From: johnm@cory.berkeley.edu (John D. Mitchell)
Newsgroups: comp.os.research
Subject: Re: A challenge
Date: 14 Apr 92 00:58:08 GMT
Organization: University of California, at Berkeley
Originator: osr@ftp

In article <32796@darkstar.ucsc.edu> ken@cs.cornell.edu (Ken Birman) writes:
>I really think that OS researchers have gotten stuck thinking that the
>machine on their desk and the file system down the hall, and the person
>across the hall with whom they are writing a paper (on distributed systems,
>no doubt) are a "typical" distributed application.

Very true.

[...'Real'world examples deleted...]
>But, if you are interested in doing OS research, I think these are the sorts
>of applications that point to the direction future work should take.  John
>Ousterhout says "we don't need new abstractions, just better implementations
>of the few abstractions that really work".  Well, I'll accept the part about
>needing good implementations, but the business about not needing new
>abstractions is totally misguided.  John doesn't have a clue concerning
>these kinds of applications.  What we need, specifically, ARE new
>abstractions, and new ideas, and whatever it will take to show successes
>in these sorts of applications.

Well, not to necessarily defend J. Ousterhout, you aren't giving any
context to his statements.  My (personal) understanding of his view (having
taken an advanced OS class from him) is that there is a lot of room for
improvement in the way that things are done *in the 'real' world* today.
There most certainly needs to be the off-the-wall, wacko research to try to
figure out where things will be going to in the distant future.  There's
also a very strong need for solid (read boring to researchers :-)
commercially usable OS's that people can use right now.  What I think
Ousterhout is really getting at is that there is a big gray middle-ground
where much research can be done to bridge the gap between now and the
future.

In this vast no-man's land, there is a great need for (for won't of a
better term) incremental (evolutionary?) improvements to today's systems.
I'm not just talking about the next version of BSD or SVR4 but of projects
like Plan9 and Sprite that take what has been seen in the past and trys to
clean house a bit.  Neither of these systems are so radically different
from either a user, programmer, or design standpoint from (dare I say)
currently accepted systems.

As you say in your post, the real world is starting to expect an awful lot
from it's computer system.  The thing is that nobody has a solution yet.
That why is called research.  :-)

>And this last point, which seems to echo Ousterhout's silly remark,
>just strikes me as negative and countrary to "progress".  If OS designers
>can't be permitted the freedom to try things that are new and weird, how
>can they be expected to narrow in on the things that really work, and
>that will let people build the distributed applications of the future?
>If the wierd stuff troubles you, wait for OSF to ship it to you; by then,
>any new approaches will have been tested and justified ad tedium.  But,
>I don't think you'll have much fun.

This, of course, depends on what turns you on.  Personally, I'm having a
blast writing/designing software for GeoWorks' PC/GEOS.  This OS is really
a great synthesis of concepts that have been floating around for awhile now
as separate entities that have been brought together to create a system
that is not only 'way cool' (from a 'research' point of view) but is
incredible for that fact that it runs on *all* i80x86s.  So for those who
are interested in 'pure' research they can (and should) be able to go off
and play.  There just also needs to be people who can do things in the more
near term.

>Really, this whole line of argument is very troubling to me, as a researcher.
>Andy is right to raise the questions he has raised, and the community is
>right to dispute some of the more far-out proposals.
>
>But, when the party line gets sort of dour and dull and says that all
>the problems we will ever encounter (including those we haven't even
>encountered yet) can be solved by some technology that doesn't even work
>very well 15 years after it was introduced, doesn't it seem like we have
>things backwards?  Isn't there an element here of saying that Jesse
>Helms knows art when he sees it, and if it doesn't look like art, the
>public shouldn't be exposed to it?

I don't get the impression from anything that I've read in this thread that
anybody is saying any such nonsense (if someone has/is let me know and I'll
help roast them :-).  The opinions that I think you are finding 'dour and
dull' is really over the fact that you don't feel that real researchers
should concern themselves with the consolidation of past ideas into truly
useable (read that as "non-research" focused) systems.

>What the community ought to be doing is precisely the opposite.  We should
>be trying our wierd solutions on problems people haven't been able to solve
>yet, and trying to understand what the solutions that work have in common,
>and using this to make real progress in what our operating systems are
>capable of doing!  Lets see some really novel distributed systems, and
>try and understand why they work!

That's a fair rendition of my interpretation of Don Quixote. :-)  Joust to
your heart's content!

Take care,
	John D. Mitchell
	johnm@cory.Berkeley.EDU

P.S.	These opinions are wholly my own.  If I've put words into anybody's
	mouth wrongly please let me know because it was unintentional.