On 11/2/05, address@hidden <address@hidden> wrote:
I am not a developer yet, but in my opinion a program, operating system
should be adequate to some standards. If a device or program is tied to
some standard, in my opinion, it is easyer for people to design programs
for it or run already available programs for it. As a user I would choose
a system with the greatest amount of available programs.
There has been a lot of talk on the list lately about multiple personalities as a design goal in the Hurd. For example, to support what you want, we need a POSIX personality; we have talked about a confined POSIX personality that alleviates all the security problems associated with the POSIX standard. However, the rest of the system sounds like it's going to support new design ideas in the core and a personality backed by modern research.
Therefore, I think we should put "support multiple personalities" as a feature that must be implemented. Without it, we will not be able to support POSIX apps and move forward with newer, forward-thinking personalities backed by recent research.
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William M. Grim
Computer Science Master's Student, Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville
Unix Network Administrator, SIUE, CS. Dept.