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Ask HN: Abandoned/dead projects you think died before their time and why?

358 points ofalkaed | 2 comments | 11 Oct 25 22:16 UTC | HN request time: 0.404s | source

Just curious and who knows, maybe someone will adopt it or develop something new based on its ideas.
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dannyobrien ◴[11 Oct 25 23:16 UTC] No.45553583[source]▶
Midori, Microsoft's capability-based security OS[1]. Rumor has it that it was getting to the point where it was able to run Windows code, so it was killed through internal politics, but who knows! It was the Fuchsia of its time...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midori_%28operating_system%29

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1. ripley12 ◴[12 Oct 25 05:01 UTC] No.45555384[source]▶
Midori was fascinating. Joe Duffy's writing on it is the most comprehensive I've seen: https://joeduffyblog.com/2015/11/03/blogging-about-midori/

I've heard someone at Microsoft describe it as a moonshot but also a retention project; IIRC it had a hundred plus engineers on it at one time, including a lot of very senior people.

Apparently a bunch of research from Midori made it into .NET so it wasn't all lost, but still...

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2. sauercrowd ◴[12 Oct 25 07:38 UTC] No.45556118[source]▶
> retention project

Never heard this phrase before, but I can definitely see this happening at companies of that size