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Google Working On New 'Fuchsia' OS (digitaltrends.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Google is working on a new operating system dubbed Fuchsia OS for smartphones, computers, and various other devices. The new operating system was spotted in the Git repository, where the description reads: "Pick + Purple == Fuchsia (a new Operating System). Hacker News reports that Travis Geiselbrech, who worked on NewOS, BeOS, Danger, Palm's webOS and iOS, and Brian Swetland, who also worked on BeOS and Android will be involved in this project. Magenta and LK kernel will be powering the operating system. "LK is a kernel designed for small systems typically used in imbedded applications," reads the repository. "On the other hand, Magenta targets modern phones and modern personal computers with fast processors, non-trivial amounts of RAM with arbitrary peripherals doing open-ended computation." It's too early to tell exactly what this OS is meant for. Whether it's for an Android and Chrome OS merger or something completely new, it's exciting nonetheless.
The OS space has really dwindled to just Unix based OS's and Windows of late. You have QNX still in the embedded space and Contiki and FreeRTOS but noting really interesting in general use area for a while. A new kernel could be really interesting. Of course the apps will be the issue.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Imagine what would happen if goog put its energy into developing groundbreaking products, instead of tracking, exporting, profiting from users.
Their market value would plummet and they would finally be bought by Oracle and dismantled.
Hello,
Consulting for several large companies, I'd always done my work on Windows. Recently however, a top online investment firm asked us to do some work using Linux. The concept of having access to source code was very appealing to us, as we'd be able to modify the kernel to meet our exacting standards which we're unable to do with Microsoft's products.
Although we met several technical challenges along the way (specifically, Linux's lack of good universal wifi support and the fact that we were unable to defrag its ext4 file system), all in all the process went smoothly. Everyone was very pleased with Linux, and we were considering using it for a great deal of future internal projects.
So you can imagine our suprise when we were informed by a lawyer that we would be required to publish our source code for others to use. It was brought to our attention that Linux is copyrighted under something called the GPL, or the Gnu Protective License. Part of this license states that any changes to the kernel are to be made freely available. Unfortunately for us, this meant that the great deal of time and money we spent "touching up" Linux to work for this investment firm would now be available at no cost to our competitors.
Furthermore, after reviewing this GPL our lawyers advised us that any products compiled with GPL'ed tools - such as gcc - would also have to its source code released. This was simply unacceptable.
Although we had planned for no one outside of this company to ever use, let alone see the source code, we were now put in a difficult position. We could either give away our hard work, or come up with another solution. Although it was tought to do, there really was no option: We had to rewrite the code, from scratch, for Windows 10.
I think the biggest thing keeping Linux from being truly competitive with Microsoft is this GPL. Its draconian requirements virtually guarentee that no business will ever be able to use it. After my experience with Linux, I won't be recommending it to any of my associates. I may reconsider if Linux switches its license to something a little more fair, such as Microsoft's "Public License". Until then its attempts to socialize the software market will insure it remains only a bit player.
Thank you for your time.
As a fellow consultant, the fact that you didn't bother to research the license, don't know ext4 doesn't need to be defragmented by design, and primarily targeted the newest version of an OS that hasn't reached much penetration in the enterprise market yet makes me question the quality of your work. Being caught by an obscure corner in the license is one thing, but not to have done even the most basic research is pretty bad for someone who's entire job is based around that aspect - you also don't appear to separate your personal from your professional feelings, nor are you willing to take responsibility for your own mistake.
You might want to consider leaving the field of consulting, or at the very least, seriously work in these points - there is no purpose in performing a job who clearly either have no interest in doing or lack the support to carry out effectively, and you don't want to be miserable your whole career.
https://fuchsia.googlesource.c...
the consequences that we've seen from google's failure to use a self-protecting license includes:
* companies incorporating GPL'd code into Android (particularly video players) and not releasing the source
* performing DRM or other lock-downs ("Tivoisation") and in the case of qualcomm ending up with 900 million devices that are basically landfill
* causing confusion in the minds of corporations over the fact that the linux KERNEL (and u-boot) is still GPL'd
do i need to continue the list? i don't but i believe a reference to mjg59's list is appropriate:
http://www.codon.org.uk/~mjg59...
google seems unable to comprehend the severe detrimental consequences of its actions, and the effects that their decisions have on the rest of the software libre community. i appreciate that they're an advertising company so are required to maximise the effective distribution of devices so that they can thus maximise the number of devices through which they can advertise, but pissing all over the free software community that MADE IT POSSIBLE FOR THEM TO HAVE A BUSINESS AT ALL is completely unethical, not to mention the detrimental consequences and money that users have to throw away when devices turn out to have major security flaws that the designers CAN'T FIX IN THE FIELD. http://arstechnica.com/securit...
Google cares jack shit about open standards. They don't give 2 flying fucks about OSS except when hey think it can damage a competitor. If they have even a sense their product can succeed, they won't touch OSS or open standards with a 10 foot pool. Hell they'll even REMOVE already built in open standards when they think they can get away with it (see Hangouts and XMPP). I'm happy to see in that case they badly miscalculated.
So, in typical Google fashion, rather than fix Android, they just walk away from it like every other Project, and create ANOTHER OS, but this time with a brand new luster of Vulnerabilities.
What a bunch of arrogant, ADHD children are Google...