From: johnm@cory.berkeley.edu (John D. Mitchell)
Subject: Re: A challenge
Organization: University of California, at Berkeley
Date: Thu, 16 Apr 1992 06:51:56 GMT

In article <32994@darkstar.ucsc.edu> ken@cs.cornell.edu (Ken Birman) writes:
[...]
>As I understood him, his point was basically that: nobody wants these
>new features, they don't work, they are too complex, and that they
>fail to accept that operating systems have been largely successful
>doing just what they did in 1970.  Along the lines of Plan 9, he
>basically called for a retrenchment of the field into these areas
>of success (and away from the various wierd abstractions cited
>above) and better engineering of those things that "really work"
>with far less focus on innovation and new abstractions.

Gee, maybe *I* mis-understood him.  :-)

>I think I really do understand John.  I just disagree with him, and
>at SOSP I said so.  His feelings, if I recall correctly, were that
>he agrees that we disagree.  He also compared the recent OS research
>advances to "trying to sell pink flamingo lawn ornaments to people who
>would like to buy a new car".  (My own sense is that he is trying to
>sell 1970 Fords to people who would like to take a train).

I'm certainly of the camp that says some people need old Fords and some
need maglev trains.  :-)

>Anyhow, short of hearing from John, I don't see how either you or
>I can summarize his views more acurately than has already been done.
>
>Here's one possible way to resolve this: can we agree that what John
>and Henry Spencer mean by "distributed system" and what I mean by
>"distributed system" are actually very different?  After all, I wouldn't
>dispute John's point, if we were talking about desktop distributed
>computing.  I think his point is incorrect in relation to some of the
>emerging large-scale distributed systems, though, and even with
>respect to some types of LAN applications in areas like CAD-CAM,
>multimedia, financial systems, etc.  In fact, I would argue that his
>point is right, for the type of system that a place like Berkeley runs
>in house... but that Berkeley may not be typical of the world.

I would buy that each of us has a different definition of what 'distributed
computing' means (I will even go so far as to claim that each of us has
*multiple* definitions of what it means based on different contexts).  Each
of us has our own biases, expertise, etc.  I think he realizes that Sprite
has tried some neat things (for the domain that it set out for) and
achieved them.  I feel that there are some lessons to be learned from the
Sprite experience.  I also think that this is exactly what research is all
about.  Sure it's important to make distributable (:-) products for general
use too.  It's just that the gap between the currently envisioned
super-WAN's (for lack of a better term) and the departmental sized
distributed computing that Sprite focuses on is simply huge.

I think that trying to get from here to there is where a lot of different
research ideas should be focused.  IMHO, the blue sky visions are nice to
play around with for fun but that the major drive behind research is to
keep at least some touch with the current cutting edge of the systems that
are being used by a wide audience (read not just a handful of researchers).
Of course some (many?) see the opposite.  :-)

Thanks,
	John
	johnm@cory.Berkeley.EDU

P.S.	I speak solely for myself.