Yes, this is exactly what I’m interested in, and building malleable systems is exactly why I’m interested in Lisp- and Smalltalk-style systems where metaprogramming and component-based design are infrastructure for enabling malleable software construction. Exokernels are also a nice complement since this aids in the swapping of even low-level OS components, since OS services are implemented as libraries on top of a tiny kernel that only handles hardware multiplexing and protection.
If I could nudge you a little further - as I think I'm almost following, but not quite - what's the difference between an exokernel and a vm? I mean, wouldn't you have to write a different exokernel for each architecture, with this set up?
Edit: reading more about exokernels - upon reflection, maybe I can better imagine how this kind of system could be very interesting for experimenting with what you describe. You'd effectively be drawing the boundaries the programs would cover much more broadly, so then maybe they could share more with each other?
