Earlier discussion, different article, same OS.
Interesting top comment by one of the devs:<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9806607">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9806607</a>
Many moons ago, I remember reading the Byte Magazine article about TAOS and being totally enthused:<p><a href="https://sites.google.com/site/dicknewsite/home/computing/byte-articles/the-taos-operating-system-1991" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://sites.google.com/site/dicknewsite/home/computing/byt...</a><p>Last time a TAOS discussion came up on HN, I emailed vygr (Chris Hinsley, one of the Taos founders) about the state of the Taos IP:<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9811455">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9811455</a><p>Sadly not good news, but I'm still hopeful whomever owns it can find it in their heart to release it to the public in some form (as Castles did with Acorn's RiscOS).
I write about this several times as at IT journalist the time. I remember interviewing Francis Charig a couple of times, who was - ISTR - MD of Tao Systems.<p>It was a tough one. The demos and the concept was absolutely beautiful and the claimed performance astonishing. It was an elegant idea. But I had no real, independently verifiable way of knowing whether it was bullshit.<p>I seem to recall it started off being described initially on the CIX bulletin board (think dial-up, UK version of Reddit) in conference (subreddit) of its own. Initiially it looked like philosphical ramblings until several of the conference members twiiged 'hang on - youre talking about a real OS!'. Might have been Chris Hinsley who posted the text.
Also covered in Edge Magazine issue 9, June 1994, but I can't find a PDF of it anymore: <a href="https://www.retromags.com/magazines/uk/edge/edge-issue-9/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.retromags.com/magazines/uk/edge/edge-issue-9/</a>
How does this compare to Erlang? Or, to be precise, and Erlang VM running on a contemporary OS.<p>I always had the feeling that the Erlang VM should have been implemented on the OS level from the start, and now it turns out some company actually did it (or something very similar)...
I was doing 3d graphics contract work for Acorn in the mid nineties, for their RiscPC. I was given an early version of Taos to try - it was so early in development as to be essentially unusable, but it definitely existed!
Sounds somewhat similar to Java combined with an MQ engine, if you turned it into an OS (like the jnode guys did) and made it load code in response to receiving messages on a queue. Not surprising that they ended up doing JVMs as it seems spiritually very similar.
So many of these ideas have become implemented, in a hodge-podge of disparate mechanisms.<p>Does anyone know how much of TAO really existed and if it can be accessed today?
It nearly became the next AmigaOS:<p><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170108073531/http://www.amigahistory.plus.com/deplayer/august2001.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://web.archive.org/web/20170108073531/http://www.amigah...</a>
Read this as "tacos," came expecting some pointlessly quirky OS filled with taco references (perhaps arguments are "fillings", passed to objects called "shells"), am now very disappointed