TunesWiki
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(As of: 2007)
TunesWiki was the former wiki site for the TUNES Project.
- What is the TUNES Project?
The TUNES Project is a project to develop a free software computing system based on a reflective design, which system as a whole is also to be named 'TUNES'.
We want to get rid of the obsolete or plain mis-designed idiosyncrasies of current computing systems that standardize things from the low-level on, as the legacy of systems designed first for resource-poor computers, then under the constraints of proprietary software.
For instance, we want to replace filesystems with orthogonal persistence of objects, compilation and administration of program binaries with automatic consistency management of dynamically optimized code, user-interface-driven programming with structure-driven user-interfacing, explicit manual networking with implicit automatic distribution. See #Features if you like feature lists.
The common point about these features is that they consist not in something more that the user/programmer can do with some more work (implementing such 'do' features is a 'simple matter of programming', and requires no a priori system support besides the basic device drivers); they consist in the user/programmer being able not to do, about his not having to care, yet still achieve all that he does care about; they consist in relieving the human from work by letting the machine handle it for him, which is the essence of progress.
The ability to let the machine automatically do things that could previously be done only by manual interaction (which include typing programs), the ability to specify what one cares about and what doesn't care about and trusts the computer to handle all by itself, these are what the reflective design is all about.
- What does the name 'TUNES' stand for?
The name 'TUNES' is a recursive acronym, which stands for 'TUNES is a Useful, Nevertheless Expedient, System'. The name demonstrates our commitment to build a computing system according to long-term concerns about how computing should be, as well as practical requirements and opportunities of today's computing.
Actually, the 'N' used to stand for 'Not', meaning that we conspicuously do not strive toward expediency in the restricted meaning of 'being good in the short term with overwhelming bad side-effects in the long run'. It was transformed into 'Nevertheless', to insist on the fact that despite our being attached to long-term implications of our system, we are conscious that to live and survive, we must be strong on short term issues, so that we aim not only long-term utility, but also short-term expediency, in its extended meaning that does not preclude said long-term utility.