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

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

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

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.

Re:Stupid

This is the way of thinking of people who were using Eunuchs for too long.

UNIX shell = OS.

Seriously though, UIs are not OSs. The UNIX text-based command interpreters are not operating systems any more than this is, so I don't really see your point. UNIX is an OS. "M$ windoze", or as I prefer to call it, Microsoft Windows, is an OS. I really don't see how using one over the other will magically educate users about computer science vocabulary.

Not an 'Operating System'

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'

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'

* 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.

Re:Not an 'Operating System'

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.

Short answer

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

Yes.

Au Contraire -- Sort of

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.

Re:Au Contraire -- Sort of

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

Google is already doing something in this vein... They have Google Apps [google.com], which can tie into your enterprise systems and offers your mobile workforce word processing and spreadsheets, email, IM, a start page with RSS--it isn't an operating system, not remotely, but the idea is that it represents an integrated, comprehensive application environment for our students to embrace from home, campus, or the Australian outback.

XIOS isn't really an OS, I certainly agree. But they're hardly unique. They're presenting an integrated suite of applications with an extensible API, sort of like what Google is doing. And really, it doesn't need to be an OS to make it useful and usable.

command line

The command line is very friendly:

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

Bad XML

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.

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

Re:Ahhh.

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

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

Well...

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

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

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

***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

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

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

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

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.

system requirements

So the requirements of this new hot XML based operating system are at least to have a operating system and a heavy weight web browser.
Why do I need an operating system to run an operating system?
Oh... you mean it's nothing more than an application framework (just like the millions of others around there).

Stack Dump

Internet Explorer 7 has experienced and error while running script:
XIOS
Would you like to send an error report to Microsoft?
Send Don't Send

Front Page

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!

Try Creating An Account There...AHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!

I thought it would be kind of neat to check it out, but the only way that I could access the button to send my information to sign up was to view it in another window. I thought it was because I was using Firefox, but the same thing on IE, and on the page that has their "Internet Services Strategy" there is a line that goes through 2 paragraphs!LOL Not very professional, and if this is the level of service that they are going to be providing, then what can we expect from them for their OS??? And they stumbled right out of the gate!lol

I've got another idea

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?

XML People are still using that?

For a while it was this huge buzzword about the wonders of XML. Then when people look into it they realize it is not a programming language or scripting or formatting language (per say) that everyone was touting it to be. But just a Text File standard for holding data, like Comma separated values or fixed space delimited. Granted it handles treed information much better then the previous types but in reality it is not that big of a deal. Oddly enough I have never found an XML Parser that I am happy with either and I never really prioritized myself to make my own.

not an os

It runs inside a browser, probably is a collection of javascript and dhtml script piles. It's not an OS. It's maybe an application suite, a framework, a collection of javascript application libraries, whatever, but it's not an OS. Putting the "internet" word before it doesn't help.

AffinityGO

A UK company, Oceanworks Ltd., already has a web based OS in place.... and even a freebie version... perhaps google should look at that company and buy them out.

Here's a link to their freebie one.

http://affinitygofree.com/ [affinitygofree.com]

XML for OS configuration?

Botherment, another web "OS". I was hoping someone had finally seen the light WRT storing OS settings in XML. That would make it easier to search for settings (no more 1000 files in 100 directories or a crappy registry editor), use non-ASCII characters (UTF rules) with only three escape characters, and avoid syntax errors.

Sorry to be rude - but dictionary time

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?

What's an OS?

It's really not in my intention to troll, but has the definition of the term 'Operation System' changed recently? Have I been living under a rock?

This OS is just as much as Windows 3.1 was an OS - a graphical environment maybe, but not an OS as I still need Windows, Linux, MacOS or BeOS installed on my HDD to get on the web or to open a file.

Real OSs have failed...

The sad part about all those web based "OSs" is that they show that the real OSs pretty much completly failed to keep up with the demand of the users. Maintenance of a real OS has become such a huge issue that at least some people prefer to stick with a Javascript/DHTML hack of a thing that runs in a browser who never was build to be an operating system or run applications in the first place and the irony is that those apps indeed often run better, build in version tracking, easy group collaboration, fast search and other things often work out-of-the-box in those web OSs while they can be a huge pain to get up and running with a real OS and a real application.

Now of course a web OS can't replace the low-level stuff of real OS, the browser after all has to run on something but in terms of higher level functions, like GUI and such, web based OSs really do quite a good job, which really is sad, since a real OS should be able to do all those jobs a heck of a lot better, but they simply don't in practice. Real OS development has pretty much staled in the last ten years from a users point of view and everything that was broken back then still is (version tracking is non-existant, no proper undelete, manual save, no quick search, hard to clone a OS onto another machine, etc.).

Its an OS?

Well, someone must have redefined what an OS is.

Violence

This reminds me of somebody's .sig:

XML is like violence, if it doesn't solve the problem, just use more.

don't think so

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.

Two points

As everyone's already pointed out, this is no more an operating system than it is a flight simulator.

Secondly, what does "XML-based" actually mean in this context? Last I checked, "XML-based" only makes sense when talking about documents or data. What does it mean for an "operating system" (or, more to the point, a web-based application framework) to be "XML-based"?

Not even worth mentioning

I've been doing professional active content web developement since the late dot-bomb days. Looking at the site for 15 seconds tells me this is probably nothing other than a scheme to fool investors. The things people put out for 'the next big thing' when they discover that JavaScript is a PL and runs in every browser amazes me time and time again.

There are some points about RIAs one should learn as fast as possible to avoid wasting everybodys time:

1) JavaScript is nothing new. It's been around for something like 10 years. DTML/Push-Pull JavaScript/Ajax/[Fill in own buzzword of choice] is nothing new. Many people have tried it, many have given up and even the best in 'Ajax' have stepped down again from using it in anything but the most tried and true situations and use cases.

2) RIA is nothing new. Plugins are nothing new. There are entire landfills full of potential competitors to Flash and Java. Most of them failed. A few remain in niches where others can't reach. The only one I would care to mention is curl [curl.com], and they are having a hard time and only manage by patiently working away at their tool for x-plattform RIAs.

3) The big boys Adobemedia / Sun / IBM and some promising others are currently involved in a giant hack & slay fest over the best and most prevailent rich client / server integration. Joining them with some obscure cross-funded project with bad buzzwords, a crappy website and nothing to deliver than something worse than the most half-assed Ajax kit is like showing up on a Knights tournament riding an aged donkey, armed with a cardboard kiddie helmet, a broomstick and a toothpick.

4) 'We will revolutionize ... blahblah ... the way people/the world thinks about computers/the web/whatever' is allway a dead giveaway that they don't know the troubles involved in building a good web product. There is no free lunch. Even with technologies around or around the corner like Laszlo, Adobes Flex (a Laszlo rippoff), Curl, Eclipse RIA, AMF, JSON/JDON, XUL/XUL Runner - all of which are basically free (all beer and mostly speech) and cream of the crop, building a working RIA that runs on every OS and doesn't bring your new 2 GB RAM Dual Core Turbo PC to a grinding halt is extremly hard work and a very tricky task with bucketloads of tradeoffs to evaluate. I do this every day, the possiblities are growing but the task itself isn't getting any easyer. And the pipedream of emulating a desktop in a browser has been implemented by many, and the best at it admit it's turned out more like a kind of experiment than anything usefull.

Bottom line:
This isn't news and it's not the bits worth it takes to transmit it. Move on. No one needs yet another bunch of silly goofs who try and tell the users/clients that they've discovered something new and everything will change if only you run with their buzzword ridden half-assed vision of an untested product that apes things others have finished years ago - and people don't know about for a reason.

Next step native XML processor

The next obvious step will of course be a XML-native processor !

Irony

Their tagline is "Software should be free"

Which they've trademarked...

Web "OSes" are old news.

I wrote this [ctho.ath.cx] years ago (requires trunk Gecko, e.g. Firefox 3 or SeaMonkey 1.5)... somebody else also did a much better looking one years ago here [sourceforge.net]. Granted, neither have very useful APIs...

Yes, Yes it is absurd.

Really really absurd.

I personally love the message on their homepage "Software should be freetm"

TM?!

A Shell is Not an OS

This sounds like a shell to me. You can use a browser as a shell. That's essentially what MS did when it incorporated IE into the OS. At least, they re-use a lot of browser components. It's probably trivial to write a shell for Windows that uses IE itself. Haven't Gnome and others done similar browser-based shells?

Anyway, I'm usually not into pedantry, but these people really need to learn the difference between an OS and a shell. An OS, among other things, provides a layer between hardware and software, and controlls processes. A shell runs as a process on the OS. Note, when I say "these people", I'm referring not to just this particular case, but all the other "browser OS" projects out there and "flash OS" projects out there.

Now, if they've hacked the browser to load as the root process, load drivers, load and schedule other processes, and provide a shell... then I apologize.

terminology

Wow, this'll work great with my new cheese-based router. Idiots.

Kernel space

Is it possible to bundle XML parser (SAX?) into Linux kernel?

NOT Impressive.

Given that www.xcerion.com looks like it was designed by a blind 6 year old with a 0.1 megapixel camera using a wind up laptop via a satellite connection, I'm not going to hold my breath.

"Programming applications on XIOS is orders of magnitude easier to program than, say, C++ or Java."
Visual Basic 6 is an order of magnitude easier to program than, say, C++ or Java.
You get what you pay for.