Re: UNIX and the RWW

On 9/16/12 11:23 AM, Melvin Carvalho wrote:
> Some very interesting comments from Ken Thompson:
>
> Probably the glaring error in Unix was that it underevaluated the 
> concept of remoteness. The open-close-read-write interface should have 
> been encapsulated together as something for remoteness; something that 
> brought a group of interfaces together as a single thing—a remote file 
> system as opposed to a local file system.
>
> Unix lacked that concept; there was just one group of 
> *open-close-read-write interfaces*. It was a glaring omission and was 
> the reason that some of the awful things came into Unix like ptrace 
> and some of the system calls. Every time I looked at later versions of 
> Unix there were 15 new system calls, which tells you something's 
> wrong. I just didn't see it at the time.
>
> http://genius.cat-v.org/ken-thompson/interviews/unix-and-beyond
>
> This sort of aligns with comment from timbl previously that a goal of 
> the RWW is to 'webize' the UNIX file system.
I don't know about your last comment.

The goal of the WWW is more in line with webizing the Unix system.

The goal of the RWW is to fix the omission in Unix, as part of the Unix 
webization effort :-)

-- 

Regards,

Kingsley Idehen	
Founder & CEO
OpenLink Software
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