© Kevin Mehall and the Splash Contributors
No. It does provide some services of an operating system, but is not able to run on bare hardware. It relies on another operating system. Currently only Linux is supported as a host OS, but Splash may be ported to other platforms in the future.
Yes. Splash includes a programming language.
Yes. Splash is intended to replace desktop environments like Gnome and KDE. This will eventually be written in Splash.
Yes. To the operating system and other applications, it runs in an OS process just like any other application. It can coexist with existing applications.
Quite a bit. Today's operating systems use concepts coming from the early days of computing. Since then, the hardware has advanced, so why not the software? The whole idea of "trust anything unless you know it's bad" used by Antivirus and Antispyware software is very bad security practice. It worked in the 1970s when most users were trustworthy, but completely fails on today's Internet. Even Linux is not totally secure. It's just not a big target.
In addition, all current operating systems are not easily used by the average user. The desktop metaphor fails because people want something better than the physical world, not something simulating it.
The key benefit of Splash code is that it is a direct representation of the original and can be decompiled to readable code, comments, variable names and all. Splash is not in the business of making a DRM system to prevent viewing the code.
Code for existing systems can be decompiled, albeit to a form that is not particularly readable. Legal protections, such as copyright, can be used to protect Splash code from unauthorized reuse if necessary. How copyright would be interpreted in a distributed system like Splash is yet another question, which has to be left for the courts to decide.
Ultimately, Splash is designed to give its users opportunities that don't exist in the current tech industry, largely because of the dominance of closed-source software. We believe that open source is optimal for our vision of empowering users.
Some systems, like Linux, started out insecure, and later additions like SElinux came along to plug the holes. The opposite is much more secure. It is simple to punch holes is a secure system, but harder to secure a system with holes from the beginning. When there are holes, each and every one must be patched. Some are likely missed and forgotten, leaving a way for someone to get in. A better practice is to only open what you need. You can never be too careful on the internet.
Splash provides programmers with the tools necessary to easily write secure code.