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Fuchsia, a new operating system

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Re: Fuchsia, a new operating system

#71

Post by j-pb »

oshepherd wrote: post #48
colemickens wrote: post #30

Written in C. What a shame. edit: Thank you to all of the repliers, I had no idea that most OSes were written in C. Er, actually, I'm more than well aware of that fact and I'm familiar with the number of CVEs that have occurred over the years because of the lack of memory safety involved in that C code. Sorry, I simply don't get the appeal of writing more operating systems and network-exposed code that isn't written…

I love Rust immensely, and it is perhaps my favorite programming language as of late. However. This is a microkernel. There is very, very little code inside a microkernel which, if written in Rust, would not end up inside an unsafe block. You are building the safe abstractions here; that code is inherently unsafe. You could use Rust as a C replacement, but it is a worse C than C, and unsafe rust contains more perils…

You could probably write one in forth though ;p, what's good enough for EFI is good enough for the kernel. (You'd end up with a lot of inline assembly probably though, but hey that's less complicated than C++.)

Re: Fuchsia, a new operating system

#72

Post by slavik81 »

cyphar wrote: post #68
slavik81 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, you couldn't because it's not GPL. It's a license that is nearly identical to the GPL, but slightly different. I think that added restriction actually makes it GPL incompatible, and disqualifies it from being an actual open source license.

> No, you couldn't because it's not GPL. It's a license that is nearly identical to the GPL, but slightly different. Then they actually are not allowed to call it the "GNU General Public License" (or in fact, they are not allowed to modify the license terms). It's the first condition in the license text of the GPL, I'm surprised their lawyers didn't notice that little chestnut.

You clearly have a better understanding of this issue than I do.

My reading was that they were calling theirs the "FreeRTOS open source license", and it just referenced the GPL.

Re: Fuchsia, a new operating system

#73

Post by jdoliner »

aiyodev wrote: post #63
jdoliner wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe the cultural problem is actually that people like you expect open source projects to be like companies except that you don't have to give them money? Most open source code is written by someone because they want it and then they release it so others can see the code. Of course there's a take-it-or-leave-it attitude... why would they care if you take it? They don't get anything if you take it, you taking it was…

That's a huge problem. Some times we end up shitty solutions to problems because the people who wrote the software do not care to fix its bugs and there's a lack of investment in creating better solutions because the free, open source solutions exist. Just look at the state of version control software. Other times we end up with a good, expensive commercial product and a free, crappy open source product with a huge g…

You're always going to end up with shitty solutions to some problems. Making open-source projects good requires several people to devote their lives to it. Very few projects achieve critical mass and all the other ones languish in obscurity. There's always going to be way more failed projects than successful ones. If you consider their existence a huge problem in open-source then it seems the only fix would be to stop trying. I don't think crappy solutions dissuade people from making better ones, if anything all they do is cause people to think: "These guys obviously got nowhere with this project and I don't see what I'm going to do better." But given the amount of duplication in open-source I don't think people really even think that either. It's just that they attempt to make a better version and fail leaving the world with another shitty project. Or, in rare cases they actually succeed and we do wind up with something great. But we wouldn't ever get there if we didn't make 10 of those "shitty solutions" along the way.

Re: Fuchsia, a new operating system

#74

Post by slavik81 »

comex wrote: post #66
slavik81 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, you couldn't because it's not GPL. It's a license that is nearly identical to the GPL, but slightly different. I think that added restriction actually makes it GPL incompatible, and disqualifies it from being an actual open source license.

I guess it depends on how you interpret this clause: > Linking FreeRTOS with other modules is making a combined work based on FreeRTOS. Thus, the terms and conditions of the GNU General Public License V2 cover the whole combination. Does this mean the combination (which could be a trivial combination) can be licensed under the pure GPLv2, or is it just an explanation of the consequences of "combined work", and "the t…

That's a good point. I would think they meant with the exception, because their first sentence is very clear:

> Any FreeRTOS source code, whether modified or in it's original release form, or whether in whole or in part, can only be distributed by you under the terms of the GNU General Public License plus this exception.

The "thus" in your quote also seems to imply it's a clarification of the consequences of previous rules, not a new rule itself. But, IANAL.

Re: Fuchsia, a new operating system

#75

Post by merb »

Actually this compiles pretty easy. It however only runs on the provided qemu. And actually without adding some user space tools you only can use kilo which is akward to handle under a MacOS terminal :( But it's really really easy to setup and even integrate userspace programs. kind of extremly simple to do useful stuff on it.

Re: Fuchsia, a new operating system

#76

Post by mckillop »

merb wrote: post #75

Actually this compiles pretty easy. It however only runs on the provided qemu. And actually without adding some user space tools you only can use kilo which is akward to handle under a MacOS terminal :( But it's really really easy to setup and even integrate userspace programs. kind of extremly simple to do useful stuff on it.

It runs on some Broadwell and Skylake hardware. Docs are coming for http://www.acer.com/ac/en/US/content/series/switchalpha12.

Re: Fuchsia, a new operating system

#77

Post by swetland »

mckillop wrote: post #76
merb wrote: post #75

Actually this compiles pretty easy. It however only runs on the provided qemu. And actually without adding some user space tools you only can use kilo which is akward to handle under a MacOS terminal :( But it's really really easy to setup and even integrate userspace programs. kind of extremly simple to do useful stuff on it.

It runs on some Broadwell and Skylake hardware. Docs are coming for http://www.acer.com/ac/en/US/content/series/switchalpha12 .

https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/magenta/+/master/docs/targe...

Has some notes on setting up the Acer UEFI BIOS to boot the system and creating USB flash boot media.

Hoping to get some more general "HOWTO Run On Hardware" docs up in the near future, including netbooting w/ NUC and other useful things.

Re: Fuchsia, a new operating system

#78

Post by Nullabillity »

couchand wrote: post #60
jdoliner wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Admittedly my response is another extreme from the parent comment. I run an open-source project and certainly don't have a take-it-or-leave-it attitude toward it. Although I also run a company behind that project and do get paid for some small subset of the work I do on the project; it'd be a lot harder to maintain that attitude if I didn't. I don't think open-source is perfect, it could be better and in my opinion i…

Maybe it's useful to point out here that: - Chrome is built on Chromium, which is open source, but Chrome itself is not. - Android is based on open source technologies, but is, again, not itself open source in many cases. - Many, if not most, programming language implementations are not open source. In fact, you're dating yourself with this claim, as those with more experience remember the dark days of paying for com…

> - Chrome is built on Chromium, which is open source, but Chrome itself is not.

If you've actually tried using Chromium then you realize that this distinction doesn't make much sense. Chrome IS Chromium + Netflix + Flash + updater/Omaha + flashier logo.

> - Android is based on open source technologies, but is, again, not itself open source in many cases.

Android itself is open source (AOSP) and is very much a usable system without Play Services.

> - Many, if not most, programming language implementations are not open source. In fact, you're dating yourself with this claim, as those with more experience remember the dark days of paying for compilers. Even C compilers.

As you said yourself, your claims are out-of-date. AFAIK, the only three remaining language implementations that matter today that are not open source would be Oracle Java (very close to OpenJDK), Apple's LLVM form (naturally very close to real LLVM), and Microsoft's C++ compiler (AFAIK generally considered to be crap).

Re: Fuchsia, a new operating system

#79

Post by flukus »

Nullabillity wrote: post #78
couchand wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it's useful to point out here that: - Chrome is built on Chromium, which is open source, but Chrome itself is not. - Android is based on open source technologies, but is, again, not itself open source in many cases. - Many, if not most, programming language implementations are not open source. In fact, you're dating yourself with this claim, as those with more experience remember the dark days of paying for com…

> - Chrome is built on Chromium, which is open source, but Chrome itself is not. If you've actually tried using Chromium then you realize that this distinction doesn't make much sense. Chrome IS Chromium + Netflix + Flash + updater/Omaha + flashier logo. > - Android is based on open source technologies, but is, again, not itself open source in many cases. Android itself is open source (AOSP) and is very much a usable…

> Android itself is open source (AOSP) and is very much a usable system without Play Services.

It's open source by the most limited definition possible. Google throw the source code over the fence occasionally.

Re: Fuchsia, a new operating system

#80

Post by flukus »

couchand wrote: post #60
jdoliner wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Admittedly my response is another extreme from the parent comment. I run an open-source project and certainly don't have a take-it-or-leave-it attitude toward it. Although I also run a company behind that project and do get paid for some small subset of the work I do on the project; it'd be a lot harder to maintain that attitude if I didn't. I don't think open-source is perfect, it could be better and in my opinion i…

Maybe it's useful to point out here that: - Chrome is built on Chromium, which is open source, but Chrome itself is not. - Android is based on open source technologies, but is, again, not itself open source in many cases. - Many, if not most, programming language implementations are not open source. In fact, you're dating yourself with this claim, as those with more experience remember the dark days of paying for com…

> In fact, you're dating yourself with this claim, as those with more experience remember the dark days of paying for compilers. Even C compilers.

And how many bugs (and security issues) have their roots in the limited stack size that those shareware compilers came with?

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