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'Cosmo' — a C#-Based Operating System
Billly Gates writes "A new operating system called Cosmo has been developed, written entirely in C#. It shows the naysayers you can write a full OS kernel without C. So far, you need Visual Studio to compile and run it, as Mono is not supported. However, the source code can be compiled with the Express editions of Visual Studio. The project plans to add VB.NET support soon."
More specifically, Microsoft can wait for any design decision that Mono does differently from them, work out the implications of that design decision; add something big, related to that design decision so that the design decision is committed then add something which is compatible with Microsoft's design decision but opposed to Mono's decision. The fact that Mono succeeds at all in copying much of .Net and in not ceasing to exist, even when it's parent company, Novell, is bought out is a real sigh of the strength of the open source methodology.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
You know the type I've been noticing a lot around Slashdot? The type of guys who complain about the other type of guys who frequent the site. You're one of those guys. Everyone is either too young or too old for you. Not zealously geeky enough for you.
Here's a little theory for you. Maybe it's just bullshit, but it's a theory: Perhaps some geeks around here care an awful lot about free, open source, community projects. Sure, when they were young, it was all about tinkering for the sake of tinkering, but now, now there's work to be done that matters. FOSS has the potential to accelerate the development of the world by removing financial restrictions to software - software that can be used to help a society grow. So now making some elaborate piece of useless software is taking a useful resource (programmers) and energy (programming) and throwing it in a black hole. It can be argued that there is a moral priority to working on software projects that actually matter in favor of ones that do nothing whatsoever. Because, as cheesy as it sounds, coding FOSS makes the world a better place. You can glorify 'tinkering for the sake of tinkering' all you want, but you act like the good in doing so is self evident. It's not. 'Because I can' is a funny thing that many a geek has said, and sometimes real cool things come about as a result. But should that really be the highest aspiration of the geek? Isn't 'because it's good' a much better reason than 'because I can'?
Perhaps you're just an old Woz in a world that has turned Jobsian.
Personally, I question the merit of any project that seems to have little to no value other than getting some geek's mental rocks off. Quality matters.
In a way, your comment reminds me of those who defend 'artists' who have no talent but insist the value of their work isn't in the end result but in the 'creative process'. Bullshit. The end result is the whole reason for the work and the quality of the end result matters more than the whatever process was taken to forge it.