- OpenGL should be a library. This is just going to make OpenGL development easier in the long run. Right now there are too many OpenGL implementations and the differences matter. Running one OpenGL library on top of N different Vulkan implementations is miles better than running on top of N different OpenGL implementations.
- POSIX can be a library too. It doesn’t have to be provided by the kernel. People have been strapping POSIX layers on top of things for ages. This was originally how Mach worked. You can still do weird things on iOS and macOS “below” the POSIX layer (although most POSIX syscalls are just provided by the kernel).
You talk about how hard it is to change APIs… and how much you hate to refactor things every time Google decides they want the shiny new thing. But POSIX is rooted in the 1970s. It sucks. It’s about time to try something new. The entire POSIX model is based around the idea that you have different people using the same computer and you don’t want them to accidentally delete each others’ files. There are a ton of APIs in POSIX which are straight-up shit, like wait(). Sandboxes are unportable and strapped-on, using arcane combinations of things like chroot and cgroups.
Let’s give people a chance to try out something new. Unix is somewhere around 50 years old now. OS research is dying out. Make it easier to run untrusted programs.
- OpenGL should be a library. This is just going to make OpenGL development easier in the long run. Right now there are too many OpenGL implementations and the differences matter. Running one OpenGL library on top of N different Vulkan implementations is miles better than running on top of N different OpenGL implementations.
- POSIX can be a library too. It doesn’t have to be provided by the kernel. People have been strapping POSIX layers on top of things for ages. This was originally how Mach worked. You can still do weird things on iOS and macOS “below” the POSIX layer (although most POSIX syscalls are just provided by the kernel).
You talk about how hard it is to change APIs… and how much you hate to refactor things every time Google decides they want the shiny new thing. But POSIX is rooted in the 1970s. It sucks. It’s about time to try something new. The entire POSIX model is based around the idea that you have different people using the same computer and you don’t want them to accidentally delete each others’ files. There are a ton of APIs in POSIX which are straight-up shit, like wait(). Sandboxes are unportable and strapped-on, using arcane combinations of things like chroot and cgroups.
Let’s give people a chance to try out something new. Unix is somewhere around 50 years old now. OS research is dying out. Make it easier to run untrusted programs.