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?

[bcat24]

But that's just the point. People who would use a non-Windows system tend to be a bit smarter (computer-wise). I doubt they'd want to spend money on a system that's incompatable with Windows and Linux.

What for?

[VGfort]

I used to periodically checking up on SkyOS until about 2yrs ago or so when it they announced they were going to be a commercial OS. I dont have anything wrong with them being commericial, it just lost my interest, cuz I'm not going to pay to check something out. I think most people that are into tinkering around with computers or OSes might be into it, just to see what ideas others are up to. I personally think Syllable, ReactOS and Symphony are more likely to take off than SkyOS.

From a Sky OS Beta user...

[cgenman]

I'm actually rather fond of Sky OS. The interface is great, and the OS hasn't acquired the kruft of a mainstream OS like Windows, Linux, or OSX.

That having been said, it doesn't run on a lot of hardware, and it doesn't run a lot of applications. Their best bet is either selling it En masse to computer manufacturers as an alternative to linux, or putting it on well-designed hardware as an elite os. Maybe work their way in with specialized hardware makers, like Car manufacturers, to build up a following.

I'd also recommend pre-loading it on USB thumb drives, for those who can boot from a USB thumb, to help people get experience with the OS.

Re:Why?

[Vellmont]

Especially, if that individual has been raised in such a capitalistic driven society; they literally can not conclude the possibility anyone could produce a valuable product for free without monetary or material compensation. It's out of their grasp, it does not compute


There's this thing that became quite popular more than 50 years ago, and it was given away free! No price whatsoever. It was called television, and a lot of people saw value in it. It had so much value that many people use this service far too much. About 50 years before that the scientists invented something we now radio. It was also, and continues to be free, and many people seem to love it and see value in it. Something like 400 years ago there was a thing called Public Education that was offered for free. People seem to continue to see value in it despite its free status even today! More recently we've invented internet websites, which are largely free.

People readily accept products that are free as having value, and have for literally hundreds of years. The problem that open source faces isn't that the software has no cost, it's simply that the current software is in an entrenched position. For the majority of people, the costs really isn't about the actual software itself. That's fairly trivial. The costs come in learning how to use new software, OS, etc. For a business that means retraining employees, or re-writing software. For individuals that means wasting your time re-learning to do something you already know how to do.

Re:Why?

[MrNaz]

And of course, free-to-air television is valued more than pay-per-view, public education is considered superior to expensive private colleges, free radio is hotter than pay-per-song iTunes and nobody ever thought of charging for web content, like, with a two-tiered Internet or anything.

You, my dear naieve friend, need to realize that until the Open Source movement, few things remained free after a) its value was recognised by business and b) a viable model to charge for it was developed. The Open Source community better watch its back, business is scheming right now how to hijack it and charge for it and as impossible as it may seem, they'll try.

BeOS was a superior O/S...

[master_p]

...at a time that Windows was not established like it is today, yet it failed to grab an important market share. SkyOS would have to be a truly superior O/S in order to have any success...but that is highly unlikely, because both Microsoft and Apple have tremendous horsepower to back their O/Ses up.

I have no idea how SkyOS operates, but it seems like another O/S based on processes/scheduling/filesystem. Isn't it time to move beyond those? todays needs are much more dynamic than the current 40-year-old O/S model offers.

Re:BeOS was a superior O/S...

[Christopher B. Brown]

"Anyway, my proposal is:

1. replace processes with components.
2. replace the scheduler with parallelizing operators.
3. replace the filesystem with collections."

Sounds a lot like a Lisp environment to me... That means that the "components" are actually function references, which can do fairly much anything. The environment then consists of a set of object references, which is definitely like your notion of "collections."

I'm not so sure about the notion of "parallelizing operators;" concurrent programming has always been hard, fundamentally because it's harder to understand nondeterministic processes than those that are deterministic.

I certainly would agree that this is a different approach from the present tendancy towards "Unix everywhere."

The trouble is that bootstrapping becomes problematic. If you build something that is more or less like Unix, then you've got compilers, file utilities, program editors, SCM tools, and all such, "for free." If you build something that is different enough, then there are two choices:

• Your system is built using Unix-like sets of tools, and is target-compiled for the desired environment. You're forever dependent on Unix.
• Alternatively, if you're trying to self-host, then you've got a five year project to build compilers, code management tools, graphical environment tools, and hardware drivers, pretty much all before you get to the real project of building the OS. And you're left chasing hardware compatibility, because the hardware that's cheap and available today will be replaced by new models that won't be 100% compatible a year from now.

That's a tough road to go down...

The A is the C

[Judge_Fire]

There are so many advertisements in that magazine, you'll be hard pressed to actually find "content".

In lifestyle magazines, the ads are often the content. The odd column or feature are nice extras, but fluff.

J

Television isn't free in the UK

[rklrkl]

Ever since I've been alive, television in the UK has *never* been free and I'm not talking about the "obvious" case of advertisements funding the media. In the UK, every household with a television has to pay an annual television license (and several other European countries are similar). This funds the BBC and allows it to run with no advertisements across all its properties (hence why the BBC Website is ad-free for example, though that's about to change with the "international version" I believe).

For a long time, the UK TV license also covered radio as well, but I'm not sure that's the case now (i.e. if you have a radio, but no TV, you no longer need a license). So that's not always been free either. If you really must go on about "free television and radio", please qualify it with the country you're talking about and, of course, feel free to ignore how they aren't actually free anyway (advertisements/sponsors fund them, which ultimate comes out of the public's pocket).

is there something about this operating system ?

[Anonymous Coward]

It does have the befs. The Haiku project recreated the file system of BeOS, and SkyOS beta testers voted to use it, although it hade to be modified to be able to boot it with grub.

It has live queries, and meta data journaling. It also come with an mp3 by Kelly Rush.

Last time I checked it was Say It Ain't So as written by Weezer. I doubt they're paying the ASCAP performance fee.

We of haiku are happy to have SkyOS use our stuff.

Re:Why?

[Phreakiture]

For instance, take a look at a typical edition of Cosmopolitan magazine . . . The publishing house makes so much money off the advertisements, that they could pay people just to accept the magazine yet, it still has a price tag . . . The Advertisement Firms insist they maintain a cover price, becuase they feel people will not take the publication seriously

There is a counter-example, though.

Many metro areas have a free newspaper. In Rochester, NY, it's City; in Albany, NY, it's Metroland; in Toronto, Ont, it's Eye (IIRC); you get the idea. While not as revered (and certainly not as frequent) as the daily papers, they do get picked up and read, and the advertisements get seen. It doesn't take a cover price to accomplish this.

Back to the matter at hand, I won't buy it. I never even heard of it until this posting on Slashdot. Linux has name recognition. BSD has less so, but it has it. Windows has mad name recognition. Even DOS has a better chance of selling, by virtue of having name recognition. I don't think SkyOS will sell.