A Free XML-Based Operating System

Dotnaught writes "For the past five years, Xcerion has been working on an XML-based Internet operating system (XIOS) that runs inside a Web browser and promises radically reduced development time. To provide developers with an incentive to write for the platform, Xcerion's back-end system is designed to route revenue, either from subscription fees or from ads served to users of free programs, to application authors. Think of it as Google AdSense, except for programmers rather than publishers. Is it absurd to think this poses a threat to Google and Microsoft?"

Stupid

[by Anonymous Coward]

I don't know if it's absurd or not because there is absolutely nothing to look at on that web site whatsoever. What is an XML-based operating system? XML is a container format.

Let this be the thread for all "So what?" posts, please.

Re:Stupid

[BruceCage (882117)]

Repeat after me "this is not stuff that matters, this is not news for nerds". I honestly can't decide between tagging it 'slashvertisment', 'vaporware' or plain simply 'bullshit'.

Just stop posting stories like this damnit, I'm looking at you Zonk!

Re:Stupid

[Speed Pour (1051122)]

The sheer concept that this is an OS is out and out wrong. It is nothing more than a UI/Shell that links to an environment on the back end. This doesn't even constitute any loose idea of virtualization or emulation because everything still falls under the sandbox/api realm. The idea of the project might not suck (once/if it's ever working), but it sure won't get very far if everybody keeps using the wrong terminology to describe it.

Not an 'Operating System'

[iBod (534920)]

By TA's own admission, it's not an OS, just an abstraction layer on top of a real OS.

Re:Not an 'Operating System'

[CSLarsen (961164)]

No, it's an OS on top of an OS (your webbrowser) on top of an OS (your uhm OS).

Re:Not an 'Operating System'

[julesh (229690)]

And by the looks of the company site, it's vapourware. They have a "sign up to beta test" button on the home page, but when you fill in the form (*after you fill in the form*) they tell you you've been added to their list of people to send news about the thing.

Re:Not an 'Operating System'

[blane.bramble (133160)]

* Is LinuxBIOS an OS?

No, it is a set of routines to configure a machine before handing full hardware control to a real OS (note BIOS is Basic Input/Output System). Also note that in DOS the BIOS formed part of the OS.

* Is OpenFirmware an OS? Mac OS X needs it to run.

Sounds like it is part of the OS then, not an OS in it's own right. An OS can comprise of hardware and software components.

* Is the BIOS in a Lenovo-compatible[1] PC an OS? (Some have alleged that the added complexity compared to 1981 IBM PC BIOS makes it a Built-In Operating System.)

This is the same as your first question.

* Is the microcode in your PC's CPU an OS? BIOS needs it to run.

No. This is firmware for the processor. Of course your OS needs your processor to work in order to run.

Short answer

[zmotula (663798)]

"Is it absurd to think this poses a threat to Google and Microsoft?"

Yes.

Au Contraire -- Sort of

[vtcodger (957785)]

Does this represent a threat to Google or Microsoft? Not any time Soon

But then, it's not that long ago that Google was just two guys doodling on scrap paper.

A few problems have to be overcome including internet latency and the tendancy of everyone to cache stuff they should not be putting in caches (If your PC's memory cache worked like Internet caches do, you'd be lucky to get a Solitaire hand dealt before the PC crashed.)

And I doubt this is a threat to Google because they will do the same thing it if it works out.

My impression is that what's good about this specific scheme is that only data is sent over the network, so the annoying latency issues many of us have with Google spreadsheets and Writely should be less of a problem.

What's bad is that the data is stored on someone's servers. Security will be an issue. So will availability. And loss of data. And ...

Another problem is that networked "OS"es may not be acceptable for a lot of users because they are just plain too damn slow. A few years ago I slapped together a networked application running on a server here at home for keeping notes together. Worked, sorta. But even though I owned the network and the application was built into server code, not run via CGI, it was too slow to be usable. The problem looked to be latency, not slow processing.

The few serious attempts I've seen at using HTTP/browsers to do real jobs varied from awful to marginal. IMHO even things like SAIL suck. I'd rather update the /etc files directly. Hell, even ed/EDLINE would be faster and more satisfactory.

Maybe the problems can be overcome with brains, technology, and money. Maybe they can't.

Back on topic. Is this stuff a threat to Microsoft? You just bet it is. MS makes most of its money off OK, but overpriced, products that do way more than most customers need (Exception--Xbox which may eventually be a real, money making operation with a bright future). Furthermore, adding more features and charging more for new versions of Windows/Office is probably an unsustainable strategy. We're already seeing geeks and a few organizations walking away from Microsoft. I think that is only going to become more common and some of them may well go to schemes like this.

command line

[hey (83763)]

The command line is very friendly:

<command><command-name>grep</command-name><args><a rg>stuff</arg><arg>*</arg></args></command>

Bad XML

[CarpetShark (865376)]

It also shows very poor use of XML, sadly. For instance, wouldn't it make more sense to have <cmd name="grep"><args><regex>stuff</regex><filespec>*< /filespec></cmd>? It's not only shorter, but more future-proof, and more clear.

Still not short enough for me though. XML is OK for interchange, but it sucks as a human-readable markup language, even when used with forethought.

Furthermore, I'm not sure it makes ANY sense to have commands in XML. That's what programming languages are for -- it's the one thing they excel at. What's wrong with cmd(argname="val") or cmd(arg1, { a, b, c="10" })? It's complex to parse, sure, but that's why you make a parser once -- the point is, it IS parseable, without a human correcting the syntax before the computer can understand it.

Ahhh.

[by Anonymous Coward]

If XML doesn't solve the problem, use more XML.

Re:Ahhh.

[by Anonymous Coward]

If XML doesn't solve the problem, use more XML.

I'm already developing a XML parser on this new platform.

Well...

[by Anonymous Coward]

Considering they use javascript for the basic hyperlinks on their website, it seems they lack technical knowledge. That doesn't bode well for a company doing a web OS and if they're doing it using XML why does the W3C validator throw 103 errors on their (non-XML) home page?

Personally, I don't see these guys as a threat to anyone except themselves and their investors.

Validation for the website

[by Anonymous Coward]

http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww .xcerion.com%2F [w3.org]

Those guys can't even put down proper HTML, I'm not sure i'd trust them to write a whole web-based "OS" in XML

Re:Validation for the website

[beelsebob (529313)]

Not only can they not write valid html, but they can't write html that render correctly in Safari, one of the most compliant browsers out there.

Re:Validation for the website

[vtcodger (957785)]

***Those guys can't even put down proper HTML, I'm not sure i'd trust them to write a whole web-based "OS" in XML***

In their defense:

• The guy doing their web page is probably not one of the folks doing the applications.

• It appears that a LOT of Web Page developers are totally unaware of standards -- or don't care. My guess is that seriously non-compliant web pages probably outnumber those that are valid on major web sites. Hell, many of them don't even have a DOCTYPE spec and can't be validated.

• Last time I looked, the Google home page threw about 50 HTML errors when fed to the W3C validator.

That said, if I were these guys, I'd fix the HTML.

Would rock if it didn't need a full OS and browser

[-Neko- (67564)]

As subject. How is this meant to change the world or "threaten" Google or Microsoft when you need an OS (probably from Microsoft) and a browser (probably with Google as the homepage, both if we take the most popular)?

Once you wanna do something in this "internet OS" you'll fullscreen your $179 copy of Internet Explorer on Windows Vista, and fire up an app which probably uses some Google API internally. World changing? Or just another layer between you and them that serves yet more adverts?

Re:Would rock if it didn't need a full OS and brow

[jez9999 (618189)]

How is this meant to change the world or "threaten" Google or Microsoft when you need an OS (probably from Microsoft) and a browser

Presumably becuase that OS could be Ubuntu, and that browser could be Firefox. Or OSX/Safari, or Suse/Konqueror, or.....

Why require a browser

[broothal (186066)]

Back in the late 80's when I got on the net we all had a pretty good idea what "the internet" was. Now, 20 years later, the internet is almost synonymous with WWW. I'd like to see good solutions taking advantage of the internet, but why does it always have to require a web browser?

Re:Why require a browser

[jez9999 (618189)]

Because a web browser is the only piece of software that fulfills the following criteria:

- Installed on most machines by default (many policies prohibit the installation of new s/w)
- Has the capability to be extended to provided an OS-like environment.

Front Page

[falzer (224563)]

I like their front page message: Software should be free(TM)
Wow, it's like they snuck into Slashdot's secret headquarters and stole the root password... to our hearts!

I've got another idea

[pfortuny (857713)]

How about developing an OS on top of TeX?

This way we would live in the best of the worlds, would we not?

Moreover, this would threaten Google, Microsoft and the great scientific publishers.

Actually, we could make it work on top of an emacs session. Pity that you need another OS to run emacs, but
**it is emacs**, you know! and TeX, of course.

Anyone joining the project?

Sorry to be rude - but dictionary time

[dbIII (701233)]

This is supposed to be the site where we laugh smugly at people who use the word "internets" or who call an application in user space an operating system. What happened?

don't think so

[oohshiny (998054)]

Xcerion is merely jumping onto the XML bandwagon and doing some nimble marketing around it.

In fact, we have an OS-independent XML-based layer, and it's called xulrunner (Firefox, Mozilla, and Thunderbird are popular applications written in it). It's getting a more powerful language with JIT support soon (ECMAScript 2.0).

Microsoft has already caught on an has been trying to develop their own, proprietary alternative, though they aren't as far along.

There are also some other attempts at this with slightly different perspectives on the same problem, like Konfabulator, Dashboard, Java, and .NET, but their success has been more limited in this area, although some of them have found other uses.