BootOS: Monolithic operating system in 512 bytes of x86 machine code | Hacker News Reader

BootOS: Monolithic operating system in 512 bytes of x86 machine code

github.com

87 pointsa_imho14 comments

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There is a fascinating story behind this:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20569438

Some notes about BootOS:

https://dercuano.github.io/notes/bootos-notes.html

Cool link. I like your notes, I learned some stuff about the Toledo's and generating IDs for use in IMGUIs too

Those aren't my notes, but someone elses.

- https://github.com/jart/sectorlisp

I don't quite like an operating system as minimal as this to be licensed under a non-copyleft license. Operating systems like Minix have already been exploited by Intel for their Management Engine, which some call a 'backdoor' in their machines. And Minix was licensed under the BSD License as well, so Intel could get away not releasing the source code for IME easily.

This is a terribly impressive project for fitting in 512 bytes. It's charmingly packed full of features for its size and it taught me a couple x86 tricks. So I don't mean to sound harsh here. But it's an OS for the 16 bit IBM PC. Its strategic value to Intel in the FLOSS wars is probably only slightly greater than CP/M's.

With this project being so small.. impressively of course. Does this licencing type interfere if someone can separately come up with some similar methods and processes, legitimately without referring to this project.

If it was the be enforced, it seems it would be extremely hard to enforce given the limited methods such an os And features COULD be implemented within such a small space.. Or have I misunderstood completely.

As an analogy.. Being able to license the most efficient way electrons and protons can vibrate at a certain frequency seems unenforceable..

I would love a libc that allowed me to compile C programs to run as a bootloader... in the 90's. These days, I'd just hack grub.

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