Trustworthy Systems

Don’t forget the OS – and the principles!

Authors

Gernot Heiser

    School of Computer Science and Engineering
    UNSW,
    Sydney 2052, Australia

Published:

Invited talk at SIGOPS Strategy Workshop

Abstract

Looking at the programs of OS conferences these days, one is reminded of Rob Pike's infamous talk from February 2000 titled “Systems Software Research is Irrelevant”: the number of OS papers shows a similar trend as Pike lamented. And of those OS papers, few are addressing fundamental OS issues. Does this mean OS is a solved problems? Isn't the world still full of OSes that are compromised regularly? And doesn't this matter anymore? I believe it does, in fact, it happens more than ever before. Let's get back to basics, and solve actual OS problems.

BibTeX Entry

  @misc{Heiser_25:ssw,
    author           = {Gernot Heiser},
    howpublished     = {Invited talk at SIGOPS Strategy Workshop},
    month            = oct,
    slides           = {https://trustworthy.systems/publications/papers/Heiser_25:ssw.pdf},
    title            = {Don’t Forget the {OS} -- and the Principles!},
    url              = {https://trustworthy.systems/publications/papers/Heiser_25:ssw.abstract.pml},
    video            = {https://ipads.se.sjtu.edu.cn/sigops-strategic/SSW25-talk-Gernot.mp4},
    year             = {2025}
  }

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