Plan9 had a proper solution for this. New processes don't get access to any files by default - you have to explicitly mount directories for them, capability style.
Shame Plan9 blew its weirdness budget.
Shame Plan9 blew its weirdness budget.
People liked Unix because it was free – either really free, via BSD, or as a Unix derivative provided at no cost when people bought their workstations. A new revolutionary operating system had absolutely no reason for anybody to buy it: No commercial developers wanted to develop to a platform without users, and no users wanted a platform without software.
Plan 9 only changed their license many years later, when it was too late for anybody to care, and Unix had become the established standard.