I was hoping I would see someone mention Plan 9 here. Solving that problem does indeed seem like what their goal was.

"The early catch phrase was to build a UNIX out of a lot of little systems, not a system out of a lot of little UNIXes."

http://plan9.bell-labs.com/sys/doc/9.html

Upvoted. In fact while reading the article I was just thinking to myself that the HN comments would be all about Plan 9. Kind of surprised that it has not been mentioned enough.

What I am really keen to find out in the coming years is what MirageOS makes of this. If you are not familiar this article http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2566628 explains it way better than I could. I wouldnt claim it is there yet but seems to be sitting right at an envious position full of realizable potential. Its written in OCaml to boot.