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OpenBeOs Developers Talk About Progress
DeltaSigma writes: "Michael Phipps, of the OpenBeos team, recently hosted a public Q&A Session where many of the public musings over a completely new open source operating system have been addressed. The answer to all the 'is there room in the market?' questions was answered in a way: 'We are an OSS project. Marketing is not our job.' Perhaps more /.ers could keep this in mind ..."
This is an operating system that hsould be developed even if there isn't "room" in the market for a new OS. Because as it progresses there will be room. As the OS becomes more usable people will make an effort to use it. Linux is a great windows alternative but starting completely over and not building off anything else is something that should really be done with most technology every so often. There is so much progress made in computer science why should we still be building off old systems and code. Build anew and you get a faster sleeker more efficient more reliable OS. This is great news even if it might take 6 years before it has the functionality of current OSes that are offered.
Dan Mayer: my blog, essays, art, etc
Seriously, though, I think right now is a key turning point in the platform wars. Simply put: thanks to widely-available and cheap networking and a proliferation of cross-platform applications (even on the desktop, at least until MS decides to pull the plug on Apple), the platform you're running on means less now than ever. That's the point Apple's trying to make in their new advertising campaign. Given that, it might just be that there's room for an OSS desktop.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
"Marketing is not our job"?
Well, that's his perogative, but not necessarily one that will lead to a successful project.
What's the goal of this project? To create a new open source OS that no one uses? If so, marketing is definitely not their job.
But if one of the goals is to create a new open source OS with a strong, active base of users and developers, then marketing MUST be part of the job and project plan.
Marketing goes far beyond advertising for the sake of increasing revenue. Marketing is all of the PR work you do with the development community, IT decision-makers, not to mention the media (including Slashdot).
Too often, open source advocates only associate marketing with profit-making companies, while forgetting that non-profits have marketing people too.
From museums to charitable foundations, the most successful ones are those that can successfully market their 'product' to the world. Open source software is no different.
If you have trouble reading the one linked off the front page, here's a mirror of the log in HTML.
http://www.kupoflux.com/tmp/beoslog.php
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I support spreading santorum
"We are an OSS project. Marketing is not our job."
Translation: "No."
It hurts when I pee.
Now you may not have liked those decisions, but as a group, that's where Open Source went.
Whoa, slow down there, cowboy.
The licenses which make OSS possible are there to do just that -- force people and organizations to stay honest and not simply take advantage of the efforts of others. What you can *do* with that software is pretty much unfettered -- consider all of the places you can find Linux in one form or another.
Besides that, who said we (we as in the community) had decided to compete against Microsoft? Competition implies that the OSS community is tied up in a parry-and-jab with MS, which we most definately are not -- why else would we be so eager to interoperate with Windows boxen, even when it means trying to adhere to MS's broken "standards"?
OSS is about a way to develop software, and nothing else. My personal interest, and I dare say the interest of most people involved in the development or use of OSS, is only to obtain and use the best possible software solution for our needs.
Raising the awareness of the project is important, but generally good and useful software concepts attract users and developers far more effectively tan "marketing".
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Umm... no. Try to be a little more informed when you write, AC. OpenBeOS is based on a kernel from NewOS which was written by one of the ex BeOS coders. There are several BeOS clones based on Linux (Blue-Eyed OS, Leonardo, even Cosmoe to some extent) but OpenBeOS is something different. The underlying architecture that made BeOS good for audio/video will not only still be there but be improved upon.
It seems to me that Linux is and always has been a server and power-user OS. It's become more user friendly in recent years, with the caveat that the ease of use depends heavily on the under-the-hood stuff operating correctly -- my mom will never, ever be able to tweak her kernel or reconfigure an XF86Config file.
Isn't is possible that an OSS-type BeOS is a better option? It provides an environment that is ground-up designed for desktop users. It can still give us all the Good Things that a OSS OS brings (compliance with standards, innate resistance to embrace-and-extend, etc). Why limit ourselves to only running over a specific kernel and using a specific (UN*X) basic paradigm?
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
That kind of attitude certainly isn't going to get your OS on any desktops, and pretty soon you won't have any job.
Except that none of these developers are working on OpenBeOS as their job. They are working on it because they like it, and that probably won't change even if no one uses the it.
Dinivin
>In my experience, you just can't hide the under-the-hood stuff
What about MacOS X?
Anyway, I guess it would be a good idea to put BeOS (the UI that is) on top of GNU/Linux. But who am I to tell anyone what to do?
is there any news at all on what Palm will do with BeOS?
i wonder how much BeOS will influence the PalmOS.
i seems a shame that such a good OS should die like this. i applaud OpenBeOS for their work at "reviving" what once was, even if it is stil linux.
I want 2D games back.
Michael Phipps gave an interesting answer to the "Why openbeos?"-question in the Q&A-session:
[Captcpu] Here's a nice one from: [mwilber] Why did you decide to start the OpenBeOS project? ;-) :)
[17:35:47] [mphipps] Insanity.
[17:36:25] [Captcpu] good answer
[17:36:52] [Captcpu] but wait..there's more...[mphipps] Seriously - I had a project that I have been working on for years on BeOS. The short version of the story is that it is an object oriented paradigm in which every class is a process and every instance is a thread. It needs hyper fast messaging and process/thread swapping. No other OS will do that. Even R5 wasn't the best.
[17:37:47] [mphipps] So, when the Palm announcement was made, I looked at Linux and the BSD's, but none of them were as fast and as easy to use. So I decided that BeOS must continue on.
Hopefully more people will see things the same way. Some things are hard to do, or outright impossible in most common enviroments today. If enough people makes this realization OBOS could have a very nice thing going.
Another thing that often is forgotten when talking about OBOS is that the goal is not only to recreate BeOS as OSS. It goes beyond that. The goal of OBOS R1 is to recreate BeOS R5, but when the devlopment continues towards OBOS r2, new interresting stuff is going to be implemented. The plans of what to include in the post-r1-releases of OBOS are made at the Glass Elevator mailing list
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"I'm surfin the dead zone
In the twilight, unknown"
Umm...who the hell are you?
These people are not being 'put together' by anyone.
They will work on whatever project they want to.
"A terrorist is someone who has a bomb but doesn't have an air force." -William Blum