[Squeak-e] squeak-e and ANSI Smalltalk
Robert Withers
rwithers12 at attbi.com
Sat Feb 1 18:38:37 CET 2003
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. :)
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