Comment by cosmic_cheese

> And while your idea does have its merits, I fear that pretty soon you still hit a point where you can't sensibly and succinctly display those more complex types of permissions in the UI.

I could very well be wrong, but my inclination is that it's possible, but it's going to take the sort of fundamentals R&D that desktop operating systems haven't seen in decades. It can't just be tacked on, everything to be designed with this new system in mind.