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 ..."

Comments

BEos

[wastedbrains]

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.

Return of the Batmobile

[Skyshadow]

Now if we could just get people to stop buying station wagons and stick to either tanks or batmobiles, we'd be in business.

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.

The "Is there a market?" question

[TheGreenLantern]

"We are an OSS project. Marketing is not our job."

Translation: "No."

Re:If you don't think marketing is your job...

[Skyshadow]

As a group, we decided to adopt restrictive licenses in order to prevent our creations from being used in a manner we did not approve of and we decided that we actually cared who adopted our operating systems, our programs, and we decided that we were going to compete against organizations like Microsoft.

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".

Does one size really fit all?

[Skyshadow]

Isn't it possible that pushing Linux to the average user's desktop is like pushing a round peg into a square hole?

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?