The Tunes root project

"To make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe"
-- Carl Sagan

These WWW pages as well as the whole Tunes project are
copyright (c) 1995 François-René "Faré" Rideau and the members of the TUNES project.

First off, you should read these Warnings if you haven't yet.
For a less verbose version of this page, click here.
Now if you already know the Tunes project, you might want to see directly What's New on the WWW pages.


Contents of the Tunes Project

Introduction
A short description of What the Tunes project is, including a FAQ list with answers.

Papers
Papers and Articles about Tunes.

Subprojects
Tunes is divided recursively into Subprojects:

Project Status
The Status of current Tunes development.

Project Schedule
A Schedule for further Tunes development.

Mailing-list
Tunes has got a mailing list, of which you can read the on-line archive.

FTP site
An anonymous ftp site containing a distribution of all Tunes software.

Charter
The Tunes Charter.

Project Members
A list of active Tunes project members to know more about us.

Changelog
We briefly "log" the Changes in the TUNES project.

Review
In the Review suproject, we inspect related software projects, particularly about OSes and Languages. We also compare compares Tunes to them.


What is Tunes ?

Actually, this is the first of many Frequently Asked Questions (a.k.a. FAQs) about Tunes.
To sum up in technical terms, Tunes is a project to replace existing Operating Systems, Languages, and User Interfaces by a completely rethough Computing System, based on a correctness-proof-secure higher-order reflective self-extensible fine-grained distributed persistent fault-tolerant version-aware decentralized (no-kernel) object system.
We want to implement such a system because we know all these are required for the computing industry to compete fairly, which is not currently possible. Even if Tunes itself does not become a world-wide OS, we hope the TUNES experience can speed up the appearance of such an OS that would fulfill our requirements.

Tunes is a recursive acronym for: "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 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, all kinds of computing, from video games to professional expert systems, on all kind of platforms, from pocket calculators to mainframe computer.
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 (see our article Why a New OS) 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.


Papers about Tunes


Tunes project status

The Tunes project is currently in early development stage. Current release is 0.0.0.20. But if you access this page through the WWW, it already has changed a bit since the release.
Look for the latest developments on the Tunes mailing-list archive.


Tunes project Schedule

Small Fixes
There are "ToDo" entries in all WWW files of things that should be done.
Version numbering
Version 0.0.1 would be the first version to boot and do computations.
Version 0.1 will be the first running version that allows any potentially useful interaction.
Version 1.0 should include the full core system semantics, and be somewhat portable, even though the implementation is lame as of running speed.
Version 2.0 would be an efficient implementation.
Version 3.0 would be fully ported to all common platforms.
Meanwhile we're version 0.0.0, and internal revision is still evolving
I hope we'll arrive at 0.0.1 before we reach internal revision 255 ;)


Contributing to Tunes

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? Who do you know could help us? Where do you know we could find useful information?


More netsurfing

  • Our Review subproject has lots of pointers about OSes and Languages.
  • If you are not there already, access the original Tunes Home page.
  • This page is hosted by the students' server at the ENS


    To Do in the root project


    Project Coordinator: Faré