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  1. BeOS Market Role on What Would Happen To Linux If BeOS Were GPL'd? · · Score: 1

    Here's a thoughts on a possible scenario for GPL Adoption:

    BeOS is a developer's operating system because it is easy to write for. Developers are more likely to work with something that is easy to create for. That is the essence of their bid for a peice of the OS Market in light of other contenders such as BSD and Linux. They might as well give them the knowledge that what they are writing it for is for the greater good and won't quickly become obselete, just like Linux program developers feel.

    To Open Source it would allow the community to have a wonderful standards-making OS that would guide future OS's to avoid Linux's bloat, BSD's difficulty, NT's lag, and Mac & Sun's liscence insanity.

    Also, it would be nice to finally have an open *media* OS that would be friendly to video capture cards, mpeg and other types of compression, and a server that utilizes it's computer to the absolute maximum. No clock cycles lost. In a perfect world, Be would run every computer because it is the fastest and cleanest.

    Naming off some of the projects that are already in progress for major (and very important) types of computing:

    Open source distributed computing: distributed.net
    Open source peer to peer networking: gnutella
    Open source web browsing: Mozilla
    Open source unix: Linux, OpenBSD
    Open source encryption: Rajandel, Serpent, Twofish

    Open source media: ...

    I really can't think of one besides BladeEnc for encoding Mp3 files.

    So an open-source media OS would definitely have a place. Linux would integrate some of it, and some of Be would benefit from Linux's very expansive code-base, authorship, and advocates.

    But the real question would be if Be can make any money by this move. Can they make a profit after spending so much time, money, and creative effort put into it?

    Probably only if it was part of a larger move. AOL-Time Warner has the advantage of Mozilla being open-sourced. It's much more likely to be adopted as time goes by. Especially by web DEVELOPERS who love the standards adherance. It's a little more out of AOL/TW's hands now but at least they don't have to deal with Microsoft owning the web. Sun Microsystems sees this and gives it's support, not wanting MS to have that kind of dominance, also as a larger part of their larger plan.

    So the question is: who among the big companies would like to take away the dominance of Microsoft (and, in some areas Macintosh) for a media OS would be willing to buy Be out?

    \\\
    For my own part, I really hope they do but there's some sharp folks over at Be. Mac OS X already tried to steal Be's thunder and still has yet to really do it. Good luck guys!