<story><title>Fuchsia: Google&apos;s modular, capability-based, non-Unix operating system</title><url>https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/docs/+/HEAD/book.md</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>gonyea</author><text>&amp;gt; it&amp;#x27;s fundamentally anti-user&lt;p&gt;I don’t get this sentiment at all. The vast majority of users don’t know what root access is, let alone care about it.</text></item><item><author>rossy</author><text>This seems good and bad. The prospect of a new, modern operating system is exciting. The system call interface is sensible and it follows modern security best practices (eg. deny-by-default.)&lt;p&gt;One practical disadvantage compared to Linux is that it&amp;#x27;s not GPL, so if Google uses it to make a mainstream mobile phone operating system, other vendors won&amp;#x27;t be compelled to release their kernel sources like they are with Android today, which means a Fuchsia equivalent to LineageOS might not support as many devices.&lt;p&gt;Also, capability-based security is fine as long as there&amp;#x27;s some way for the owner of the device to acquire all capabilities. If there is not, it&amp;#x27;s fundamentally anti-user, since it&amp;#x27;s treating the user as an adversary. Since most Android devices require aftermarket modifications to get root access, I&amp;#x27;m not too hopeful about Fuchsia. If these bullet points are anything to go by and DRM and verified boot are first-class features, it&amp;#x27;s likely that Fuchsia will have built-in mechanisms that prevent the user from copying protected video content, so it&amp;#x27;s unlikely that the average Fuchsia powered device would grant the user full privileges.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>michaelmrose</author><text>Its as simple as imagining any scenario where your interests are at odds with the oem, the government, or literally any interested party with money and time.&lt;p&gt;If Verizon wants to sell you a device with GPS but rent you the feature for 10 bucks a month.&lt;p&gt;If the government wants the privilege of censorship unobstructed by the inherent technical impossibility of controlling every aspect of user owned devices.&lt;p&gt;If you want to avoid planned obsolescence and use your device longer than 18 months.&lt;p&gt;If you are a keirig owner if you want to buy the coffee of your choosing.&lt;p&gt;If you want to refill your ink cartridges.&lt;p&gt;Any obnoxious thing that people would trivially bypass if they had full control of their own stuff.&lt;p&gt;The fact that you an otherwise intelligent individual could ask such a staggeringly ridiculous question is why the free market is a worthless answer to any of the above.&lt;p&gt;There is a reason standards are developed by knowledgable parties rather than hoping that buyers will navigate the quagmire of complicated topics to demand sanity from merchants.</text></comment>
<story><title>Fuchsia: Google&apos;s modular, capability-based, non-Unix operating system</title><url>https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/docs/+/HEAD/book.md</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>gonyea</author><text>&amp;gt; it&amp;#x27;s fundamentally anti-user&lt;p&gt;I don’t get this sentiment at all. The vast majority of users don’t know what root access is, let alone care about it.</text></item><item><author>rossy</author><text>This seems good and bad. The prospect of a new, modern operating system is exciting. The system call interface is sensible and it follows modern security best practices (eg. deny-by-default.)&lt;p&gt;One practical disadvantage compared to Linux is that it&amp;#x27;s not GPL, so if Google uses it to make a mainstream mobile phone operating system, other vendors won&amp;#x27;t be compelled to release their kernel sources like they are with Android today, which means a Fuchsia equivalent to LineageOS might not support as many devices.&lt;p&gt;Also, capability-based security is fine as long as there&amp;#x27;s some way for the owner of the device to acquire all capabilities. If there is not, it&amp;#x27;s fundamentally anti-user, since it&amp;#x27;s treating the user as an adversary. Since most Android devices require aftermarket modifications to get root access, I&amp;#x27;m not too hopeful about Fuchsia. If these bullet points are anything to go by and DRM and verified boot are first-class features, it&amp;#x27;s likely that Fuchsia will have built-in mechanisms that prevent the user from copying protected video content, so it&amp;#x27;s unlikely that the average Fuchsia powered device would grant the user full privileges.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Mithaldu</author><text>Being anti-user isn&amp;#x27;t about providing an overwhelming value to all users of a product, but to make sure that no user ever gets stuck with no way out.&lt;p&gt;Opera v12 is a great example of that. There is no browser with its feature-set. In purely objective terms all other browsers are strictly inferior when it comes to usability and range of features outside the web rendering core. It also provides a number of data storage features. Now Opera ASA has given up on it, and because it&amp;#x27;s closed sourced not even small things like changing SSL ciphers can be fixed.&lt;p&gt;So millions of users were forced to switched to worse alternatives, and some were forced to manually extract their data.&lt;p&gt;The kick in the butt about this: There&amp;#x27;s a leak of the source code on the internet, but collaboration on it is nigh-impossible because any site hosting it is breaking copyright law. This despite Opera v12, with the Presto engine, being 100% and entirely abandoned and with the sale of the &amp;quot;Opera Browser&amp;quot; to a chinese malware company, there not even being any way for the public to know who actually owns the rights to v12.</text></comment>