Microsoft Singularity

Singularity is the code name given to an internal Microsoft research project to build an operating system from scratch. This research project has no ties to Windows as per "Microsoft's Other OS" article states. Note, some of the links in the this article are not available. The interesting points about this proof of concept research project is that is built entirely using Microsoft languages. In particular, it uses a derivative of the managed code C# dubbed Sing#. Singularity even got attention at Slashdot, "The Microsoft Singularity".

The published technical status report (pdf) to date reports to having the micro kernel running. This sets the foundation for building modules or plugins to the operating system core. There is a team of approximately 35 researchers spanning many disciplines. The road to the future of this project currently is still purely for research purposes. I am sure there will be eventual commercial use or application of the research knowledge gained.

An interesting observation about this project is that only Microsoft technology is used to build it. Given the well known ambitions of this company, does this mean a 100% proprietary operating system in the future will be a successor to Windows? I can speculate quite extensively about the future possiblities (not all positive) for an operating system from this particular organization.

Another viewpoint is that 'reinventing the wheel' comes to mind when there are so many mature micro kernel alternative operating systems today based on Linux. There was another large corporation (IBM) that went down this same path in the 1980-1990s building a proprietary operating system (OS/2) that did not succeed in the marketplace. It looks to me that history may be repeating itself over the next 5-10 years with yet another big information technology corporation.