Web operating system

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"Online operating system" redirects here. Refer here for the web desktop.

In metacomputing, WebOS and Web operating system are terms that describe network services for internet scale distributed computing, as in the WebOS Project at UC Berkeley [1], and the WOS Project [2]. In both cases the scale of the web operating system extends across the internet, like the web.

However, the terms WebOS and Web operating system have been employed more broadly and with far greater popularity in the context of "the web as in HTTP", and for many meanings ranging from singular systems to collections of systems [3][4][5][6][7]. In April 2002, Tim O'Reilly spoke of "the emergent Internet operating system" as an open collection of Web services [8]. For others a Web operating system, is a traditional operating system that is focused on supporting Web applications themselves.

Common to all uses, a Web operating system is distinct from Internet operating systems in that it is independent of the traditional individual computer operating system. This conception of the system reflects an evolution of research in the field of operating systems into the increasingly minimized (for example, TinyOS and Exokernel) and distributed (for example, Inferno), and for distributed systems increasingly defined in terms of the specification of their network protocols more than their implementations (for example, Plan9's 9P).

There's an ongoing controversy upon whether the new breed of WebOSs, that include eyeOS (which is Open Source), Oos, YouOS, G.ho.st, DesktopTwo and eXo WebOS are actually OSs that fall within the broad definition of the term [1]. The fact that all of these new WebOSs run over a browser window and/or a plugin and have no relation whatsoever with the hardware and its drivers seems to be central to this discussion. According to some of the people that actually run one of these sites, the object of these sites is to turn the desktop itself into a service that runs on the Internet [2] rather than on the local OS. So the term 'web desktop' or 'webtop' may seem more appropriate to some. On the other hand, as these services start to include a file system, application management systems and so on, they do overlap more and more with the typical functionality of an OS.

A Web operating system, could also be defined as operating system that solely provides Web access.[9] [10] [11] Web operating systems like these have been known as kiosks. However since the paradigm of Web computing is not limited to kiosk environments, a broader definition of a "Web operating system" is apt.

Contents

[edit] WebOS Project

The WebOS Project is a computing research project started at the University of California, Berkeley to develop suitable software development abstractions for applications that run over a network. The abstractions it provides include:

  • a filesystem that identifies data by uniform resource locators
  • a location-independent resource naming system
  • secure remote execution
  • secure data access
  • fail-safe transactions

Research on WebOS has continued at Duke University[12], the University of Texas at Austin, and the University of Washington.

The conception of the web operating system in the WebOS project can be characterized as a finite or catalogued collection of services.

[edit] History

WebOS gained popularity in 1999 when a much touted start up, WebOS Inc. (at first known as Hyperoffice[13] and later known as MyWebOS [14]), was founded by Berkeley grad Shervin Pishevar and Emory grad Drew Morris. WebOS licensed the WebOS technologies from Duke University and University of Texas (Austin) and recruited Dr. Amin Vahdat, Professor of Computer Science at Duke, who had pioneered the WebOS technologies at University of California at Berkeley where he got his PhD on his WebOS research. WebOS acquired WebOS.org, which was created by a young Swedish programmer, Fredrik Malmer, who had created the first online desktop environment. Soon after, some of the top DHTML and Javascript programmers in the world such as Erik Arvidsson of WebFx fame, Dan Steinman, creator of the Dynamic Duo Cross-browser DHTML API, joined WebOS. WebOS raised over $10 million in financing from Impact Venture Partners led by Adam Dell and Grotech Capital. WebOS was launched with a vision of creating the first web operating system complete with a WebOS API allowing developers to create Windows-like web applications that worked an extremely fast speeds by caching much of the code in the local browser. Arvidsson later launched Bindows, a framework very similar to the WebOS API, that does much of this and is used by many large companies and the US Military. WebOS filed the very first WebOS patents in 1999. WebOS competed with another start up, Desktop.com, which was aimed more at the consumer market. WebOS was covered by many media outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, financial Times, LA Times, Power lunch on CNBC, Fox News and CNN and helped spread the WebOS meme further. WebOS launched Hyperoffice[13], a full office suite, back in 1999.

[edit] WOS Project

In the context of the WOS Project, the web operating system is conceived of as a dynamic or ever changing collection of services [15] [16] [17] [18] [19].

“ The WOS (Web Operating System) is a joint project of four universities that aims at developing an operating system for the Web on top of existing operating systems and making the native services internet wide available. ”
 
— Simon Schubiger and Béat Hirsbrunner, WebCom: Automatic software configuration for the WOS [18] [19]

[edit] List of Web operating systems

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ Amin Vahdat. WebOS: Operating System Services for Wide Area Applications.
  2. ^ Peter Kropf and John Plaice and Herwig Unger. Towards a Web Operating System.
  3. ^ Richard MacManus. What is a WebOS?.
  4. ^ eyeOS. Open Source Web Desktop Environment, commonly known as Web Operating System (Web OS) or Web Office.
  5. ^ YouOS. What the heck is a web operating system?.
  6. ^ Xindesk. The WebOS..
  7. ^ John Battelle. All the world's a platform.
  8. ^ Tim O'Reilly. Inventing the Future.
  9. ^ Kai Hendry. Webconverger.
  10. ^ Matthew Nourse. cl33n.
  11. ^ Steve Hargadon. LiveKiosk.
  12. ^ WebOS at Duke University
  13. ^ a b The HyperOffice web site.
  14. ^ Press release for the extinct 'myWebOS.com'.
  15. ^ Slim Ben Lamine and John Plaice and Peter Kropf. Problems Of Computing On The Web.
  16. ^ Peter G. Kropf. Overview Of The WOS Project.
  17. ^ Ioana Banicescu and Herwig Unger. Running Scientific Computations In A Web Operating System Environment.
  18. ^ a b Simon Schubiger and Béat Hirsbrunner, Department of Informatics, University of Fribourg. Automatic Software Configuration for the WOS.
  19. ^ a b Simon Schubiger. Automatic Software Configuration.
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