Upperware: Pushing the Applications Back Into the System

It is quite difficult and tedious to share devices among different operating systems. If we also want to share other resources, like the state of a web browser or an editor, it becomes next to impossible. Similar problems are solved inside Plan 9 [14] and Inferno [4] by using the 9P protocol [9]. The normal approach, though, is to write an applica­ tion or a device driver providing a filesystem interface. Our problem is somewhat different. We already have native applications like Word or Fire­ fox. How can we use these applications, native to several operating sys­ tems, and at the same time have the ease of communications provided by 9P?. In this paper we propose a simple way to do it: Wrap the applications and drivers with a controlling filesystem running on Inferno, hosted on the relevant machines. Then, export and share the filesystems, exporting them even to the local host system through some protocol it under­ stands. Without much configuration, the user can print and read docu­ ments simply by using drag and drop at any of the involved machines. We propose the name upperware for this approach, which tries to abstract applications instead of the underlying system.