Re: Ada-inspired OS/Language

[nickroberts@blueyonder.co.uk (Nick Roberts)]

On Fri, 30 Aug 2002 09:33:11 -0400, "Marin D. Condic" <not.valid@acm.org>
strongly typed:

>It looks interesting. Does this mean that development on AdaOS is ramping
>up? 

I'm not sure about "ramping up"! Maybe stepping up a gear. I can only hope
that as people see the vast technical superiority (and I'm not being
ironic, for once) of AdaOS, they will be attracted. But that will surely be
a slow process for the next few years.

>Here's one thing I think is an excellent hook: The fact that you are
>aiming to make it a distributed system. ... That's something kind of unique. 

Yes, I think it is. I am not very familiar with Andrew, but my impression
is that in fact no-one has produced a truly distributed OS yet (that can
shuffle processes between workstations arbitrarily, without any major
restrictions).

>Perhaps the more it aims at distribution and load balancing the more of a 
>niche it will find in industry. If it makes scaling up a system easy by 
>just plugging in more inexpensive computers, it could really catch on. 

I believe AdaOS really will make it easy to just add on computers. But this
is not the only potential hook. It seems AdaOS may be the first general OS
to offer proper security facilities (TCSEC B1 or B2). Do any others offer
full dual labelling?

>Especially to the extent that it can exploit Ada tasking as a distribution 
>mechanism ...

I'm glad you have seen that point. I think it is a very significant one.
There is currently a hot market in Internet servers, for e-business and
many other purposes. These still all work on software that is very
primitive (e.g. vulnerable to buffer overrun vulnerabilities), and I see
this as one potential ouvre for AdaOS.

>BTW: What theme is driving the naming scheme?

Some of the names are old, and have simply stuck. For example, the program
named "Avarus" (Latin for "miser") was named long before it became the
object system manager, and was instead responsible for storage compaction.

Some are new, and I have endeavoured to choose names that are original but
which have some relevance. "Bachar" is the Gaelic for "acorn", which seemed
appropriate for a microkernel. "Belenus" was a Celtic god of light and fire
(and he was also associated with the forge and metalworking), and so seemed
quite appropriate for a windowing program. "Carrot" is the name of a
character, from the Discworld series of books by Terry Pratchett, who is
phenomenal at remembering people's names (quite unlike myself ;-).
Suggestions for program names are always welcome!

-- 
Nick Roberts