Distributed GNU Shepherd NLNet Grant

Distributed GNU Shepherd NLNet Grant

[Juliana Sims]

Dear comrades,

As some of you already know, in December I submitted an application for 
an NLNet grant to fund porting our beloved Shepherd to Spritely Goblins 
[1]. This work would represent a radical evolution in the capabilities 
of not just Guix's system layer, but of GNU/Linux system layers in 
general; and would also be the biggest real-world test to date of the 
Goblins library and its capabilities (pun not intended). Materially, it 
would allow Shepherd dæmons running on different machines to securely 
communicate and interact with each other, going so far as to control 
one machine's dæmons from another machine.

I am happy to announce that this grant application was approved! [2]

While there remain some administrative tasks to complete before work 
can begin, I wanted to make the community aware of this upcoming effort 
and to invite you all to collaborate in this process. My hands may be 
the ones on the keyboard, but I want this to be a community project. I 
welcome questions and feedback about the project's goals and direction.

You can learn more about object-capability security, the basis of 
Goblins, from Spritely's "The Heart of Spritely" whitepaper [3] as well 
as erights.org (which the whitepaper cites heavily). You can learn more 
about Goblins and this specific project at the links cited above.

Thank you to everyone who supported the application process. Ludo, I 
wouldn't have the courage to attempt this if I didn't know I have your 
support. Also, this grew from your idea of integrating Goblins and the 
Shepherd in the first place. Christine, I couldn't do this at all if 
not for your and Spritely's work, and I wouldn't have applied for this 
grant without your encouragement. Thank you as well to everyone who's 
talked with me about this project, shared ideas and excitement, or just 
not gotten mad at me for emailing them questions out of the blue - I'm 
sure you know who you are. Knowing the community supports this work 
only increases my desire to do it. Last but most assuredly not least, 
thanks to NLNet for funding this project. Y'all are an incredible 
positive force in free software and thereby the world. Keep up the good 
work!

I look forward to working together with all of you over the coming 
months!

Solidarity,
Juli

[1] https://spritely.institute/goblins/
[2] https://nlnet.nl/project/DistributedShepherd/
[3] https://spritely.institute/static/papers/spritely-core.html

Re: Distributed GNU Shepherd NLNet Grant

[Ricardo Wurmus]

Hi Juli,

> I am happy to announce that this grant application was approved! [2]

Congratulations!

> Materially, it would allow Shepherd dæmons running on
> different machines to securely communicate and interact with each
> other, going so far as to control one machine's dæmons from another
> machine.

I'm very interested in this.  Back when I worked on the Swineherd I
wanted to eventually extend it so that it can communicate with other
Swineherd instances to migrate Guix System containers between
cooperating machines.  Having this feature at the foundation of the
implementation of the Shepherd is much preferable to implementing a pale
compromise of this in an extension.

It also reminds me of Mach's cross-node message passing that could be
used to turn the Hurd into a Single System Image cluster.

Exciting stuff!  I wish you success and lots of fun working on this
project.

-- 
Ricardo

Re: Distributed GNU Shepherd NLNet Grant

[Felix Lechner via Development of GNU Guix and the GNU System distribution.]

Hi Juli,

On Thu, Apr 18 2024, Juliana Sims wrote:

> I submitted an application for an NLNet grant to fund porting our
> beloved Shepherd to Spritely Goblins

Wow, I'm not sure what that will do just yet, but I can't wait to hear
more!

> I am happy to announce that this grant application was approved!

Congratulations!

Kind regards
Felix

P.S. Please have a look at ZeroMQ for your sockets, if you haven't.

Re: Distributed GNU Shepherd NLNet Grant

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hey Juliana,

Juliana Sims <juli@incana.org> skribis:

> As some of you already know, in December I submitted an application
> for an NLNet grant to fund porting our beloved Shepherd to Spritely
> Goblins [1]. This work would represent a radical evolution in the
> capabilities of not just Guix's system layer, but of GNU/Linux system
> layers in general; and would also be the biggest real-world test to
> date of the Goblins library and its capabilities (pun not
> intended). Materially, it would allow Shepherd dæmons running on
> different machines to securely communicate and interact with each
> other, going so far as to control one machine's dæmons from another
> machine.
>
> I am happy to announce that this grant application was approved! [2]

Yay, congrats!! 🎉

This is exciting; I’m glad Ricardo has already offered another nice use
case.  :-)

It’s great to have you on board, and it’s great to have you be the first
person bridging the inspiring work happening in Goblins and the cool
stuff in Shepherd and Guix.

Cheers,
Ludo’.