Joyent's David Young has a conviction that the days of the operating system are numbered, as part of his Joyent Manifesto - Quo vadis, Computing he writes:
“The operating system is dead. Long live the operating system. If the future is network applications, the past is the operating system.”
I think David has oversimplified the concept of an OS-less and server-less environment just a tad. Hardware and software will still need basic building blocks able to run the software of the future, be it server-client or de-centralised. He also notes:
A Web operating system will not emerge. I’m sure this point will be argued vigorously. But I’m right.
That is a give-in. Because the web isn't defined by being an "operating system", rather it is an increasingly interactive environment. So it's hardly breaking new ground to suggest "the internet" won't be an operating system, as it were. David also states:
Because the operating system is pushed down the stack, doesn’t mean what replaces it is an operating system.
To suggest a less complex OS isn't really an OS at all, side-steps the reality than an Operating System is defined primarily by it's function, not how big, or small it is. Or which parts of it reside where. This, again, is a questions of semantics.
A duck doesn't suddenly become an elk the moment it gains a slightly more efficient plumage and flies faster. It is still a duck. Just because many operating systems are moving towards a decentralised nirvana, doesn't suddenly mean they stop existing entirely.
As an example, the software that allows the iPhone to surf the web, access email and receive calls all hinges on a base install of OS X. It may be hidden, indeed one may potentially never actually see it, but it's still there.
Joyent rely heavily on Solaris and large server farms. Without either they would be little more than an idea looking for some way to find fruition. Indeed without that standardised, documented operating system they would never have been able to build their various products to begin with. It seems at odds with sense to be so quick to claim the imminent death of the very thing that helps gives one’s business life.
Further reading, however, illustrates that David contradicts and concedes some points:
This doesn’t mean a client edge device won’t have an operating system. It just won’t matter. Changes have been afoot to usher in this new era. The web is one.
So we’ve gone from no operating system, web or local, to an invisible one that doesn’t matter. I don’t typically “see” oxygen, but I still require it to live. Future technologies will be just the same, in that they too will require a basic operating system or environment to function. That may be entirely built into the device itself, or may be some kind of downloaded “intelligent code”. It may be a very different beast, but it will still be there.
This is really so much more about de-decentralised, portable and application focused computing and evolution of technology, both at the user and producer levels, not the death of the operating system itself. Smart devices are cropping up everywhere and David is right, computing as we know it will change massively in the future. But in order that those new devices can pass information and work in a semi-predictable way, they will still require a common tongue and portable code to co-exist.
How they will be constructed, where they will reside and what remnants of the current model will remain is something that will challenge us for many years to come.
≡ This is a journal entry relating to the topics of function, joyent, os, software, technology.
Brendan Borlase is a Systems and Network Administrator living in Adelaide, Australia, having lived, worked and breathed Information Technology for over 12 years. Learn more.
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