Overview of the WOS project

We discuss the Web Operating System (WOS™) approach to global computing. We show that the heterogeneous and dynamic nature of the Web or Internet makes it impossible to define a fixed set of operating system services, usable for all services. Rather, we propose that generalized software configuration techniques, based on a demand-driven technique called eduction, can be used to define versions of a Web Operating System that can be built in an incremental manner. This net-centric approach considers communication as the central issue as opposed to the common notion of central servers. We present the communication mechanisms as well as the WOS node architecture and components to achieve this.