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A Kernel Hacker Meets Fuchsia OS

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Re: A Kernel Hacker Meets Fuchsia OS

#281

Post by leucineleprec0n »

mda wrote: post #266
tiffanyh wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "(b) being able to be free of the GPL" Wouldn't the easier path have been just for Google to contribute (or fork) Free/Open/NetBSD?

Seems like BSD/Linux seems fundamentally not compatible with what they want to achieve technologically. It is not a license issue.

Google won’t be producing Ad Campaigns against GPL, no. Yet the licensing model of the Linux Kernel & the kernel developer policy towards drivers & driver interfaces effectively renders Android hostage. This complicates Android’s architecture greatly which is why they’ve spent exorbitant sums of time trying to ameliorate the damage.

Anyways, if you’re going to build an alternative or fork another stack —- you might as well hit two birds with one stone. Fuchsia’s relatively distinct capability-based, quasi-microkernel (it is not in fact a microkernel on a strict read) architecture is a chance to cleave off technical debt and start anew on security, and it’s relative modularity dovetails into the whole driver, kernel interface issue.

Re: A Kernel Hacker Meets Fuchsia OS

#282

Post by afr0ck »

Banana699 wrote: post #261
skavi wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really can’t see the equivalency between a political stance (imo a movement for racial equality) and religion. The former mixes, often by necessity, with technical documents all the time. See GNU or the Apollo program. > In the concrete case we're discussing here, only progressive tech companies signal their beliefs in this vulgar way, no conservative tech firm have ever put "Blue Lives Matter" or "Make America Gre…

>I really can’t see the equivalency between a political stance (imo a movement for racial equality) and religion. Politics and religion are notoriously related. They are both morally charged subjects that infamously degrade people's ability to see the world clearly and discuss pros and cons rationally. I can cite plenty of pro-BLM speech and actions that disturbingly mirror religious language and actions. The fact th…

Let people say and express whatever they want. Why do you want to censor anything that you "hate" or anything that looks "ideological" to you? I don't see anything wrong with someone supporting BLM or mentioning a verse from the Quran or from the Bible on a technical website. For me, it would be an interesting short read/observation, I don't care if I don't agree, it doesn't matter. If I read a scientific paper from a Chinese researcher that mentions "Glory to the CCP", it would probably give me a short laugh, then I'll just move and focus on my goal (the science).

Re: A Kernel Hacker Meets Fuchsia OS

#283

Post by Banana699 »

afr0ck wrote: post #282
Banana699 wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I really can’t see the equivalency between a political stance (imo a movement for racial equality) and religion. Politics and religion are notoriously related. They are both morally charged subjects that infamously degrade people's ability to see the world clearly and discuss pros and cons rationally. I can cite plenty of pro-BLM speech and actions that disturbingly mirror religious language and actions. The fact th…

Let people say and express whatever they want. Why do you want to censor anything that you "hate" or anything that looks "ideological" to you? I don't see anything wrong with someone supporting BLM or mentioning a verse from the Quran or from the Bible on a technical website. For me, it would be an interesting short read/observation, I don't care if I don't agree, it doesn't matter. If I read a scientific paper from…

>Let people say and express whatever they want

Does this extend to letting people control other people and harass them with politics in their workplace to coerce them into expressing their politics ?

>Why do you want to censor

Quote 1 part of my comments where I advocated for censorship.

>anything that looks "ideological" to you

Is this meant to imply that "ideological" is subjective? Because I'm pretty sure all the examples I mentioned would all be recognized as partisan Ideology to the vast majority of people (except possibly the believers of said ideology, who would predictably disagree that it's anything but the plain obvious truth).

As for why I mock people who bring their ideology or religion to their workplace and why I think they are immature and unworthy of respect or cooperation, it's because I believe in not burning bridges.

Humans differ on uncountable millions of things, the exception is when we agree for once. A workplace is already full of potential and actual work-related conflicts enough, without somebody bringing in another certified-infinite source of conflicts that serves nothing except heat generation.

It's selfish and disgusting, like an army breaking a peace agreement to score a quick victory.

Re: A Kernel Hacker Meets Fuchsia OS

#284

Post by throwawaymaths »

jnwatson wrote: post #75
throwawaymaths wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In theory you could do even better than that -- you could make capabilities cryptographically signed tokens, so that you don't need to ask the kernel to verify the validity of your request every time. If your chipset supports crypto intrinsics this will almost certainly be better than an interrupted syscall.

Not even theoretical. An early capability based OS called KeyKOS worked that way.

Oh man KeyKOS, that brings back memories. I wonder if crypto intrinsics might breathe life back into something like KeyKOS. More contemporary, I think Sel4 does as well.

In my comment I meant "in theory fuscia could have been architected/could be rearchitected that way", sorry should have been more clear.

Re: A Kernel Hacker Meets Fuchsia OS

#285

Post by walterbell »

ksec wrote: post #278
kllrnohj wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's yet again not true. Parents are often paying for the Chromebooks used in some of these markets (eg, US & Canada at least). That the school requires a certain OS doesn't change who pays for it, just like parents are still buying TI graphing calculators. > Before COVID, most schools were still about pen and paper in most European countries, Gonna need a citation on that one. It'd be quite surprising for European…

>It'd be quite surprising for European schools to be so far behind Using Pen and Paper isn't so far behind , it is the wisdom to avoid hype.

Paper is the Root of Trust for Silicon.

Re: A Kernel Hacker Meets Fuchsia OS

#286

Post by leucineleprec0n »

dmitrygr wrote: post #24

The people who work on fuchsia are very good engineers - I’ve worked with many of them in person. But the project itself has always been a staff retention project. It only existed to keep said engineers from going to a competitor. I don’t know how any understanding of fuchsia is possible without this crucial fact

This is not true and it’s odd people still take this bait voluntarily. At best this line used to be cheap PR to avoid GPL and Linux disciples going ballistic and to keep media off the project as much as possible.

They’ve shipped Fuchsia on a real product now - the Nest Hub - they have Chrome working on Fuchsia, and an Android syscall interface in the works.

They removed this line from the site, possibly since it read as provocative, but for a few recent years they had updated Fuchsia.dev with “Fuchsia is not a science experiment”. Anyways, Google has a tendency to scrap projects as we all know but I don’t know if the recent trends point in that direction just yet, but it is possible - the project lead did leave recently and reportedly Meta were going to use Fuchsia for an AR/VR platform and switched to Android, likewise Google.

Re: A Kernel Hacker Meets Fuchsia OS

#287

Post by leucineleprec0n »

rvz wrote: post #57
tyingq wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does that mean you don't believe it's going to replace Android/AOSP? It's in some Nest devices right now.

I'm sure in the next 10 years it will replace both Android and ChromeOS. Starting with ChromeOS first, then Android itself. Otherwise, why is Fuchsia already running the Chrome web browser? [0] [0] https://9to5google.com/2022/03/04/full-google-chrome-browser...

Right. This is what I think Fuchsia and Zircon probably are headed for long term but people really felt the compulsive contrarian need to stake out the experiment/retention project angle since so many saw the obvious but were hyperbolic about the timescale.

Re: A Kernel Hacker Meets Fuchsia OS

#288

Post by leucineleprec0n »

goodpoint wrote: post #175
forgotpwd16 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Unlike Linux, Fuchsia is not under GPL. It's under MIT (the kernel Zircon specifically since comparing with Linux). Whether a license allowing even more freedom is worse is arguable.

I know - it provides google the freedom to lock down the OS further and the freedom to implement proprietary drivers. Yay for arguable freedom.

I love the freedom Android provides what with the utter clusterfuck that is the Linux kernel’s driver interface and GPL. Yay freedom.

An MIT license is fine. Great, even, because Fuchsia is in fact still an open source OS.

Hardware OEM’s don’t owe the public transparent firmware blobs.

Re: A Kernel Hacker Meets Fuchsia OS

#289

Post by pasabagi »

jhugo wrote: post #259
skavi wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really can’t see the equivalency between a political stance (imo a movement for racial equality) and religion. The former mixes, often by necessity, with technical documents all the time. See GNU or the Apollo program. > In the concrete case we're discussing here, only progressive tech companies signal their beliefs in this vulgar way, no conservative tech firm have ever put "Blue Lives Matter" or "Make America Gre…

I think the issue is simpler than the above discussion. I have no idea what to think about BLM. I'm not American, so it's not part of my zeitgeist. I hear all kinds of differing opinions about it from Americans. One thing is clear to me: "BLM good" is more complicated than just "racism bad". When I see something supporting BLM in tech documentation, it's confusing (I don't know why it's relevant to tech documentation…

My guess is the only reason why Europe has a more sophisticated discussion about race and racism now than it did in the 50's is because of American influence. I say this as a European. There simply are not the sizeable minorities in europe to push these issues into the public discourse, and as such, without exposure to US culture, most people's views on race tend to be only lightly modified from traditional views, which are extremely racist.

Re: A Kernel Hacker Meets Fuchsia OS

#290

Post by Commodore63 »

jeltz wrote: post #111
ignoramous wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because they have those banners up doesn't mean those point to some latent reason for whatever is responsible for their woes. Granted it gives a window in to the culture of the Fuschia team at Google, but to me, personally, it doesn't come off as virtue-signalling at all but rather a conscious effort to put diversity and inclusion in the front and center of what they do. As another example, Google has had socio-…

To me it comes off as inclusive of Americans while excluding the rest of the world. As a European I do not feel welcome, and I imagine people further from US culture feel even less welcome.

As a European you are welcome by default. Look around; you are not a persecuted minority.
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