive Java environment libraries. If you are a customer of Vita Nuova, you can get the C source to the Inferno environment, and program in C, too.
Lack of applications is obvious. There are development tools of course, and a rudimentary Web browser, but not much else.
9P for Linux (Score:1)