The key new "feature" of Fuschia is that its stable ABI makes closed-source drivers easier to write in the short term, relative to Linux. As a result, the vast majority of Fuschia drivers will be closed-source. Don't you agree?
I believe supporting a stable API and closed-source drivers will result in a technically inferior, more complex, less stable kernel. The Linux model of including all the drivers in a single open source codebase, where the drivers can be refactored and improved along with the rest of the kernel, is a genuinely superior way to develop a kernel, which produces a genuinely technically superior product. I just hope Google realizes this before they sink too many millions into Fuschia.
Anyway, what I said is that sandboxing isn't a substitute for open-sourcing. They are complements, not substitutes.
FUD. L4 is the most widely deployed kernel in the world.
> Anyway, what I said is that sandboxing isn't a substitute for open-sourcing.
Given reality, something must substitute for open source drivers. Sandboxing is certainly the obvious choice.
That's why we should sandbox drivers as much as possible! I'm a big fan of punting a lot of driver work to userspace. How are we supposed to do that if drivers are allowed to use the entire Linux kernel internal API and do whatever they want? How can we possibly isolate a driver that thinks it has the right to take mmap_sem and twiddle PTE bits?