alt Hacker NewsReading this makes me wish someone would really try to make Project Xanadu a reality. A network built on Content Addressable Storage and a Version Control System is some thing I'd really like to see invested in.
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Analemma_ • yesterday at 8:48 PM
It's not a reality for a lack of trying. Multiple people have spent (literal!) lifetimes working on Xanadu and multiple businesses poured a great deal of money and effort into it way back in the day.
It continues to not be a thing because, even though the idea is superficially appealing to a certain engineer mind and that's why people get sucked into the cult, in reality it's not something anybody wants and it's solving a problem nobody has.
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You’ll hear/read many people opining that it actually wasn’t a good idea.
I counter that it’s a great idea for many things. The problem is that something good enough and far cheaper is already all over the Earth: the web.
Just like Hurd and Minix might have technical merit that’d make them “better” than Linux, Linux is good enough and already here.