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OpenBeOs Developers Talk About Progress
Posted by
timothy
on Tue Jul 09, 2002 02:04 PM
from the always-room-for-more dept.
from the always-room-for-more dept.
DeltaSigma writes: "Michael Phipps, of the OpenBeos team, recently hosted a public Q&A Session where many of the public musings over a completely new open source operating system have been addressed. The answer to all the 'is there room in the market?' questions was answered in a way: 'We are an OSS project. Marketing is not our job.' Perhaps more /.ers could keep this in mind ..."
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Maybe not market room... (Score:2, Insightful)
BEos (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:BEos (Score:3, Interesting)
People seem to forget that although BeOS was ultra-great, it was designed under commercial pressures. They had to have a product that worked soon, and that limited them. We can do so much better. Here are some blue sky ideas for my "dream" OS:
I mean really, we should not limit ourselves to merely small steps. Linux will do for now, but eventually we will need to move things forward, completely free of the past. Why not?
Does one size really fit all? (Score:5, Insightful)
It seems to me that Linux is and always has been a server and power-user OS. It's become more user friendly in recent years, with the caveat that the ease of use depends heavily on the under-the-hood stuff operating correctly -- my mom will never, ever be able to tweak her kernel or reconfigure an XF86Config file.
Isn't is possible that an OSS-type BeOS is a better option? It provides an environment that is ground-up designed for desktop users. It can still give us all the Good Things that a OSS OS brings (compliance with standards, innate resistance to embrace-and-extend, etc). Why limit ourselves to only running over a specific kernel and using a specific (UN*X) basic paradigm?
Parent
Re:Does one size really fit all? (Score:2)
I would like to see a free (or significantly cheaper) version of Lindows (including all of its features and goals). Should be too hard - it's open-source, right? At $99, it's not going to be a Redmund-killer by any means.
Let's see, I can get 100% compatibility for $90 (Windows updrade) or I can get partial compatibility for $99. Sweeeet.
Re:Does one size really fit all? (Score:2)
Linux with Gnome or KDE is roughly the same as MacOSX with the Mac GUI: a UNIX-like kernel and command line environment with a nice GUI on top of it. I don't see why that should work any less well for Linux than for MacOSX. If anything, the Linux kernel and GUIs are faster, smaller, and more efficient than what Apple is shipping.
Isn't is possible that an OSS-type BeOS is a better option? It provides an environment that is ground-up designed for desktop users.
But what concretely does it do better? Yes, people were thinking "desktop" while writing BeOS, but I have not seen any feature in BeOS that I can't get on Linux, Windows, or MacOSX just as well. And from a programming point of view, an operating system through-and-through based on C++ seems a bit old fashioned and constraining.
Also, I like the fact that Linux and MacOSX are POSIX-based and have a complete server environment integrated as well. And that's not just useful for programmers, it also means that artists and grandmothers get good, free software like web servers and FTP servers.
Re:Does one size really fit all? (Score:3, Informative)
I own two Macs: a PowerBook and a desktop. More importantly, perhaps, my parents have also used all three systems, Windows, OSX, and KDE, so I know what kinds of problems non-computer folks run into. Windows is bad. KDE and OSX have both been OK for them, with different strengths and weaknesses and no clear winner.
Aqua is so far superior to KDE or Gnome, its almost a laughing matter.
I don't see much functional difference. The biggest differences are that Aqua leaves out a lot of options, which makes it easier to use for beginners, and that Aqua has a much nicer graphical design. And Aqua and the Mac UI have their share of rough spots, too (e.g., printing, finder defaults, wireless configuration, software installers).
OS X plain works. Always. Smoothly.
OS X works very well indeed, and I heartily recommend it. But that derives not from some kind of amazingly superior engineering, but simply because Apple has a much simpler problem than Linux: they need to support only a very limited range of hardware, they get to preinstall OSX, and they have full say in what ships. Specific Linux distributions on specific hardware work just as well.
Anyone can use OS X, but your average day user cannot vi XF86Config and fix their settings.
You are comparing apples and oranges (no pun intended). If you buy a PC with Linux-supported hardware and Linux pre-installed, it works just as well and just as easily as OSX.
Re:Does one size really fit all? (Score:3, Insightful)
Who said anything [debian.org] about about [debian.org] limiting ourselves [debian.org]?
Granted, two of the three above links are *BSD, but I don't see any reason why we couldn't have Debian GNU/BeOS [debian.org].
Re:Good points (Score:2)
In my experience, you just can't hide the under-the-hood stuff and assume the users will never need it -- remember the "zero administration" debacle?
Re:Good points (Score:3, Interesting)
What about MacOS X?
Anyway, I guess it would be a good idea to put BeOS (the UI that is) on top of GNU/Linux. But who am I to tell anyone what to do?
Re:BEos (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:BEos (Score:3, Insightful)
What makes Linux inappropriate for the desktop is its lack of real time features, its monolithic design, its unix everything-is-a-filesystem-object architecture, it's hostility towards proprietary hardware drivers, etc.. All good things or non-issues for Servers. All terrible for a desktop user. (hint: Desktop users don't want to recompile their kernel... *EVER* - and they don't want to wait for their OS Vendor to come out with a complete set of up to date kernels with drivers)
Getting rid of X is a good start. Getting rid of lpd/cups is another good start. Major surgery on the kernel is also required.
Return of the Batmobile (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, though, I think right now is a key turning point in the platform wars. Simply put: thanks to widely-available and cheap networking and a proliferation of cross-platform applications (even on the desktop, at least until MS decides to pull the plug on Apple), the platform you're running on means less now than ever. That's the point Apple's trying to make in their new advertising campaign. Given that, it might just be that there's room for an OSS desktop.
Re:Return of the Batmobile (Score:2, Informative)
Define 'marketing' (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, that's his perogative, but not necessarily one that will lead to a successful project.
What's the goal of this project? To create a new open source OS that no one uses? If so, marketing is definitely not their job.
But if one of the goals is to create a new open source OS with a strong, active base of users and developers, then marketing MUST be part of the job and project plan.
Marketing goes far beyond advertising for the sake of increasing revenue. Marketing is all of the PR work you do with the development community, IT decision-makers, not to mention the media (including Slashdot).
Too often, open source advocates only associate marketing with profit-making companies, while forgetting that non-profits have marketing people too.
From museums to charitable foundations, the most successful ones are those that can successfully market their 'product' to the world. Open source software is no different.
Re:Define 'marketing' (Score:4, Interesting)
People don't seem to want to be bothered with supporting truly open source software. This is just an indicator of such a person's own cynicism regarding the potential success of open source. I acted under no direction of the OBOS team. They're right, it's not their job to market, but whoever wants to get the word out is welcome and that's exactly what I did. Now come on, read about what we're doing. Try to understand where we're coming from and where we're going before you judge us from an article, the length of which just barely constitutes a paragraph. I'm sure that if you looked into OpenBeOS, while it might not be the OS for you, you'll agree it has its place. Sorry to bother your slashdotting with this plea for sincere consideration, I'll go back to work now...
Parent
Re:Define 'marketing' (Score:3, Interesting)
I ask because in order to get this message across you need to use an argument that has more meaning than "stopping the MS hegemony" or to "create choice". There needs to be a reason than people can actually personally relate to, such as "because we have the best quilting design software" or "because we provide the easiest-to-configure internet access".
It's easy to convince as
What about the other 90% who just want the damn thing to work most of the time without too much hassle? What do you offer them?
Re:Define 'marketing' (Score:2)
In this respect, it still comes down to good old userbase. Which, when you're *not* advertising, will be a function of
Consider that companies *pay* people to go into bars and malls to talk their product up
Re:Define 'marketing' (Score:3, Interesting)
So yes, if the people doing the coding want people to actually run their code, they should take it upon themselves to do some evangelizing. If there's not a groundswell of support, then distros will never pick up the code and do the advertising work that follows.
If you don't think marketing is your job... (Score:2, Insightful)
OSS has grown up in many ways. Because of this, it's time we stopped acting like children and took responsibility. As a group, we decided to adopt restrictive licenses in order to prevent our creations from being used in a manner we did not approve of and we decided that we actually cared who adopted our operating systems, our programs, and we decided that we were going to compete against organizations like Microsoft.
Now you may not have liked those decisions, but as a group, that's where Open Source went.
Down that path lies marketing (including FUD, which we seem to have adopted quite easily), profit (which we still claim to want, even if we debate how it's actually obtained under this model.), and responsibilty (since we presume people will use this O/S to do business.)
If you don't want to take the responsibilty to handle the tasks that aren't fun (such as marketing), please don't complain in a few years that the project died of lack of support and adoption.
Re:If you don't think marketing is your job... (Score:2)
Wrong. Not everyone made any of those decisions. Some people use completely free licenses (BSD), many OSS developers don't care who adopts the operating system, and quite a few never decided to comete against organizations like Microsoft.
Next time, speak for yourself, not every OSS developer.
Dinivin
Re:If you don't think marketing is your job... (Score:5, Interesting)
Now you may not have liked those decisions, but as a group, that's where Open Source went.
Whoa, slow down there, cowboy.
The licenses which make OSS possible are there to do just that -- force people and organizations to stay honest and not simply take advantage of the efforts of others. What you can *do* with that software is pretty much unfettered -- consider all of the places you can find Linux in one form or another.
Besides that, who said we (we as in the community) had decided to compete against Microsoft? Competition implies that the OSS community is tied up in a parry-and-jab with MS, which we most definately are not -- why else would we be so eager to interoperate with Windows boxen, even when it means trying to adhere to MS's broken "standards"?
OSS is about a way to develop software, and nothing else. My personal interest, and I dare say the interest of most people involved in the development or use of OSS, is only to obtain and use the best possible software solution for our needs.
Raising the awareness of the project is important, but generally good and useful software concepts attract users and developers far more effectively tan "marketing".
Parent
Re:If you don't think marketing is your job... (Score:2)
While it's hard to speak of the open source / free software community as a competitior due to lack of organization, several companies such as Mandrake are directly competing against Microsoft for the desktop market. They do have their tactic and can change it if they want.
HTML version / Mirror (Score:3, Informative)
If you have trouble reading the one linked off the front page, here's a mirror of the log in HTML.
http://www.kupoflux.com/tmp/beoslog.php
Re:HTML version / Mirror (Score:2)
Yeah, that would be it. Curse my metal fingers.
The "Is there a market?" question (Score:5, Funny)
Translation: "No."
The "Is there an OS?" question (Score:2, Insightful)
For instance: The kernel is a fork of the NewOS kernel, which is far from complete itself and there are few if any competant kernel hackers on the OBOS team. Also, fork has been changed so much (mostly superficial changes) by the few developers who are working on it, that changes to the NewOS kernel will not easily port to the OBOS fork.
Also, very little else of the OS has even been seriously started on. Check out the OpenBeOS website [openbeos.org] and see their progress indicators.
I'm not saying that the project will go nowhere (that's only my personal opinion), only that if it does it will be years before anything of significance is realized.
Technical question (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Technical question (Score:2)
The lack of drivers, especially for the graphics cards, is really a hurting point for any alternative OS.
I have heard that the division between the driver back-end of XFree86 and the "X" part is getting better and cleaner, which may lead to eventually being able to use XFree86 drivers. But I doubt it is there yet because I don't see it being done now.
WhoOS? (Score:2, Insightful)
That kind of attitude certainly isn't going to get your OS on any desktops, and pretty soon you won't have any job.
**News Flash** Marketing works - especially if you have a solid product like BeOS was. Do you think MicroSoft and AOL would spend the wads of cash on marketing if it didn't work? Hell I'd be willing to guess that 40% or americans think that America(n) Online is the Internet.
While it may not be the developers' job to market BeOS, they need to be more aware that marketing plays an ever-increasing role in the success of any product - including Operating Systems.
Re:WhoOS? (Score:4, Insightful)
Except that none of these developers are working on OpenBeOS as their job. They are working on it because they like it, and that probably won't change even if no one uses the it.
Dinivin
Parent
Re:WhoOS? (Score:2)
If You Build It... (Score:2)
If not, you still learned a lot in the process and quite possibly added to the pool of knowledge and others will still benefit.
palm and BeOS (Score:3, Interesting)
i wonder how much BeOS will influence the PalmOS.
i seems a shame that such a good OS should die like this. i applaud OpenBeOS for their work at "reviving" what once was, even if it is stil linux.
Re:palm and BeOS (Score:2)
Why? (Score:2)
I suppose in a world where people spend a lot of time writing PDP-10 and game console emulators, another nostaliga-driven software effort won't matter much. But just imagine if all that effort were directed towards doing something new and original: coming up with new kinds of user interaction, figuring out entirely new ways of organizing kernels, rethinking the way kernels are implemented.
If it has to be a clone of a system that has been done before, why not clone and create a better implementation of something that differs more from what we already have than BeOS?
Marketing is CRUCIAL (Score:2, Insightful)
Marketing does not need to mean advertising. I believe for Open Source projects, they need to use marketing as a way to define needs of the market (or the wants of the users), and goals of the project. As well as a way to present the product to the end user/customer.
How can you develop something for which you do not understand its requirements, nor its goals? Just because it is open source, and a voulenteer effort, does not mean its a good idea to attack the project blind from 2 sides!
Is there a market? (Score:2)
With MS basically looking to try and force people into XP, I've been wondering what I'm going to recommend to these people. OS-X is a definate possibility, but apple hardware is rather expensive. And I'm not exactly a huge fan of the way apple handles things either. They are not exactly a model company either.
Honestly, I've never gotten a chance to use BeOS. I really wanted to give it a whirl, but it went under before I got a chance. From what I saw though, I think it might fit into that space very well, if they can get enough apps. (Binary support for other free OS's would be good there. Not sure how feasible that is though in this case.)
Regardless, they aren't a company. They have no need to prove market or profitability. If they want to do it, that's all that really matters. There's no need to justify your itch before you can scratch it.
Cool, but (Score:2)
Simply put, BeOS was an excellent operating system, but OBOS may (or may not) fall under some of the axes that fell on BeOS.
Boot Loader: Acceptance by OEM's I take it is not a concern, but should be in the mind of the developers, just in case.
OSS: Attracting developers did not seem to be a problem, but because of the politics involved with some binary compatability with OSS, there were *drivers* for hardware that were rejected because BeOS was closed. (don't pshaw, that is why you could not get anything beyond a 3com 905 to work despite drivers being written...I ran into that problem)
Not a fun place to be, you know the OS and hardware will work, but the person who wrote it gets smacked down. Grrrr.
The "B" in BeOS/OBOS: perhaps the B shoud be for BSD, that way the above OSS conundrum does not present itself. Think about it: forks and usage of the source w/o giving back are welcomed and would avoid the "show your source or piss off" problem.
This, I think, would also round out the BSD family (Open/Net/Free) with a Multimedia (crus of BeOS) quite nicely if the developers did decide to use BSD. (and this coming from a Slackware, and slight Redhat, fan).
Interesting that I found myself getting excited, but after the first round of being wowed and then let down when Be dropped BeOS, well, "once bitten, twice shy..."
.
Re:A Meta-Question (Score:2, Informative)
Ummm, an IRC log is just a text file. You're probably viewing it in a Windows text editor, which would cause the line breaks not to translate properly. Try viewing the file in Wordpad, or better yet, VIM [vim.org].
As an aside, just because everyone you know uses AIM doesn't necessary mean that the rest of the world does. The reason it's not posted in an AOL IM log format is because the Q&A took place on IRC, not on AOL.
Re:this will be nothing like beos.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:hmm BeOS? (Score:2)
What was nice about BeOS was the simplicity: how many home-ish users really need a multi-user system?
Multi-profiles would be nice, that is true. But multiuser in that type of OS would be a fairly useless thing to implement.
Re:hmm BeOS? (Score:2)
Anyone who shares their computer with family or friends on a regular basis. I myself enjoy a Mac OS X computer with separate accounts for each member of my family; they can create documents, download files, and so forth without stepping on each other's desktops or making major changes to the system (without my permission). My wife can litter the desktop with text documents, my kids can add their own browser bookmarks, they can download and rip whatever music they like -- it doesn't get in anyone else's way.
Really, multi-user systems might not have been all that important in the "old days" of personal computing. But now that a $699 off-the-shelf box and a cable modem is enough to become a vulnerable server on the Internet, multi-user setups are essential for basic security, with the added benefit of keeping everyone's virtual space personalized and distinct from everyone else's.
multi-user is not useless on home systems (Score:2)
1. Profiles are little more than eye-candy without permissions to enforce policy on said profiles. Without some sense of multiple users, one user cannot restrict read and/or write access from other users. Even home users have something to gain from little brother not being able to delete big sister's homework. Not to mention keeping users from deleting or changing key system files.
2. The multi-user paradigm allows services to run as other than "root." One of the big weaknesses of most home flavors of Windows is that a compromise in any program is a "root" level compromise. I feel much more confident knowing that if a back door happens to be in my irc client that my exposure is limited to my personal files. Losing data sucks. Having to reinstall the OS sucks worse.
Regards,
-l
Uh (Score:2, Informative)
This article is about OpenBeOS, which is currently vaporware. They don't even have a functional kernel yet. They've taken the NewOS kernel and badly maimed it... there aren't many competant kernel hackers on their team.
Um.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Corporate backing? (Score:4, Interesting)
Michael Phipps gave an interesting answer to the "Why openbeos?"-question in the Q&A-session:
[Captcpu] Here's a nice one from: [mwilber] Why did you decide to start the OpenBeOS project? ;-) :)
[17:35:47] [mphipps] Insanity.
[17:36:25] [Captcpu] good answer
[17:36:52] [Captcpu] but wait..there's more...[mphipps] Seriously - I had a project that I have been working on for years on BeOS. The short version of the story is that it is an object oriented paradigm in which every class is a process and every instance is a thread. It needs hyper fast messaging and process/thread swapping. No other OS will do that. Even R5 wasn't the best.
[17:37:47] [mphipps] So, when the Palm announcement was made, I looked at Linux and the BSD's, but none of them were as fast and as easy to use. So I decided that BeOS must continue on.
Hopefully more people will see things the same way. Some things are hard to do, or outright impossible in most common enviroments today. If enough people makes this realization OBOS could have a very nice thing going.
Another thing that often is forgotten when talking about OBOS is that the goal is not only to recreate BeOS as OSS. It goes beyond that. The goal of OBOS R1 is to recreate BeOS R5, but when the devlopment continues towards OBOS r2, new interresting stuff is going to be implemented. The plans of what to include in the post-r1-releases of OBOS are made at the Glass Elevator mailing list [sourceforge.net]
Parent
Re:Yeah, go ahead... (Score:3, Insightful)
These people are not being 'put together' by anyone.
They will work on whatever project they want to.
Re:A two-part strategy... (Score:2)
Uh, Insightful? (Score:2)
You're right! No middle ground! I hereby call for a boycott of OpenBeOS! While we're at it, let's boycott Sourceforge; there are clearly too many software projects there that aren't meant to compete directly with Microsoft products! All those projects born of niche necessity or pure personal enjoyment... all those programmers indulging in their hobbies... it makes me sick!