I would be so excited to see new operating systems which depart from POSIX completely and introduce new abstractions to replace the dated notions of hierarchical filesystems, terminals, shells, shared libraries, IPC, etc. The sad truth is that everyone targets POSIX because there is so much software that can be ported in order to make the system usable.
I agree. The "Unix compatibility layer" has killed so many interesting projects over the years. If systems research were still an academic pursuit, maybe there would be some interest in bringing a system like this to fruition. It would require a long-term investment in the design of the system foremost.
