> It's really not. Imagine a file system where all the "real" file locations are hidden, and the visible file structure just symlinks to these "real" locations. Practically no overhead at all. There will be a minor performance hit with uncompressing files before starting a program, but that's about all.

Are we talking about the same thing? It's a:

- pseudofs

- in userspace (IIRC)

- which parses multiple archive files

- and vends their contents as unionfs

If this bought you anything at all useful, then maybe it would be worth all the complexity involved ... but it doesn't.

> That only works when all applications are written using those standard libraries, and that doesn't always happen, even on OSX. Why punish software developers for wanting to use libraries that better suit their needs?

It's not punishing developers. I've shipped software for Mac OS, Mac OS X and iOS for 15+ years, and believe me, being able to ship custom versions of libraries without having to deal with a package manager, library incompatibilities across applications, et, al, is an advantage.

> The system was not built as a successor to the original Mac OS. The BeOS team were led by ex-Mac people, granted ...

Led by ex-Mac people, including the former CEO of Apple. Targeted at the BeBox (PPC) and PPC Macs. Shopped to Apple for purchase. It was intended to be the successor to MacOS that Copland wasn't.

> As I've said before, the idea behind BeOS was to look to the future, not to be tied to the past.

Then maybe the new Haiku leadership should stop blindly copying what they're familiar with from Linux.