Microsoft Singularity Now "Open" Source 392
Alex_Ionescu writes "Microsoft's Singularity operating system (covered previously by Slashdot) is now open to the public for download, under a typical Microsoft academic, non-commercial license. Inside is a fully compilable and bootable version of what could be the basis for the future of Windows, or maybe simply an experiment to demonstrate .NET's capabilities. Singularity, if you'll recall, has gained wide interest from researchers and users alike, by claiming to be a fully managed code kernel (with managed code drivers and applications as well), something that would finally revolutionize the operating system research arena. The project is available on CodePlex."
Stability? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Stability? (Score:5, Informative)
This OS doesn't really run any applications at all. It's not intended for commercial use, and will not be the next Windows. All it is, is a test bed for future technologies. Think of it as an IT equivalent of a concept car. It doesn't really run, but it's nifty to look at to get ideas for future projects.
Re:Stability? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Stability? (Score:5, Insightful)
IMHO it has a company behind it with enough money to market it. The reason to market it is so the technology gained from the people "learning from it" can be usurped by the marketer. btw. thanks for the link.
Re:Stability? (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Have you ever worked with those folks from marketing?
Re:Stability? (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
"Does it run IE?"
Not if it's super-stable-hacker-resistant. If it lacks active-x it is at least more crhacker resistant and stable, though.
wharrrt? (Score:5, Funny)
"Microsoft releases open source operating system"
"Mans head explodes from intense confusion after reading news article about Microsoft releasing Open Source OS"
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
To me there appears no surprise here. You can't use it except in certain carefully isolated ways. And it's hardly a complete OS.
It's no threat to MSWind. It's an attempt to keep developers from even looking at Linux. ("You want to study an OS? OK, study our toy model.") I'm not saying it's technically crippled. It may be, but I'm not going to check. It's legally crippled.
This is just another one of those things that you're safer ignoring. Did you expect more from MS?
Sometimes tin foil is just a cigar (Score:5, Insightful)
This is just another blue sky project from the Microsoft Research, a division that is tasked with coming out with cool stuff without regard to commercial viability. Every big high-tech company has such a division. My own employer, Sun, has Sun Labs, which is always coming out with interesting stuff that mostly has nothing to do with our business model. I think it's mainly a prestige thing, to convince folks that you're a cutting-edge company.
Re:wharrrt? (Score:5, Funny)
Minor nit: you misspelled "Asplodes" [uncyclopedia.org]. From the link:It is unknown whether the Singularity OS incorporates this useful command, but it is assumed that a singularity asplosion would release vast quantities of something not real nice.
Kurzweil was right! (Score:2, Redundant)
Software Isolated Processes (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Software Isolated Processes (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Software Isolated Processes (Score:5, Informative)
For the IPC they have made some strange choices, receiving is synchronous (as in process calculi) but sending is asynchronous. As they are writing the lowest level parts (such as the schedular) in this code it may be an implementation difficulty with synchronous sends. The cheapness of the IPC seems to be routed in the transfer of ownership that communication implies. In essence you can't alias, you can only pass by value - but the low-level runtime can modify this to pass more efficiently by reference because it can verify there are no dangling references. This would (if it works over a large enough code base) solve the performance issue with IPC in a microkernel. It is (as another reply pointed out) similar to providing the semantics of heavy-weight communication to the programmer in a way that can be implemented with cheap co-routines.
Having done some (well, little) work in this area I'm really impressed by what they've achieved already.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
This is underplaying its role; it is an OS slate with solid ideas that can be used to pound new OS theories through without having to deal with any lineage to prior models.
However the microkernel issues that you are referring to are ideas that Microsoft tackled 16 years ago and is a
It's open source because... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:It's open source because... (Score:4, Informative)
Managed Code is code intended for a virtual machine (like MS's CLR or Sun's JVM) that abstracts the hardware instructions away. Instead, the instruction set for the virtual machine is used. The Virtual Machine will provide "devices" and "memory" in a (hopefully) safe and portable way and take care of all of the dirty hardware business itself. Some VM's will actually take the VM instruction and turn it into actual hardware instructions as it's being executed (JIT) for speed, but that's not necessary.
Which isn't to say that Managed Code is a new thing: The USCD-Pascal p-code machine is remembered fondly by many, and the Zork games ran on a Z-Machine.
Interpreted code is a little stickier because it's been around a lot longer and has picked up some additional meanings. It can mean anything from the "Managed Code" described above to parsing (and possibly re-parsing) text lines of BASIC as they're run to process them in a giant state machine which "runs" the program.
Usually, interpreted code implies that there's no abstracted fully virtual machine underneath running the code, but possibly just a big jump-table pointing at native assembly-language (hand-coded or compiled) routines. Perl and Microsoft BASIC (basis of many of the old 8-bit BASICs) are two examples of interpreted code.
technically not open source (Score:2, Informative)
QUOTE:"Although the Singularity research development kit (RDK) is available for download, it is not technically open source. The source code is distributed under the terms of the restrictive Microsoft Research License rather than one of Microsoft's two OSI-approved open source licenses."
ars technica [arstechnica.com]
To be "open source" you need a tad little bit more than having the source readable in plain text, IMHO.
Re:It's open source because... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:It's open source because... (Score:5, Interesting)
There are several websites out there that deobfuscate code in realtime to advertise their services... if I was actually interested in the issue I might still have a link, but you will have to google if you want to research this further.
The basic Visual Studio toolset has everything you need to reverse any managed code manually, obfuscated or not, providing you are willing to put in the time.
Anyhow, C# currently pays for my meals, so I'm not trolling here... but be careful about making assumptions about the privacy of any managed code that you release. Hell, same goes for any code, the 'managed' aspect just lower the bar for crackers a bit.
Quick, Slashdot! (Score:3, Funny)
All I want to know is ... (Score:4, Funny)
No spin required: it's kernel Erlang (Score:5, Informative)
In other words, Microsoft finally discovers Erlang [erlang.org].
While I wouldn't go so far as to say that the guys at Redmond lost the habit of inventing anything new a long time ago, the above concepts have been in industrial use in Erlang-powered PTT exchanges since the dawn of time.
Advertise (Score:2, Funny)
Yeah...Rare kind of advertisement...The question is, will it work on slashdotters?
Why are people excited about this? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
You're right, this will not eliminate bugs. But it will prevent applications from "stepping on each other's toes". SIPs can
Re: (Score:2)
Every program should have careful and tedious checking by a lot of programmers. This is where open source really shines, and is a large reason why open source OSes and apps are so much more secure than closed source.
Instead, the way most commercial software is written it appears that the code is given a cursory glance, run ("tested") by a few people, shoveled out the door for other peop
Re:Why are people excited about this? (Score:5, Informative)
Oh wow! (Score:4, Informative)
What OSS developers already proved [jnode.org] years ago.
Actually, I'm still pretty happy about this. Regardless of whether Microsoft was first or not, they're going to manage to market the concept far better than a conglomeration of OSS developers ever could. (Sorry, guys!) If everything goes well, perhaps the public impression of managed code being "nothing but an interpreter" can finally get turned around and Computer Science can keep moving forward.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I love the name (Score:5, Funny)
That black hole has surely sucked in a few dollars of mine, and sucked in a lot of little companies that were pulled apart by Microsoft's huge gravity well.
-mcgrew
(Apologies for the lack of journals lately)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
It became a very small, but incredibly dense OS. It really serves no useful purpose besides the promise of being the perfect embedded OS for write-only storage devices.
In the meantime, the survivors had to start Vista from scratch and this catastrophic event is what really delayed Vista's launch date. All the
What? (Score:5, Funny)
It's a nice system. Is this abandonment? (Score:5, Interesting)
Very nice. It's sad, though, that Microsoft is making it available as open source, because that means it's not going to become a Microsoft product.
Singularity is an interesting system. Most of the individual ideas aren't new, but the combination of them is well chosen. It's a message passing microkernel, like VM and QNX, the OSs that actually work reliably. The storage management and of enforcement of process separation at compile time comes from the ALGOL compiler for the Burroughs 5500, circa 1960, for example. They recognized the problem of interaction between interprocess communication and the scheduler and dealt with it; QNX probably has a better solution, but the one in Singularity is OK. Singularity tries a bit too hard to avoid interprocess copying; so did Mach, and it made things worse.
There's a reasonable design-by-contract language. The language knows about marshalling for interprocess communication, which encourages its use. That's borrowed from Mesa. In most languages, a subroutine call is much easier to code than an interprocess call, which encourages bloat of individual processes.
Drivers aren't in the kernel and aren't trusted, although drivers that can do DMA still present a security problem. This is a problem with insecure PC hardware; IBM mainframe channels have DMA that goes through MMU checking. That could be fixed, especially since most new peripherals are on USB or FireWire ports. Add-on boards are on the way out.
Makes me wish I was still doing OS R&D.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Threads are the source of so much pain that an os that supports some other model for multiprocessing (from the ground up rather than as a library) seems way overdue. Since the various Singularity "processes" run in the same actual process space, a shared memory model for multiprocessing seems like it would be practical and very fast.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I refer you to this IEEE article: http://www.computer.org/portal/site/computer/menuitem.5d61c1d591162e4b0ef1bd108bcd45f3/index.jsp?&pName=computer_level1_article&TheCat=1005&path=computer/homepage/0506&file=cover.xml&xsl=article.xsl&;jsessionid=HTWQvFsBn [computer.org]
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Does this mean Microsoft is abandoning Singularity (Score:2)
Seriously, I guess this means it isn't in their mainstream OS roadmap,
which seems like bad news for those who would hope M$ might eventually
produce and sell a simple, safe, easy to use non-strongbad product.
NOT Open Source (Score:3, Informative)
Microsoft hate (Score:5, Interesting)
1). Open sourcing weird stuff like this.
2). Silverlight is pretty good.
3). I disabled UAC in Vista. Now Vista is just like XP, but it has a prettier (albeit inconsistent at times) UI.
4). Realizing that as much as I may like free as in freedom with Linux, in XP, my stuff just works, and it's fast and snappy and doesn't get bogged down (of course I'm not doing stupid stuff like using IE visiting sketchy websites that install things). It works great for all my games, etc. Solid OS; I just had to get over my Linux vigilatism to notice it.
5). I just found the speach recognition built into Vista 2 nights ago. For just about everything but typing, it works flawlessly. As much as I love my mouse; sitting back, relaxing with both hands comfortably unbound from a keyboard and mouse, feels absolutely wonderful. So instead of clicking minimize/maximize/close, alt+tab'ing until you see the window you want, clicking start, etc; you just say into your headset "Minimize" "Maximize" or the name of the window you want to use. So to change focus back to Firefox, I would say "Mozilla Firefox". Then you can say things like "Bookmarks" and it opens the menu for your bookmaks. Say the name of the bookmark and it selects it, then "ok" or "enter" to open it. If you've got several bookmarks it thinks you're saying, it highlights all of them with a transparent bar that you can see through, and places a number in the middle of that bar. So if I say "Slashdot", it highlights the 8 slashdot bookmarks I have, and then I say "7" and it opens the one under the bar labelled "7". "Scroll Down", "Scroll down 10", "Press control w" to close a tab. If you have a list of sites you usually like to go to, and have them all bookmarked (for me they're all in the bookmarks toolbar folder), then browsing your favorite sites that you check daily is easy. "GM [gmail]" "Reddit" etc. Since I have all these bookmarks on the toolbar, it automatically finds them and clicks them. When you're surfing the net, just say the name of the link on the page and it opens it for you.
The Start Menu works nicely too. Just say "Start" and then the name of the program you want to open. Then it opens it. If it thinks there's several things you could be referring to, it shows these in the search results pane and uses the same number scheme to select which one you want. You can access windows here as well; after saying "Start" say "Show numbers" and then the number of the window you want to restore.
This is the same tech they're putting in Ford/Lincoln/Mercuries for the GPS and music system that you've been seeing commercials for lately. After using the Vista version for just about 30 minutes, I've quickly gotten used to it; the commands are very intuitive. Gotta say it's really cool stuff. Yes I know OSX has had this since who knows when, but meh, OSX can't play my games. It feels much closer to what I'm thinking I want to do, because there's no physical motion besides just speaking what I want to do and it does it. Seems like they're progressing towards the synergy between brain and computer control very nicely.
Microsoft will never be able to do microkernel (Score:4, Interesting)
When they had OS/2 available to them, they switched back to DOS and stuffed everything into Win16.
Then when they had the original NT microkernel available to them, they stuffed everything into the Win32 layer, where it didn't belong.
Do you really believe Microsoft when they say, again, "This time we're going to design it properly" ??
Please fix the title! (Score:5, Insightful)
Won't someone fix the title? It's just plain wrong. A non-commercial license is not Open Source.
Doesn't quality (Score:5, Insightful)
This is Microsoft's attempt to redefine what Open Source means. It is an aberration of their "embrace, extend, extinguish". They are trying to confuse the market into a non-understanding of what open source means.
That license is not even close to the GPL. People who develop for open source need to understand and spread the word that this is simply a matter of intentional obfuscation of the ideals behind open source and what it attempts to achieve. Giving up is giving in, so don't give up on spreading word.
*yawn* (Score:4, Interesting)
The "vaunted" MS Research team has put out a "concept" OS that doesn't run _any_ applications, and cannot be used for any commercial purpose, and has no indications that it can be licensed. It's only claim to fame is that its an MS OS; there have been 100% managed code [jnode.org] OSs before.
Just last month Arstechnica [arstechnica.com] had an article about two similar OSs, except they are written entirely in C#, without the C++ HAL in Singularity.
Both are REAL opensource. As is jnode.
In short, who gives a flaming f**k? As usual, MS is a day late and a dollar short, which is impressive considering that the "research team" working on singularity seems to be 30-40 people.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:!free (Score:4, Funny)
gscb_hungarian_use = FALSE
(global static constant boolean)
Layne
Re:!free (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:!free (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I think you're confusing "open" with "free" (as in freedom). Generally, free software means it can be freely used and open just means you can view the source code.
Re:!free (Score:4, Informative)
It's not Open Source until you can use it. BSD, MIT, Apache, GPL, allow you to actually use the code.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
-uso.
Re:!free (Score:5, Interesting)
Exactly, it's a trap (Score:5, Interesting)
If you are a large entity, revealing your source via restricted license has become one of the best ways to cause your ideas to be protected, since you can argue that anyone else who had access to your source code, and then subsequently wrote something competitive, has "stolen your intellectual property." Even if you don't win the case, or the case is weak to begin with (as was SCO's), at the very least you can make a lot of trouble for a competitor, mire them in an expensive multi-year court case, and cause Casper Milquetoast prospects to avoid a "possibly infringing" solution.
This could very well be Microsoft duplicity at its finest. It is built-in protection for Windows 7. Let's assume that software patents are overthrown by the SCOTUS, Microsoft's SCO friends die the zombie death they so richly deserve, and that Microsoft is forced, kicking and screaming, to obey standards by the EU and others -- in other words, all of Microsoft's existing weapons to maintain its monopoly position are defused. This strategy becomes a key defensive position.
Do not look at this code. You must be able to answer, "I never saw it," under oath, if you ever expect to build something competitive.
Re:!free (Score:5, Interesting)
Singularity and Linux are so completely different that the chances of successfully prosecuting somebody for "stealing code" or even ideas is zero. Not only is Singularity written in a custom derivative of C# rather than C, but it has very different concepts of what a process is, what a kernel is, how system components communicate, and so on.
I, for one, am very happy to hear this and will definitely be checking it out. Singularity is probably the most interesting research OS out there right now, in multiple dimensions. The main challenge they have to tackle next is one that most microkernels never really reached (because their performance was too poor to make it worth bothering with) - once a component does fail, how can you rewind the system to a safe recovery point? I emailed the Singularity guys about this and got back a very nice reply, which basically said "we don't know, that's still a research problem we need to investigate".
Anyway. Good on MS Research. Let's see if anything interesting comes of this. It doesn't have to be useful, mind you, just interesting.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:!free (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:!free (Score:5, Informative)
Re:!free (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
free is important to have more OS devs (Score:2)
I'm sure alot of people will be very excited about this, I mean almost everything is done in c#. Looking at the build instructions it goes something like this:
Re:free is important to have more OS devs (Score:4, Insightful)
Microsoft finally innovates something, and this is the response.
Of course people who are actually interested don't much care for your tribalist attitude. Hey maybe in 20 more years the open source world can reinvent another Unix.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
You ever think that maybe I don't exactly have a lot of room for an extra OS partition due to all the porn on my HD?
Seriously, some of us have actual jobs and don't have oodles of time in mom's basement to wank around with stuff like this.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Forget the ideology. What I want to know is, has anybody here installed it/used it and what are their opinions?
Why don't you, uh, have a clue and download it yourself and look at it? Its 60MB compressed and compiles in 40 seconds. Don't be lame. It's a research project, focusing on designing reliable, dependable, secure and low-overhead systems. You get code - written in C++, IA-32 assembly and Sing#.
I don't want to be lame. But I can't compile it, and I don't want to have to install a toy OS just to play with Singularity. What are your opinions of it, other than anyone who doesn't already run windows is lame?
Re:!free (Score:4, Insightful)
free software = source code is not only made available, but you are free to use that source however you wish, assuming you abide by the guidelines presented in the free software license, assuming there are any
there is a thing called the open source definition (Score:5, Informative)
also, repost is repost [slashdot.org]
Stop propagating missinformation! (Score:2)
Open Source != Open source [princeton.edu].
Just because some guy with a political agenda picks a common word loosely related to his goals as a name, doesn't mean that the word changes it's meaning to match that guy's goals.
There is a world of difference between Democratic process and democratic process.
Real life runs on *nix, case is sensitive.
-Rick
*Who* has an agenda? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm somewhat agnostic on the question of whether or not Open Source is a good thing, but it does us no good to have someone call any license their cat coughs up "Open Source".
Re:!free (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.opensource.org/ [opensource.org]
They may have coinded tghe term, they certainly promoted it and made it polular. They disagree.
all the best,
drew
http://zotzbro.blogspot.com/ [blogspot.com]
"Open Source" has a standard definition (OSI's) (Score:3, Informative)
Instead, use another term when you mean "you can read the source code". I suggest "source available".
Re: (Score:2)
the open source definition, right here: (Score:2, Informative)
also, STFU when you clearly have no clue.
Open Source != open source (Score:4, Funny)
It's kinda like Democratic vs. democratic. One is a political party with lobbyists, fake politicians, etc., and the other is a type of system where the people make the decisions.
Noun VS Adjective (Score:3, Insightful)
-Rick
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Noun VS Adjective (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft stated last year that they'd be killing Open Source. This is an attempt by them to redefine the term. We had this discussion last year about how Microsoft's use of the term hurt the definition and how business would react to those terms. Our discussions mean nothing to Microsoft, so they have simply continued in hopes that the legions of ill informed could further their redefinition. History is written by those who win the war. This is an attempt by Microsoft to win the war.
Open Source is precisely what the Opensource.org says it is.
Microsoft has simply opened the source. It is not Open Source in any remote way.
open source != Open Source Initiative Approved (Score:3, Insightful)
http://opensource.org/docs/osd
also, STFU when you clearly have no clue.
In fairness to the GP, there is an argument that a Californian non-profit organisation can't suddenly spring up and decree that the words "open source" suddenly have whatever meaning they say they have. The OSI is neither a standards organisation nor a dictionary. Nor are the words "open source" a trademark (or, indeed, trademarkable, since they're descriptive).
What is trademarked by the OSI is the phrase "Open Source Initiative Approved", and you (and the OSI) would have a perfect right to object to
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Microsoft will soon say that they own the trade mark "open source" and challenge everyone on the issue in the years to come.
Honestly, all this bantering about is actually in support of "Open
look into the actual definition at OSI's: (Score:2)
disclaimer: repost [slashdot.org] is repost [slashdot.org]
Re: (Score:2)
-Rick
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:NOT Open Source (Score:5, Insightful)
I know very well that Microsoft Research and Microsoft are very loosely-coupled, however the article was submitted by a Microsoft proponent (judging by his account history) which "has signed an NDA with Microsoft" and one can very well see how this benefits to Microsoft (they're working hard to make everyone think they do "Open Source" too with their SharedSource initiatives and such -- btw they do have a few projects under true F/OSS licenses afaik).
Microsoft (as well as other proprietary software companies) is (and has been) very interested in spreading FUD regarding Open Source (such as "if the source is available then it must be Open Source", obviously using a flaw opened by the Open Source Initiative which put the emphasis on the openness of the code rather than on its freedom from the start), and with such an headline on a site such as Slashdot (ie, where a lot people go but don't browse further than the main page) I'm sure to take a coffee next week with someone who will tell me about Singularity now being Open Source... Is that your definition of "news"?
Singularity is a great research project but it's not Free/Open Source by any means. So grand-parent is right (as are others), and you are just as much as a fascist than the F/OSS zealots you criticize since your critics are based on them being OSS fascist and not on the facts being right or wrong. Let's call a cat a cat. Open Source is a well-defined term (just like "Windows-compatible" and nobody would like to see the Wine project tout itself of that feat unless it's 100% true), so let's respect it.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
OSI is not some random organization that popped up and created a website. Proponents of open source ar
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
No
Re:NOT open source (Score:4, Insightful)
The US California non-profit organization OSI does not own, copyright, or hold a trademark on the term 'open source'.
They are also not a government or dictionary in that they get to arbitrarily redefine words and mandate that they are the new definition for the entire human race.
The term 'open source' has been around alot longer than the OSI org, and had the same meaning then as it does now. It means the source is availble to read/view.
For a pretty substantial portion of our industry, the term 'open source' used in this context is accurate.
Re:NOT open source (Score:5, Insightful)
It is certainly true that "open source" is subject to some semantic unclarity (which is one reason why I personally dislike the term, preferring "free software" - albeit that has problems of its own, of course).
However, that doesn't mean that the likes of MS should be allowed to get away with their bait-and-switch tactics of attempting to gain the perceived kudos and good marketing karma of promoting "open source" (in the OSI sense) and then turning around and saying, "Oh, we only meant it was 'open source' as in 'the source is available, on restrictive terms'". Nor that, as I said in my original comment, /. should be adding to the confusion over the term.
My guess is that the original submitter didn't appreciate that "non-commercial" takes the licence outside the scope of the OSI's definition of open source - not that they meant to use "open source" in some broader sense of "source is available".
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah, about 10% slower code, about 90% fewer bugs...