From the webpage:
Project Oberon is a design for a complete computer system. Its simplicity and clarity enables a single person to know and implement the entire system, while still providing enough power to make it useful and usable in a production environment. This website contains information and resources to help you explore and use the system. The project is fully described in a book — Project Oberon: The Design of an Operating System, a Compiler, and a Computer — written by the designers, Niklaus Wirth and Jürg Gutknecht. The second (2013) edition of the book and the accompanying code are published on Niklaus Wirth’s website. We provide links to the original material here, along with local packaged copies, with kind permission from the authors.
You are unlikely to encounter an Oberon system in production use at most government or enterprise offices. Still, the experience of knowing how computer operating systems work will enable you to ask pointed security questions and to cut through the fog of evasion.
Nicklaus comments in the 2013 preface:
But surely new systems will emerge, perhaps for different, limited purposes, allowing for smaller systems. One wonders where their designers will study and learn their trade. There is little technical literature, and my conclusion is that understanding is generally gained by doing, that is, “on the job”. However, this is a tedious and suboptimal way to learn. Whereas sciences are governed by
principles and laws to be learned and understood, in engineering experience and practice are indispensable. Does Computer Science teach laws that hold for (almost) ever? More than any other field of engineering, it would be predestined to be based on rigorous mathematical principles. Yet, its core hardly is. Instead, one must rely on experience, that is, on studying sound examples.The main purpose of and the driving force behind this project is to provide a single book that serves as an example of a system that exists, is in actual use, and is explained in all detail. This task drove home the insight that it is hard to design a powerful and reliable system, but even much harder to make it so simple and clear that it can be studied and fully understood. Above everything else, it requires a stern concentration on what is essential, and the will to leave out the rest, all the popular “bells and whistles”.
Recently, a growing number of people has become interested in designing new, smaller systems. The vast complexity of popular operating systems makes them not only obscure, but also provides opportunities for “back doors”. They allow external agents to introduce spies and devils unnoticed by the user, making the system attackable and corruptible. The only safe remedy is to build a safe system anew from scratch.
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Did you catch that last line?
The only safe remedy is to build a safe system anew from scratch.
We don’t all need to build diverse (safe) systems but is does sound like a task the government could contract out to computer science departments. Adoption by the government alone would create a large enough market share to make it a viable platform.
Think of it this way: We can keep building sieves upon sieves upon sieves….nth sieve, all the while proclaiming increasing security, or, a safe system can be built. Developers should think of all the apps to be re-invented for the safe system. Something for everybody.