Re: Ada OS

["Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de>]

On Thu, 27 Dec 2007 02:56:04 +0600, I. Levashew wrote:

> Paul wrote:
> 
>> OpenBSD values security, correctness and standardization, all of which I 
>> see in Ada.
> 
> Well, security is currently something fashionable. Nobody wants to be 
> the one not concious about security. But Ada isn't being mentioned more 
> often. I had impression that it's a good show business to be 
> security-concious.

Under "security" a marketing guy understands making secure something which
is not. They sell solutions for problems. The software which is secure by
its nature has no market, obviously. You can't sell a medical ventilator to
people who can breathe. First they must be ill, badly ill...

> in their programs. Security measures such as SELinux, chroot, 
> Capabilities, etc. can only be secondary layers of prevention, not the 
> primary one.

Right, a lid to seal the compost-bin...

> God in the details. Each detail matters. That's why next-generation OS 
> must be written in Ada, but it's neither the least nor the most 
> meaningful detail.

I think that Ada still lacks some important features. Concerning security
and OS design the problem with Ada is that it has a trusted model of
interaction between components. You can do a lot of unchecked stuff. The
model of access rights is very primitive (visible - private).

In short, there will be needed a level of OS API *outside* the language to
protect objects and methods of. That wouldn't be a truly modern OS, as Unix
was when it started to use a higher-level language in its design. To be
modern now means that the very language should be able to deliver
protection (and some other things, like distribution, persistence,
heterogeneity).

-- 
Regards,
Dmitry A. Kazakov
http://www.dmitry-kazakov.de