Puzzling Evidence, and a call to arms

[Joseph Osako <scholr@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

(Note: I posted this to the OS Dev forum earlier today, but I felt that 
this group would also appreciate the sentiments express herein. I hope no 
one is too offended, and I welcome any disagreements or corrections.)

I just read this jeremiad at the Gemini Nucleus site, and I'm not sure if 
to be depressed by its implications, vindicated because it matches what 
I've said for years, or outraged that it should get to this point.

"Systems Software Research is Irrelevant" by Rob Pike
(http://www.cs.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/rob/utah2000.ps)

What I *do* know is what this group should see it as: a challenge. Pike has 
thrown down the gauntlet, knowing full well that the academics won't reply. 
What he hasn't counted on is *us*: the private fanatics, the grassroots 
hackers who have nothing to lose except time and pride if we take risks we 
can't meet. It is from people like us that the next big thing will come 
from, because *no one else is going to*.

This isn't a new problem; The Futurist Programmers
(http://www.sgi.com/grafica/future/)
saw it coming ten years ago. All that has happened is that things have 
gotten so frozen stiff that people mistake marketing for technology. The 
dot.com crash proved to everyone that the technology didn't matter; all you 
needed was a name and an IPO to shear the sheep. For all it mattered, they 
could have been selling tulips, instead of computers. The boom, and the 
bust, had *nothing* to do with computers, at all, at all. And neither do 
most of the things in the industry today - .NET, Bluetooth, JINI, SOAP, all 
nonsense names for marketroids to rattle off. If there's any technology 
involved in them, I can't find it.

Think about it: if something doesn't come up, then we could be locked into 
the MS/Linux/Mac treadmill indefinitely, ever rushing to catch up yet never 
getting anywhere. That alone is enough reason to want to jump out  of line.

They call the past ten years 'the computer revolution'. Fuck that noise; I 
say we show them what revolution is all about! Let's throw it *all* away, 
and start fresh, with new ideas and new systems that don't owe them 
anything. If we don't, we'll be slaves forever.


J. Osako
Operating Systems Designer, Notational Engineer, Generalist
http://www.mindspring.com/~scholr/