[Squeak-e] squeak-e and ANSI Smalltalk

[Robert Withers]

On Saturday, February 1, 2003, at 05:52 PM, shane at shaneroberts.com 
wrote:

> I have a question about this.  Part of the philosophy which
> motivated the creation of Squeak (as I understand it) is to be an
> "open" system.  That is users/researchers can get at any part of the
> system.  So my question is, would you want to violate this
> philosophy by changing Squeak to "control" access to parts of the
> system?

Sure I would.  In development mode, I would allow access to the entire 
system, or rather I would allow the user (console, so to speak) to get 
at the system, but no third-party code should be allowed in while you 
are doing this.  Once you put it into lock-down mode, it should not 
allow you access to parts you don't know about.   Thus third parties 
could safely run code on your machine.  You could still kill foreign 
code, I suppose.  These seem to be in the area of UI  interfacing of 
the security to the user, and I haven't really thought about that too 
much.

But it still needs to be alive in the sense of:  
http://minnow.cc.gatech.edu/squeak/2950 .  That's what will make it 
Smalltalk.

> Or would capabilities be something that you implement between
> "images", that is, different instantiations of the image run-time?

inter- and intra-  image I believe we are considering.

> Are capabilities something that becomes important for inter-host
> communication over a network?  Or for intra-host (on the same
> host) user process cooperation?

yes.

> I'm not sure what these questions mean in terms of "normal"
> Smalltalk operation and security measures.  Has anyone on this list
> dealt with Smalltalk security issues before, without relying upon
> host operating system services?

this is a big reason that I presume we felt it was pertinent to form 
another list.   the host OS is only there to give us a launching point 
and allow squeak access to display, sockets, files, sound, time, and 
that kind of thing.

Rob


ps.  Cees: we need the reply-to fix..  my 'C' and 'V' are wearing down 
to nubs - that's not my CV, of course.  :)