World: r3wp

Wow, sounds cool. By the way, I was just looking at Minix3 with it's 
micro-kernel, and I wondered what kind of kernel Syllable has. I 
found this Syllable FAQ:
What kind of kernel design does Syllable use?

As Syllable is a fork of the AtheOS operating system, the author 
of AtheOS (Kurt Skauen) said "I often ask myself that question too. 
The kernel is very modular and it has a well-defined interface between 
the kernel and its device drivers and file systems. Given that each 
component communicates through a thin, well-defined interface and 
each component does not know much about the others, it resembles 
a micro-kernel. I am not sure if this is the right term though, since 
all kernel components live in kernel-space and are not protected 
from each other, and these are all properties of a monolitic kernel. 
I am a bit confused :)"

That's pretty much it: the design is much more modular and layered 
than well-known monolithic kernels, but it doesn't qualify for the 
academic definition of a microkernel

On the other hand, like in BeOS, which the design is inspired by, 
many system services run as servers in user space, so we do try to 
keep many things out of the kernel, which improves reliability. For 
example, we're now extending the design of our multimedia framework 
and moving the audio drivers, which were ported from Linux, out of 
the kernel into user space

By the way, I exhibited on the Free Software Bazaar this week, which 
is part of the SANE conference, and Minix3 had a booth next to me 
and a talk after me. I am also now the owner of a Minix3 live CD 
with the signature of Andrew Tanenbaum :-)

:-) Cool. Must have been an inspiring chat.

Eh, I once planned a meet-up with Tanenbaum, but I didn't go through 
with it. The CD was just from a stack that his coworkers took to 
the conference

ah not to worry.

Very cool Kaj! I never did get the Syllable CD to work here, but 
maybe I should try again. :-)

Lots of bugs were fixed over the past year, and again in Syllable 
0.6.1, which we will probably release this weekend. So yes, that 
would be a good time to try again

I thought Orca was to be renamed to avoid a name clash with the global 
context of computer languages

It should - or I would have had an extra interesting discussion with 
Tanenbaum. But that's up to Karl

So, is this the first redistribution of any Rebol clone??

Quite possibly

Ok, will be added to Rebolweek blog :)

Cool!

Kaj - what will happen after R3? It introduces some changes - will 
you try to keep the rebol compatibility, or it is not the primary 
goal? Maybe a wrong group, maybe it belongs to Orca group .... just 
would like to know opinion from the Syllabe guy perspective ...

Orca already breaks compatibility with REBOL a little. I wouldn't 
worry about it - I'm sure that the best ideas from R3 will be adopted.

ok ....

I read some reactions and some guys seem to have difficulcy understanding 
rebol is different :-) I hope Kaj and Syllable team can defend Orca 
decision ....

And you never know, with the platform-specific source of REBOL 3 
being released to the community, in theory, perhaps there will be 
a direct port of REBOL to Syllable.

yes, I hope so, but - isn't there problem with licensing? Can, license-wise, 
Syllable guys, accept binary distribution?

It appears from Syllable's forums that Kaj and crew are thinking 
of extending Orca with hooks into Syllable's internals (correct me 
if I'm wrong). Orca may end up being a better choice for them, particularly 
if it becomes compatible enough to run REBOL services.

what about View? From what I understood - are they for native wdiget 
bindings? Correct me if I understood it wrongly ....

I'm not really the one to ask. All I know about Syllable I've heard 
from here, OSNews and from skimming a little of their forums. I'm 
a little more familiar with Orca, but I haven't really looked too 
closely at it in case I want to clone REBOL myself.

:-) interesting, and probably not correct group here ... you have 
different ideas than Orca? Now as R# is showing non-activity for 
way too long time, Orca is the only clone which showed some promise 
...

Yeah, my approach is different. My time and energy is limited though. 
We'll see if I can budget the time to work on it.

In the meanwhile, the thought I've put into it has informed my criticism 
of and ideas for REBOL 3.

Brian - please, cooperat with RT on rebcode - my feeling is, that 
it is not finished yet, from security pov mainly ... it would be 
good to have rebcode inside anyway .... I hope Carl does not decide 
to discard it as an experiment only :-)

I get the impression that he still considers rebcode to be important.

who knows, maybe one day, Carl will keep "just" a language kernel, 
language will be extensible via plug-ins, etc., so maybe it will 
be much easier to actually get it working anywhere ...

we are probably becoming OT here .... maybe move to chat or REBOL3?

cool

Yep, this belongs in the Orca group, or rather on the Orca web site 
if you want to contact the author. I'm not developing Orca, Syllable 
is simply integrating it. Of course that means we influence it a 
little, but that's it

Since we do develop Syllable, we don't have to defend the Orca decision. 
It's done. :-) I introduced the idea to the Syllable community, ported 
R# and Orca, and ultimately convinced my project leader. That's all 
that's needed

And yes, we fully intend to port REBOL 3 to Syllable. Orca allows 
us to use it in the open-source base system

my question was more of a license problem category ... simply put, 
if you can bundle e.g. closed source app with your system?

I mean - binary one .... e.g. nVidia drivers, etc., or Rebol3 :-)

Eventually I would like to have a port of /View 3 and an Orca dialect 
for our native widgets

We can bundle closed-source apps, just like Linux and others can. 
We already do, with some games and demos that were released by their 
authors without source

However, we will never include non-free stuff as essential parts 
of the system. That would endanger our survival

that is understandable ....

what are general reactions to new Syllable releases? Is there increased 
interest? Has any company e.g. showed their interest?

I mean - in the area of embedded systems for e.g. I can see Syllable 
as AmigaOS for x86 .... maybe AROS guys could join you :-)

Anyone still an Amiga user now will not be persuaded... :-)

Although we do currently have 11 of them in our poll - just as many 
as declare themselves fulltime Syllable users :-)

Interest has definitely been picking up, especially over the last 
year, but it's a slow process

The interesting thing is that we have these rings around the inner 
circles that each are an order of magnitude bigger than the adjacent 
one

In the coming years, each time we improve the functionality enough 
to make the system usable for the next ring, the number of users 
will increase by an order of magnitude

I am not sure I understand the ring concept, but never mind :-)

what system is your closest competition? AROS? Any of BeOS resurrection 
projects? SkyOS?