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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.
Fix the typo at least please
They want to throw out a Linux kernel outa android and gpl compliance matters with it. Qualcomm already has a unit that writes a HAL midware for it.
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.
Just what the fuck should a company do if not profit from its users? Thats the entire point...
Rant:
They have: 1) Chrome OS, which is basically Chrome browser and a few extensions 2) Android, can run Chrome browser aswell 3) Android Wear, a small OS seeking a market.
Now they've already shown Chrome OS running Android apps, which is the dumbest thing ever, when Android is perfectly capable of running the Chrome browser why would you run a browser under Android under another browser! What is the f-ing point of Chrome OS to an Android user? And to the Chrome OS market (basically schools who want locked down minimal machines), what is the point of Android to them?? Do you think they want their Bejeweled on their school laptops?
Then we have Android, it is a big win for Google, but doesn't scale to large tablets. It's been held back by the lack of side-by-side apps. FINALLY they're adding multi-window support this month in Android Nougat... like only 4 years after Samsung introduced it on their Note range..
Big heap? I should be able to consume 90% of memory on a single app if its needed. Yet Big Heap limits me to 512MB on a 3GB tablet.
Limited stylus support. Samsung did a good job years ago, the only support on generic Android tablets is the mouse handler. If you pull out a stylus on Android, on most non-Samsung devices it looks to the program like a mouse pointer. With no information on when the stylus has been pulled out of the holder, or when its been removed from the screen. Because the software thinks its a mouse.
Crapware, every device loaded with unwanted surveillance crapware, some of which is yours. Don't ever ask me again if I "Agree" to send Wifi data to Google for a better location calculation, the answer is "Disagree", just like the last 50 times your shitting spyware app asked.
I have money, I want a powerful Android tablet to upgrade from my Galaxy Note pro 12.2.... if Google can't deliver a decent Android someone else should. Really Apple are the slowest at software development, yet their iPad Pro was out last year and Google can't even keep up with Apple, let alone Samsung. /rant
Or to put it another way, every single google product is a useful service that can be supported by advertising tied to what you're searching for. Obviously, Google is in business to make money - or maybe to be more charitable, to stay in business so that its founders' vision can continue to be realized. Less charitably, well, there have been compromises along the way...
As a side benefit, though, they've done a lot for the open source movement - if only in promoting the web as the primary platform for application development. That has made it possible for something like ChromeOS to be viable - and along with it, for desktop Linux to also be viable. Not to mention MacOS, iOS and Android. In pre-Google days, MacOS was wholly dependent on the availability of native Microsoft apps for its marketplace viability. Now, Google can't take all the credit for this, but I don't think any other organization has done as much to make sure that open standards ruled the day.
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
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...
I hope they do a better job stewarding this thing than they did with Android. Todays Android is repeating all the same mistakes that Microsoft made with earlier versions of Windows. They gave way too much power to developers, so now Android may be an extremely flexible and powerful mobile OS, but it also requires every user to act as a sysadmin, constantly monitoring resources, manually killing apps, etc etc. Battery life is abysmal, and malware is ripe in the android ecosystem. And that's on top of the myriad landfill android devices which are so breathtakingly shotty that they arn't even fit for purposes as simple as a basic e-reader.
The fact is, is that you can't trust developers to code properly. Whether by design, lack of competence, or due to time crunches that result in taking short cuts, an OS *must* guard against rogue applications. Google's finally starting to understand that, based on what I'm reading in the release notes for Android 6 and 7, but they still have a ways to go.
If they don't correct this mistake while creating Fuscia, it won't matter how excitig and awesome it is. It will already have a major uphill battle, competing against established systems, so it will need to be solid right out of the gate just to compete.
Now this, gentlemen, is what a well crafted troll looks like.
This has nothing to do with ADHD, and everything to do with the GPL. The GPL is seen as something negative by many companies like google or apple. Apple has rewritten gcc, google is now rewriting linux.
I am partly a fanboi of linux because of its license.
LLVM isn't GCC, isn't inspired by GCC, isn't fully compatible with GCC and uses a completely different design than GCC.
Any OS that isn't Linux isn't a rewritten Linux...
Really, is this a troll or are today's /. users this clueless?