Transport-level protocols in user space

Posted Jun 25, 2016 19:01 UTC (Sat) by robert_s (subscriber, #42402)
In reply to: Transport-level protocols in user space by marcH
Parent article: Transport-level protocols in user space

"The closer to the user, the closer to the principle."

I disagree that the application is closer to the user than the OS. The application is closer to the corporatized (and often rather greedy) vision the application developer has. The application likes to think it exists in a vacuum on your system without having to interoperate with or work alongside things it doesn't want to. One of the OS's important jobs is to police that on behalf of the user.

Transport-level protocols in user space

Posted Jun 26, 2016 10:37 UTC (Sun) by Fowl (subscriber, #65667) [Link]

That job has been delegated to the web browser, it seems

Transport-level protocols in user space

Posted Jun 26, 2016 18:38 UTC (Sun) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link] (1 responses)

This discussion has so far been confusing two different types of control/freedoms:

A) run-time control, e.g.: root permission, cgroups, firewalls, etc.
B) "build/install control", sorry for the lack of a better term. e.g.: choosing which application to trust and install, a.k.a: "is there an app for that?"

> One of the OS's important jobs is to police that...

Yet is is, and this can be type of control/freedom A.

> ... on behalf of the user.

... on behalf of the *administrator*.

Freedom A obviously did not exist on multi-user systems. Now that everyone has a single-user computer in their pocket you'd think people have it. Except not because it's way too technical and complicated and scary, so all users besides geeks still want someone else to manage this on their behalf: see the massive success of secure/verified boot, DRMs, managed set-up boxes, etc.[*]. So nice theory but was never really practised on a wide scale. In practice the OS is owned just like the rest of the network is.

This leaves only freedom B as a (admittedly limited) type of control for most users.

[*] now add Linux TCP/IP maintainers to that list?

Transport-level protocols in user space

Posted Jul 1, 2016 21:21 UTC (Fri) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

> This discussion has so far been confusing two different types of control/freedoms:

I think it is also confusing two types of user. The user/owner, and the (ab)user/nonowner.

Just because I'm the user doesn't mean I have any special rights. The owner may be someone completely different who wants to use the kernel to secure HIS rights.

Cheers,
Wol