Singularity
These days a lot happens in the field of the Microsoft Research Project Singularity: the source is finally available from Codeplex! Why is this project exciting? It is a research playground to test ideas such as using virtual machines like the CLR on the level normally occupied by C or assembler (hey, device drivers in C# are definetly more readable). Also a lot of concepts such as contracts are inherited from Spec# and used for guarding most system services. Because until now only interviews take place (the last one on Software Engineering Radio with Markus Völter and Galen Hunt), so look at actual working code is amazing.
I’m sure anyone who is interested in novel operating system ideas and want not explore something like Minix should download the source. And I’m sure, also any other developer will get some new ideas from the source.
