KOSH [Kommunity Orientated Software Hardware]

Weekly Summary

Week Commencing: 1st May 1999

Number: 019

Mailing List: kosh-general

In the mailing list this week, the following items were discussed. Please do
not email the scribe regarding any of these topics, it is not his job to answer
these questions but merely to report  the topics of conversation. If you have
any queries about this summary, please email ben@kosh.net, stating the Summary
Number, and Mailing List Name, and he will try to answer your queries.

a)

Subject: KOSH General ML Summaries

Summary of debate: These can be found both on the KOSH URL and at
                   http://www.mythicz.u-net.com

                   John Chandler also hopes to have a KOSH page up and running
                   soon and is interested in learning of links to other KOSH
                   pages.

b)

Subject: Bit size for KOSH OS

Summary of debate: It was asked if we are writing a 64-bit OS. The reply came
                   that we are writing an n-bit scalable OS that could easily
                   scale from 32-bit (and lower if needed) to 64-bit and more
                   if physical CPU and/or virtual implementation allow.

                   KOSH will not have address pointers exposed at the
                   application level. They will be within any HLL but that is
                   fixed on a recompile. At the API level there are object
                   references nominally somewhere between 64-bit and 128-bit.
                   Only an Object Manager will have any clue what an object
                   reference actually is.

                   Questions then posed: Can HLL and Object Manager be changed
                   so that applications can continue seamlessly? Could running
                   objects be moved from one machine to another, different one?


c)

Subject: Alternative OS Project - UNIOS

Summary of debate: A different OS project similar to KOSH can be seen at
                   http://unios.dhs.org/index.html


d)

Subject: KOSH Aminet

Summary of debate: Suggested we could see if it would be possible to get a KOSH
                   section on Aminet as there are files relating to NetBSD and
                   Linux already present - and KOSH will be ported to AmigaOS
                   (in one form or another).


e)

Subject: Abstracted KOSH and running multiple simultaneous OSses

Summary of debate: With software processors and the ability to maintain
                   multiple HALs as interchangeable objects and the ability to
                   maintain multiple HALs as interchangeable objects to allow
                   the system to view the ability to maintain the same hardware
                   in many different ways, we could make it relatively easy to
                   run multiple operating systems simultaneously. If we could
                   find a way of legally abstracting away and translating API
                   calls - WINE springs to mind - we could have crossplatform
                   software running relatively transparently.

                   However for something like this we would have to change the
                   OS - in essence port it to a new machine, much as has been
                   discussed for "hosted" KOSH.


f)

Subject: KOSH Survey

Summary of debate: Greg Webb and the Surveying Working Group have a preliminary
                   survey which they will show to us soon for comments. This
                   will be primarily to gather information from the wider world
                   about what should be included in KOSH and what it should
                   look/feel like.


g)

Subject: Correction to Summary 18 - Greg's email address

Summary of debate: Greg Webb's correct email address is
                   greg@gpwebb.freeserve.co.uk