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?

[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.