genodians content

[Guido Witmond]

On 2/11/19 2:48 PM, Norman Feske wrote:
> Admittedly, I cannot quite grasp the audience you are targeting with the
> two postings. Even though the topics are related to Genode in general,
> to me they remain somehow disconnected from our actual project.
> The supermarket analogy is nice, but overall the tone of both articles
> remains rather "educational" - like a wise person telling a life lesson
> to some uninformed kids. As a reader, I would find a tone like
> "look-what-we-can-do", or
> "look-what-a-painful/fantastic/surprising-experience-I-just-had" more
> captivating.

The educational tone is deliberate:

I've noticed that _most_ people in IT, be it programmers, managers don't 
know about the existence of microkernels or the concept of ambient 
authority at all.

They've heard about POLA, but can only imagine applying that in a 
Linux/Windows setting.

And one manager mentioned that "all this microkernel-stuff is academic 
and will someday show up in Linux".

I want to address people that are interested in computer security and 
show that some (many?) security and usability problems stem from the 
architecture. And that there are other architectures offering different 
trade-offs.

I hope to reach that I can reach that captivating level when we (genode 
community) can show that computers can both be easy to use and safe 
against malware. Don't worry, I'll go deeper into Genode/Sculpt too.

My fear is that people might find me too condescending and stop reading.


I've updated those posts and added a third pill. In that one, I describe 
how users are let down by the ambient authority model.


I'll make em presentable and when I'm done, I ask to get them published.

Cheers, Guido.