Process
The term within traditional operating systems for a very coarse-grained active object. In the sense of a high-level system, they merely denote active objects.In traditional systems, processes are the basic execution unit, and are very coarse-grained. In fact, traditional systems use insecure languages (like the C language), and thus all programs obtained are intrinsicly unsafe, and thus need be wrapped into some paranoid protection frame for the system to be secure at all; this frame is the process.
Computing liberalism indicates that coarse granularity is bad, so that processes in this traditional sense should be avoided when possible.
This page is linked from: IPC Isolation Monopoly Off Plan9 Protection SR Thread