Re: Fwd: Which 90% of POSIX /is/ good then?

[Marcus Brinkmann]

At Thu, 27 Oct 2005 17:37:58 +0200,
Alfred M Szmidt wrote:
> 
>    Pids are also broken for another reason: they are public entries in
>    a globally shared, mutable namespace.
> 
> If and only if one considers globally shared mutable namespaces
> broken.  People with a lispish background don't.

This is ironic, because this is precisely the reason why the Hurd is
not a LispOS.

http://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/hurd-paper.html

[talking about lack of extensibility in traditional kernels]

  Some systems have tried to address these difficulties. Smalltalk-80
  and the Lisp Machine both represented one method of getting around
  the problem. System code is not distinguished from user code; all of
  the system is accessible to the user and can be changed as need
  be. Both systems were built around languages that facilitated such
  easy replacement and extension, and were moderately successful. But
  they both were fairly poor at insulating users and programs from
  each other, failing one of the principal goals of OS design.

Thanks,
Marcus