I appreciate the kind words, but let's give me a tad more credit in the experience department, please: I have been doing production OS kernel development for over two decades, and have done non-trivial work in essentially every privileged subsystem across several different microprocessor and OS architectures. If you want to say that I have gobs of experience in kernel development (and more generally at the hardware/software interface), but no experience with unikernels per se, then fine, I guess -- but at the same time, let's acknowledge that you are the CEO of a unikernel company who very much has a dog in the fight?

Absolutely. I would rank you in the very top of developers with experience in development of traditional operating systems. In particular DTrace stands out as an excellent piece of work. It's one of those fundamental advances that serves as inspiration for others.

Now, I'm not sure I agree that I have a horse in the race. I don't necessary believe that there is a race. I've never really been a proponent of the schism between Unikernels and Containers. I struggle to see how Unikernels can offer the same flexibility and ease of deployment as containers. We're likely won't be able to support the vast amounts of runtimes and infrastructure needed to replace something like Docker. Perhaps there could be very specific uses where something like the paper described could be used, but I'm not betting on it.

As a software project IncludeOS has a much narrower target than what people traditionally have thought when thinking of Unikernels. And as a result of of this we're not in the business of replacing neither containers not general purpose operating systems(GPOS). We're aiming to carve out a few niches where we are confident that a GPOS isn't the answer. We're only going to address those needs where we're pretty certain we can actually add some value. Basically we're think we can improve on security in addition to adding real time capability whilst still remaining source-code compatible with Linux (mostly thanks to musl).

My grief is singularly with the myths you helped create that Unikernels are something where you are forces to work with stone age tools and hardly without any tools, except printf, for debugging. We've had to spend a lot of time dispelling these. There are a few other things I believe you where wrong about at the time but I'll spare you the details. Better suited discussions over a beer of coffee.

You never disappoint me in your recorded presentations or now apparently timely HN comments. I am starting to like you just as much as tptacek here bc if someone invokes your name I will expect a witty, if not only informative, rebuttal!