“[Vita Nuova Holdings CEO Michael] Jeffrey says developers will
be drawn to Inferno because it is a powerful technology for
creating network-based applications. For one thing, he says,
Inferno is highly scalable, which means it can be embedded into
very small devices – it can be used in a mere 30 kilobytes of
memory – and it also can run on a variety of processor
architectures and larger operating systems (OSes), such as Linux,
Sun Microsystems’ Solaris and Microsoft’s Windows.”
“Another of Inferno’s strengths is the simplicity of its network
protocol, according to Jeffrey. All network resources are
represented as files in a hierarchical system; therefore, accessing
network resources in Inferno is as straightforward as making a
“file open” call.”
“Then there’s Inferno’s lineage. The operating system was
created by Rob Pike, Dennis Ritchie and other Bell Labs software
engineers who were the original developers of the Unix OS some 20
years ago. …the timing is right because the industry is now
much more receptive to alternative OSes. He cites the rise of Linux
and the U.S. government’s antitrust suit against Microsoft as
helping to shift people’s attitudes.”