Welcome to the Tunes project

"To make an apple pie from scratch,
   you must first create the universe"
-- Carl Sagan
You should read this Warning before you
learn what the Tunes Project is,
see the current project Status, or
follow Pointers to more Tunes topics...

If you already know the Tunes project, you might want to see What's New on the WWW pages.


Warning !

This page, as the entire the Tunes project beneath, is currently under active construction...
Do regular "Reloads" to get the latest version. It may just have changed since you first loaded it!
If this isn't enough, because you can't flush the httpd cache, then you'd better get the Tunes distribution by ftp, and regularly get patches by ftp or mail (send me e-mail to get subscribed) so that you may quietly read upgraded pages at home with very limited network traffic.

Please do never hesitate to send the page maintainer's any feedback: questions, suggestions, ideas, corrections, remarks, opinions, insults, and comments about mistypes and broken english are welcome, especially if you disagree or do not understand. Thus, the page can be improved, things explained better and changed according to your suggestions.
Each page's maintainer's e-mail address is always at the end of it.
You can also send mail to the whole Tunes mailing list, if you can't reach the maintainer, keep disagreeing with him, or think the subject involves discussion from project members. Also, when things aren't settled on WWW, it's best to read the mailing list, and ask on there.

Finally, The above is true for every Tunes pages, and every page reader, whether active project member or simply guest, even if no subsequent warning may are present.


What is Tunes ?

Actually, this is the first of many Frequently Asked Questions (a.k.a. FAQs) about Tunes. Here are partial answers to these questions.

Tunes means Tunes is a Useful, Not Expedient, System. It is a project to provide both design and implemention of a computing system, based upon a paradigm of total computing freedom. Such a system encompasses all computing software, from the lowest-level hardware layers of an operating system, up to the highest-level layers of computer logic, and including friendly user interfaces, computer languages, distributed computing management.

Its scope is the whole computing world; it aims at absolutely all kinds of users (we make no arbitrary racial or other distinction among them), from newbies to gurus, humans or machines, and all kinds of computing, professional, amateur or leisure.
Its approach is based on a permanent, serious, deep reflection about how the computing world could be, how it should be, and why it should be so, including both theoretical and practical considerations, which we invite you to share with us. We believe that both theory without practice and practice without theory lead to deeply flawed systems. Thus this project is neither a purely philosophical nor a purely experimental project: it's an ethical project.
Since the project is in an early development stage, we're currently looking for the guru (or would-be guru) type of collaborator. Don't be modest; if you're ready to work, you can easily become a guru. The project is currently not funded, and lives on the spare time of its collaborators.
The project will freely distribute all its code over this world, but will reserve the right to offer non-free support for it. Code will be copyrighted so that it will stay freely distributable, but the project will stay in control of commercial use, distribution, and support of any code produced.

The project is divided recursively into subprojects each having its own maintainer, according to the Tunes Charter. This page is the root project of the above hierarchy.


Tunes project status

The Tunes project is currently in early development stage. Current release is 0.0.0.12. But if you access this page through the WWW, it already has changed a bit since the release.

Helping us

Now you can help us, and we beg you do so, be it "merely" by sending us feedback or pointers to other people's work. What did you understand/misunderstand, like/dislike, agree/disagree with? What improvements could be done, in the contents or style of this page? What gross or subtle mistakes are we doing, that you can point us to? What other subjects would you like the project to cover, even though you might not be able to actively help us cover it ?


Tunes addresses

In any case, don't forget to send us any kind of feeback !


Tunes papers


To Do in the root project


Project Coordinator:
Faré -- rideau@clipper.ens.fr