[Info-vax] Reinventing VMS logical names (Fuchsia & Win NT)

[Dan Cross]

In article <uiishi$28arh$1 at dont-email.me>,
Robert A. Brooks <FIRST.LAST at vmssoftware.com> wrote:
>On 11/9/2023 8:47 AM, Dan Cross wrote:
>> Jake Hamby (Solid State Jake) <jake.hamby at gmail.com> wrote:
>  
>> 
>>> If I were hired to work on the future of OpenVMS, the one
>>> non-obvious direction I'd explore (anticipating what customers
>>> aren't yet asking for) would be to extend logical name tables
>>> and VMS's existing concept of multiple object classes with
>>> common security attributes to provide a secure way for
>>> processes to grant capabilities to each other via special
>>> mailbox messages or special LNM entries in a shared table.
>> 
>> That actually sounds kind of interesting.
>
>If you look at the original plans for DECnet/OSI in the late 80's/early 90's,
>the expectation was that the distributed naming service would be used for much more than
>node name lookup.
>
>I was a customer at the time, so at that point, I was hearing rumours, but a big concern was
>how many naming servers would one need for clusters of varying sizes.
>
>VSI has all the old internal DEC Notes conferences; reading some of the internal
>communication around that time, it's apparent that concern was HUGE deal with the sales force,
>as that was a constant question coming from customers.
>
>As we all know, the project became quite delayed, and among the aspects of the project that got
>tossed was the DNS as a broker of all objects.
>
>Yeah, that would not have addressed the security aspects noted by Jake, but it would have been
>an interesting start.

This makes perfect sense.  There was a lot of "distributed
object" stuff "in the air" back then; I can well imagine DEC
feeling like they had to come up with a response to DCE.

	- Dan C.