August 4, 2008

Seeing Microsoft’s research OS Singularity become the Midori Project reinforced some prevailing beliefs about the conflicted operating structure within the organization:

Here’s an email from me on July 30th, 2007 to Orion Hodson:

Hi Orion,

I’ve been following the progress of Singularity for a while now and am intrigued by the possibilities it portends. It seems as though the Singularity V1.0 Research Development Kit (RDK) is only available to academic institutions. However, I am past the academia stage - is there any way for me to get my hands on it?

Cheers, Zubin.

Orion replies in typically “i’m being watched by the overlords” diplomatic manner:

Zubin

I’m redirecting your email to Mark Lewin, the program manager for the Singularity RDK.  He is able to provide more details on RDK plans.

Kind Regards

- Orion

And finally Mark Lewin puts the predictable icing on the cake:

Hi Zubin,

At this stage and for the foreseeable future, the Singularity RDK will be available only for academic non-commercial use.

Thanks,

Mark

So, the impression I got was: No Zubin, you can’t play with a research OS from Microsoft because you aren’t in school anymore and therefore the future cannot be shaped by you.

The reality is: No Zubin, you can’t play with a research OS from Microsoft because you are not an impressionable junior drone that can be moulded to our thoughts and beliefs. Your original thoughts would likely be construed as anarchy within our politically charged ranks. Oh and Midori will make us money someday.

I do still have high hopes on Midori, only because it is based on Singularity. Sing# is a systems language built much like Erlang. I am pretty sure Tony Hoare’s work on CSPs was an influence in the design. There are lots of innovative concepts being implemented and from what I understand, the results have been encouraging.

It will be interesting to see how Microsoft evolves Midori to maintain these properties while still meeting consumer demands. There, lies the greatest challenge. I anticipate the first use of Midori will be in MS’ cloud initiatives. They need a CloudOS that’s competitive with Linux or better than it in many respects. Future iterations of projects like Live Mesh can certainly take advantage of that.

So, thumbs-up for the innovation, thumbs-down for the schizophrenic public policy Microsoft.

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