Building new operating systems seems so ambitious to me. Radiant Computer (https://radiant.computer/) was also recently posted.
What other exciting projects like these exist?
What other exciting projects like these exist?
You make any of your OS standard libraries GPL and they need to suck to use and can’t statically link your code without being forced to also be licensed GPL.
That viral property some people find desirable.
Being able to sell it closed and not releasing the source would make closing the android ecosystem 'good old times', no?
We would only get a bunch of closed outdated company controlled binaries, but now for everything, not only drivers?
Virality might suit the ego, but it doesn't make for a healthy project when its primary users are parasitic.
Software is not a scarce good. Let companies use free software without contributing back as much as they wish; it doesn't affect others in the least. There is no bleeding of the commons here, because even if companies take as much as they can without giving back, it doesn't reduce the resources available for others.
When that development gets silo'ed away in proprietary systems, that is potential development lost upstream. If that happens enough, upstream becomes starved and anemic, and with forks only living on in silos.
Apple, for example, has made trillions of dollars off of FreeBSD. To this day, FreeBSD still does not have a modern WiFi or Bluetooth stack.
Meanwhile, AMD, Intel, Microsoft, and even Apple, etc have full-time engineering roles and teams dedicated to upstreaming their improvements to Linux. And there are paid engineers at these companies that ensure WiFi and Bluetooth work on Linux.
People really got to stop with crazy nonsense.
LionsOS[1] is its static scenario building framework, with some dynamic scenario support.
Genode[2] is an independent OS construction kit that can also use the seL4 kernel. Their general purpose OS, Sculpt, just had a very interesting multi-kernel release[3].
The systems group at ETHZürich is building Kirsch[4], an effort with seL4 and CHERI.
Managarm[5] is also building something of interesting architecture with some Linux software compatibility.
1. https://trustworthy.systems/projects/LionsOS/
3. https://genodians.org/alex-ab/2025-11-02-sculpt-multi-kernel
This is real world throughput and latency seL4 is crushing Linux on, not some synthetic IPC benchmark.
Something I want to explore, and which has some viability in the LionsOS model too, is that a general-purpose system may still liberally cut out unused functionality if highly modular and easily configurable. Like Legos.
In conclusion, props to the people at Trustworthy Systems as always, but it's safe to say that the OS field is still far from settled. My best compliment to seL4 is that it has raised the bar and simultaneously paved the way for future generations of advances. It's a seminal work that was desperately needed.