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Building a secure Operating System (Redox OS) with Rust (Interview)
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this post was submitted on 06 May 2024
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Linux
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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What benefit would it provide though? It's a microkernel so you could just add non-free drivers in the userspace. Things like Playstation would choose BSD instead.
It would at least protect the core parts of the kernel itself
Sure but protect from what? Apple, Sony and Microsoft can just use BSD or any other proprietary kernel. Nobody will try to create the "new proprietary Linux" out of it because getting OS market share is hard even for an Open Source standard like Linux, let alone for some proprietary crap.
A potential issue is someone like Qualcom who makes their own proprietary fork which works on their hardware only. So instead of digging through the tens of thousand lines of code which Qualcom publishes for their out of tree Linux kernels, you can only reverse engineer. But again we are talking about a microkernel so most of these lines of code would be proprietary regardless. At least we save time of these crazy developers who try to bring out of tree stuff into mainline.
It stops parts of Linux becoming proprietary, and becoming the dominant version users interact with. Comparisons with other kernels are irrelevant
Comparisons with other kernels is imo relevant. Protecting software that has many alternatives from becoming proprietary is nice but not really important when the potential software vendor can just choose a different but equivalent project. It would not really matter if people interacted with this proprietary fork of RedoxOS or BSD, they would get screwed either way.
Note: the original comment was "GPL or bust". imo GPL is nice but in this case it's a minor thing
Harder GPL. Like v3 something.
If your point is that it would need some kind of license that would prevent proprietary drivers, then I'm not really sure how would lawyers differentiate between drivers and straight up non-free apps running on it.
GPL v3 prevents mechanisms that interfere with the ability of the end user to replace the free firmware of a device, like accepting only signed firmwares. It’s an “anti-TiVo” thing. It won’t prevent proprietary drivers, but any device distributed with it must not prevent the user from making their own drivers to replace them.
There isn’t a real solution that would work for user space drivers. At least not yet. But just like GPL v3 rose from TiVo, if this becomes an issue I’m sure the lawyers of FSF will come up with something, and Linus and a lot of other folk will hate it.
Yeah that makes sense but does not really fit with the theme "GPL or bust" since Linux itself does not use v3
We’re talking about Redox OS, not Linux.
I am aware. I was just pointing out that Tivotization would be a weird reason for "a bust" when we are in a linux community and Linux itself does not prevent Tivotization.