Who is Going to Buy SkyOS?

An anonymous reader wonders: "With the huge amount of operating systems available (numerous free and non-free Linux distros, Windows, Mac OSX, BSD, etc) who would buy SkyOS? An OS that was once free will now become a commercial operating system with the release of version 5.0. Although 'Porting applications from POSIX operating systems is an easy task', applications will still have to be ported since SkyOS 'isn't based on any other operating system'. This leads me to wonder...is there something about this operating system that I'm missing? Has anyone out there tried SkyOS and why would anyone pay for SkyOS with all of the alternatives out there with tonnes of software easily available?"

Comments

Re:Why?

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

People buy windows when there is a free alternative.

There's a free alternative to Windows? But it's only in alpha.

Re:I don't think so - at least for now.

[Phil John]

As another posted pointed out it was with the creators blessing, however even that wasn't needed.

The Crystal Icon Set is licensed under the LGPL, so basically, as long as the SkyOS team supply you with a copy of the LGPL license and a written offer of the "source" (e.g. original pngs) they can use them in a commercial application.

There is a common misconception with some people that (L)GPL=no commercial usage. If it's GPL you can still charge (however your clients can turn around and distribute your app for free, so you'll get further charging for support). If it's LGPL you can distribute the rest of your app as closed source, as long as you provide the LGPL license and provide the source of the LGPL'd component(s) in some way for at least three years (you're even allowed to charge a reasonable fee for providing it under the terms of the license).