OpenBeOs Developers Talk About Progress 261
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 ..."
Quality and utility (Score:1)
Maybe not market room... (Score:2, Insightful)
BEos (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:BEos (Score:1, Interesting)
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?
Good points (Score:1)
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:Good points (Score:1, Flamebait)
Re:Good points (Score:2)
I know where it is done to mkae the name look funky, that's horrible, but wnat is the alternative? Beos and Macos? They loose meaning because it becomes less clear that they are the OS associated with Be and Mac, respectively.
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.
windows component cost (Score:2)
Re:Does one size really fit all? (Score:2)
Although I agree, I feel much of the consumer value in Lindows is within the $99 subscription to the Click-and-Run warehouse. What's a Lindows user to do if he got no applications?
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: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.
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?
Re:BEos (Score:2)
Re:BEos (Score:2)
Ah, not quite. BeFS allows for flexible metadata, great, but not quite what I was thinking of here. An object filing system is a bit different to tagging files with metadata, although they can often achieve the same thing in different ways.
Don't get me wrong here, but why? Gecko is designed to be an HTML viewer. Why do you want that as your GUI? I swear, I am not trying to start a flamewar; I honestly don't understand this one.
Don't worry, it's not obvious why until you've played with Mozilla a bit. Gecko is an HTML viewer yes, but it can do a lot more than that. The whole Mozilla front end is written in XML and rendered by Gecko - the menus, toolbars etc are written in a way similar to web pages (styled by css, handled by javascript etc). XML is pretty flexible. Mozilla is written using XUL which is like HTML but for user interfaces, however you can mix and match content types at will. SVG is like Flash in XML and I've already seen some extremely cool demos of what you can do with SVG in Mozilla. Imagine having a user interface with the slickness of Flash (clearly it'd have to be subtle, but you get the picture). Mozilla also supports MathML for embedding mathematics into the document, and I've seen ChemML be transformed into SVG diagrams of chemical formulae.
What Gecko does is give you a set of very generic but powerful tools that let you do very easy but powerful graphics. The only problem is basically speed at the moment.
About Plan-9, yes that has some neat ideas, including integrating everything into the filing system (which is sort of what I meant by the OFS).
The knowledge representation stuff is just meaningless until it "clicks" I've found, check out the semantic web documents at the w3c - the stuff TBL has got planned for the next generation web is simply mind blowing. And that's my whole point: this sort of stuff has to be taken into the design at the beginning, it's not something you can just add later.
One thing I don't think is useful is constantly reinventing the wheel. If I ever was to create my dream platform (what a geek!), I'd use Linux as the base. Writing efficient VM, video drivers etc is a solved problem. It'd really be more a new type of desktop environment: you can base something on Linux without using the Linux development systems or UIs, look at TiVo.
Re:BEos (Score:1, Insightful)
Second, I would say that definitely "YES", Windows is more secure and more stable than 4 years ago. I'm not sure about more efficient, as that's a harder point to analyze.
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)
Re:Return of the Batmobile (Score:2)
Now if we could just get people to stop buying station wagons and stick to either tanks or batmobiles, we'd be in business.
But you have to admit, the European sports cars [apple.com] have gotten much better.
Good for Be (Score:1)
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)
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...
Re:Define 'marketing' (Score:1)
I made no judgement as to the quality of the OS (in fact, I greatly admire OBOS's techincal goals). But this an observation about the chances of OBOS's success if the people who are creating it don't take some level of responsibility for nurturing a user base.
IMHO, saying "We are an OSS project. Marketing is not our job" does not bode well for the additional goal of "But I also want to make it work for my Mom".
My mom, your mom, everyone's mom for that matter, needs to learn about alternative OS's somewhere, and see the value in using them. That can be accomplished without multi-million dollar ad campaigns. But it cannot be accomplished if developers take the position that evangelizing and marketing (which are flip sides of the same coin) is not their job.
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:2)
Yeah, they need to keep that in mind all along, just like Torvalds did. Oh wait...
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.
Re:Define 'marketing' (Score:1)
Well, if OBOS turns out to be as great as many of us hope it will be, it will probably market itself. Afaik, the OBOS team has not been actively marketing their project very much, yet they have recived a "lot" of attention.
What primarily speaks in favour of OBOS compared to Linux is a much less steep learning curve.
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:1)
The OpenBeOS team is depending on the same thing to happen with their OS. An audio company could have a distro with apps and drivers specifically targeting the audio segment, while another company might have a distro with programs specific to their goals. Each would market their own distribution.
Re:If you don't think marketing is your job... (Score:1)
And yet, that doesn't decrease or remove the need for marketing. Instead, it simply changes who your marketing is targetting. Do you think distributions of OpenBeOS will just appear? Maybe that happened with Linux, but it took a very long time (as measured in computer time, since it's only been a little over 10 years now). No, if the OBOS team wants their software to be used, then they will need to either distribute it themselves (market to end users), or actively find others to distribute it for them (market to VARs). If they do neither, then OBOS will die. And maybe that's fine, because perhaps they're just doing this for fun and their own personal use and it doesn't really matter to them whether or not others use their software.
Re:If you don't think marketing is your job... (Score:1)
Re:If you don't think marketing is your job... (Score:1)
See the part where I said
and extrapolate from that what you will. IE, it's taken Linux a long time to build up marketing steam; it could've gone faster had Linus actually marketed the kernel (of course, he wrote it originally just for his own use, not to take over the world, so of course he didn't do any marketing); Linux was a bit of a fluke, since I doubt you can really come up with another such example in the computing world; or any other conclusion you wish to draw.Marketing isn't a silver bullet, of course. Just because you take the time to evangelize your work doesn't mean anybody's going to buy into it. But not evangelizing (note that, as other posters have pointed out, marketing is a whole lot more than just buying advertisements, and I think evangelizing is a good word to cover more of this because it includes things like helping our your developer community and just generally making sure people know what cool stuff you're doing) is a very good way to not go anywhere.
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".
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.
Corporate backing? (Score:1)
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]
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:1)
And here's a version where you can actually read who's saying what.
http://www.daishar.com/obosolog.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.
Re:The "Is there an OS?" question (Score:2)
Build it and wait...who will care again? (Score:1)
The question the guy asked was "What plans have been made to succeed in the areas Be failed in, the marketing, the lack of drivers, and apps? Without these we could be in for a repeat...."
Marketing is not the job of OSS, useable software is. I'm not entirely sure whether Phipps wasn't reading all the way through, or answering little bits, or...
Be didn't die because it was great software, Be died because it couldn't do the job. Or, another way of putting it, you couldn't do the job with Be.
Technical question (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Technical question (Score:1)
Damn near impossible. Oh, and Be is dead and gone. This is OpenBeOS that's being talked about, which as of yet is vaporware.
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
Re:WhoOS? (Score:1)
And they are right that marketing doesnt matter to them. They arent trying to grow marketshare, they're trying to build an operating system to satisfy their desires. If they are the only ones who use it, it doesnt change a thing.
Marketing plays no role in the success of their product because the definition of success for their product isnt about having market share or making millions. It is about building their os the way they have envisioned it.
by the way, the reason 98% of the public have never heard of BeOS is because Microsoft abused its monopoly position to force oems to not offer it as an option on their systems.
No amount of marketing will help your product be accepted in the market if the monopolist controlling the market won't let your product into its playground.
marketing (Score:1)
IF the project ever gets anywhere significant, it's going to be years from now.
Re:WhoOS? (Score:2)
hmm BeOS? (Score:1)
But while its journalizing system was good..
It lacked other nice functionalities usch as multi-user..which was not added until the ned and other missing features..
ah the OpenSource Market has already spoken.. BeOS is RIP..lets give it a nice rest..
Re:hmm BeOS? (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
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
Re:multi-user is not useless on home systems (Score:2)
First of all note that BeOS had hooks built into it for multi-user opportunities. The default user-id is Baron, not root. There are add-ons that provide a multi-user environment as well.
There are down sides to having a muli-user platform as well. There are situations where it makes sense to have the OS come up and start running a user application. Tivo is one example, Internet radio stations are another.
That said, one of the down sides of having a multi-user system is the very thing that makes it handy to have. Adding cycles to authenticate access slows down a platform.
Also note that if little brother is dedicated to finding a way to delete big sister's homework, the fact that the platform is multi-user, with ACLs, does not prevent little brother from being paitent and finding bit sister's password, or breaking the SU password and getting to the file.
Actally having to re-install an OS is nothing compared to losing some data. For example the password file to your online bank account, or your graduate thesus and supporting documentation. The OS is either available on redilly available CD-Rom disks, or other handy resources. If you have spent months collecting and analyzing data, putting together your paper, you probably can't re-create it overnight. If your Online checkbook is compromised, it very well may cost you significanly more than the value of your time and materials to re-build your system.
Then again, it apperars that you have different ideas, so I could be wrong.
-Rusty
Enthousiasm.. (Score:1)
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.
Wired: OpenBeOS founder dead by suicide (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Wired: OpenBeOS founder dead by suicide (Score:2)
Ok, now in human readable format (Score:1, Redundant)
<Captcpu> and now.. we are starting.
<mphipps> So I want to ask any people in the north americas to let the Europeans ask questions first. Just to be nice.
<Captcpu> good evening everyone, I'm Captcpu and I'll be you're moderator this evening
<Captcpu> and that's mike if you didn't know
<mphipps> Hi! Even though we are starting early, I will stay until 8 (my time) unless we run out of questions.
<Captcpu> the way tonight's chat is going to work is, you can private message me your questions, and I'll foward them to mike
<mphipps> What if we threw a war and no one showed up?
<Captcpu> we'd be in trouble
<Captcpu> it's simple
<mphipps> monolith - no estoy embarrazada.
<Captcpu> Hey Mike, Monolith would like to know if you're with child.
<mphipps> Monolith asked if I was pregnant.
<Captcpu> <lillo> first Q: is someone already working on the kernel VM? It seems like a very urgent task to be completed before other things can be touched...
<mphipps> Yes. Next question.
<Captcpu> <Matzon> Since newos is nowhere complete, why did we fork this soon? is he willing to divulge any rough specifications on what the VM will and will not support? ie. integrated VM/FS cache and/or mmap/munmap?
<mphipps> Good question. I am wondering that myself.
<Captcpu> and to add to it, he has to say... <Matzon> Why rename all newos methods to be BeOS compatible (thus making obos kernel undiffable with newos), when we could have provided an abstraction layer?
<mphipps> Truth is, Travis et al have a lot going on in their lives and they haven't been making major changes to NewOS. If you go back even 4 months or so, there weren't a lot of check ins. And we are getting to the point where we need to spread our wings and fly.
<Captcpu> here's our next question from <BlueOS> When do you join B.E.OS? and a secondary more serious question: <BlueOS> What about binary compatibilty in the driver side?
<mphipps> As for the second part, we are doing the easy stuff ATM. There are bigger changes to be made that will make the question irrelevant. BlueOS - when will you join us?
<Captcpu> here's another one mike... <AnEvilYak> is he willing to divulge any rough specifications on what the VM will and will not support? ie. integrated VM/FS cache and/or mmap/munmap?
<mphipps> Yes to both of those features. I would not want to ship without. At least, that is the plan ATM.
<Captcpu> Here's a nice one from: <mwilber> Why did you decide to start the OpenBeOS project?
<mphipps> Insanity.
<Captcpu> good answer
<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. 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.
<Captcpu> here's an interesting one from: <shatty> the new font engine is going to be freetype right? when can we expect things to reach the stage where that is working? it's part of app_server, so we need to wait for app_server don't we?
<mphipps> The font engine is indeed going to be freetype. Proto 6 is in development right now. I don't think that font handling is in it, though.
<Captcpu> Here's one: <macdonag79> Why are people writing custom versions of basic CLI tools when they could be obtained from, eg, *BSD?
<mphipps> Good question. Many of those custom CLI apps are little tiny things to help us develop. I doubt that they will be part of the final "release". But since we don't have bash, et al, yet, some little things to help us work and test make sense. The whole shell is scheduled to go out the door.
<Captcpu> <elver> How is the name choosing going? Will we stick with OpenBeOS (unlikely) or do we have a list of possible names already?
<mphipps> We have been cutting the list of names down. Many that we submitted were not usable for one reason or another. It hasn't been our top priority, but it is getting there.
<Captcpu> Here's an interesting one: <linn> question: who are you? you = captcpu. may I answer Mike?
<mphipps> sure
<Captcpu> I'm a web developer and college student from Las Vegas. I'm Kurtis Kopf's Business Partner in real life, the guy that's designing the new website for Open-Beos
<Captcpu> Someone (forgive me for forgetting your name) wanted to know about the Game Kit, what's the status?
<mphipps> Game Kit. Ahh. The poor, misbegotten step child.
<Captcpu> Here's one: <Matzon> I read a review of TuneTracker, wherein Dane Scott mentioned that obos would have a first release this year - ofcourse he is only speculating... but what is our (roughly) timeframe?
<mphipps> Sigh. So many ways to answer this. There is the Commodore answer "when it is done". There is the Microsoft answer "Q3, 2002". There is the real answer... I very strongly feel that we could finish this by the end of 2002. It will mean some long nights and hard work. But I think that it could happen. What would it take? Some more *REAL* help. Some people willing to really dig in, grab some piece of work and ride it until it is done.
<Captcpu> Ooooh.. question about networking: <z3r0_one> Question: I've seen recently that the network stack is being moved into the kernel (if it hasn't already been done), and that sockets will be file descriptors. Does this mean that the net team borrowing ideas from BONE, and trying to recreate it? Has the problem with select been fixed yet?
<mphipps> Where is David when I need him?
<Captcpu> Here's we go...
<Captcpu> <DragonSoull> 1. I've heard requests to make server applications like mySQL run in OBOS. Are you doing any work in that direction? And if so don't you think that's outside of the "Desktop OS" focus of the original BeOS?
<mphipps> *Excellent question*.
<Captcpu> I figured
<mphipps> mySQL would certainly be required on a server. But I can see, too, where it would be cool to have it on a client. For developers, for one thing. So I don't think that doing some small amount of work to make mySQL work is a bad thing. But that is different from major work or porting it ourselves. I ***STRONGLY*** believe in the focus on the desktop. BeOS wasn't, isn't and shouldn't be a server OS. Does that mean we shouldn't be able to run ftpd? No. But the *FOCUS* is on the desktop.
<Captcpu> Here's an innocent question: <x-gh0st> Will R1 support localization or is this feature reserved for R2?
<mphipps> R2. Localization is *VERY* important. And it *has* to be done right. And it really needs a whole ball of other features, like GUI with a layout engine.
<Captcpu> and now we have hit the 19:00 hour. Oficially starting =) <M_BeOS> can i ask, 'What plans have been made to succeed in the areas Be failed in, the marketing, the lack of drivers, and apps? Without these we could be in for a repeat....'
<mphipps> That is probably an FAQ.
<Captcpu> Here's one from: <coolbear> What are the GUI Interface plans for after version 1.x, are they in consideration now? I have some proposals, where should I send them, and in what format?
<mphipps> Yes, we are thinking about a number of things.
<Captcpu> " <coolbear> I refer to API and features. "
<mphipps> There are a few proposals out there, now, for new looks and feels. I have certainly heard about Gonx enough times.
<Captcpu> here's a long one from: <misza> Do you agree that it would be better to clone the current UI (Yellow Tabs, same functions like double click a tab minimize it) and implement all those functions exactly, and provide an interface to skin the UI(e.g change position of buttons, implement light skinning) having the current UI as the default one because that is familiar to alot of users, Rather than to create an entirely different UI that may be infl
<mphipps> For R1, there is no promise of skinning. The only "promised" feature is that it will look like and work like it does today.
<Captcpu> Here's a good one from: <AlienSoldier> As to help the community and OBOS in itself, does the OBOS team will suggest a line of hardware so that futur buying streamline the community to have easier driver transition in the first release R1.
<mphipps> Sigh. ATM, this is a tough one. We have the Matrox driver "in the bag", so for video, that is my only promise. If the kernel boots on it today, it is likely that it will tomorrow, too. As for other stuff (networking, sound, etc), we can't really say. If current R5 supports it, esp if the driver is publically available (i.e. source), we probably will, too.
<Captcpu> and now <sdrsolo> states "Out of the 214 listed programmers how many are contributing?"
<mphipps> Not enough. In fact, we are reworking the web site to make it more representitive of those contributing. Let's put it this way - there are 32 people with CVS write access. And none of the team leaders are beating me up because they have to submit so many patches. OBOS is still a place where *1* person can make a huge difference.
<Captcpu> and... <mwilber> have you been contacted by any corporate/government/educational organizations that are interested in OpenBeOS?
<mphipps> Yes. A few corporate. And we are working with those.
<Captcpu> this reminds me. there. that fixes that. anyway.. here's one from: <z3r0_one> Question: Another tough one: Is true multiuser support in the future of OpenBeOS?
<mphipps> Nice.
<Captcpu> Here's a good one: <M_BeOS> I can't program, and neither can many of us... How can we help on other ways?
<mphipps> Just like a kid at camp. Send money.
<Captcpu> Here's one from the Dark Side of the Mac: <mdvb747> Are there any plans for a PPC version of OBOS?
<mphipps> When Steve Jobs calls me and asks for one. Seriously, though - I love PPC. I *want* to give my Mom an iMac and have it run OBOS. The question is time and resources. I can't justify dropping VM or other "generic" work for a port to a platform that doesn't really want us. If someone wants to do it, I am more than open to helping in any way. But I can't justify "assigning" people to it.
<Captcpu> and an interesting question from: <miloshe> When can we expect USB support and a nice media player?
<mphipps> USB - Hopefully with R1. I have a good USB book and I have done some preliminary work on it. "Nice Media Player" is somewhat vague. I would have to ask what is wrong with R5's.
<Captcpu> <El-Al> Is anybody working on OBOS API documentation? <El-Al>
<mphipps> OBOS API documentation has a team, yes. What tools? Not 100% sure. We are using doxygen inside the code.
<Captcpu> Here's one from down under: <SmallStepForMan> Well, OBOS has been going for just over 9 months now. How do you look back on the last 9 months, and is it according to expactations, subpar or way beyond expectations. BTW - good morning from Australia
<mphipps> G'Day to you! The last 9 months have been unimaginable. I had no clue what I was in for. None of us did. It has been a fun trip, though. My only regrets are a) that I can't do it full time and b) the price that my family (and others) have paid.
<Captcpu> and from: <el_d00d> Will there be localized versions of OBOS, and can some of us help translating OBOS?
<mphipps> el d00d, huh?
<Captcpu> Mike, Monolith has informed us that our spanish sucks.
<mphipps> I didn't make that one up.
<Captcpu> but.. onto the next question: <grim> How's progress with the change of team structure going? Are the leads working on todo-list-type pages? IMO, it would need to be pretty fine grained to allow people to pick up a smallish task, work on it, submit it and be happy:-) Rather than TODO: Finish the kernel...
<mphipps> The team structure didn't really change all that much. Adding people to the teams changed. And that went pretty quick. Some TODO lists are done. Some need more work. If you want to work in an area and can't find the todo list, ask the team lead. They will help you. And if they don't have one, they will get sick of people asking...
<Captcpu> Here's a long winded one: <lillo> currently there's a debate on wheter obos should be fully graphical or if it should have a text console as well just in case. It's sure that the second would be useful during kernel development, but it'd break the BeOS phylosophy... What's your opinion?
<mphipps> This is in reference, I think, to a conversation that we were having on the kernel list. For the average user, I think that the system should be just as it is today. I can see some value to a boot disk that is text based. For either emergencies or as a "download this, see what hardware it detects". But not for users to use every day.
<Captcpu> <M_BeOS> Are we going to have humorous API call's just like Be did?
<mphipps> I won't dictate that, either way. I certainly intend to extend the "is_computer_on" series in the kernel.
<Captcpu> here's one from: <Deris> Will there be a new OBOS update that will replace certain things (like apps and preferences)
<mphipps> I think that this is asking about an automatic update. Personally, I like that idea very much. I know that there has been a lot of interest in the community about that. I would love for someone to write such a thing. Can't promise that it will be us.
<Captcpu> Programming, Oh my!: <mmu_man> What about a BeIDE replacement ? (I suggest XEmacs >:-)
<mphipps> E$*#()#*Q)(? Begone you heathen dog! There is aught but one True Editor: VI!
<Captcpu> <mene> Will opentracker be moved into OpenBeOS CVS..and developed under OpenBeOS name?
<mphipps> I doubt it. That would "cut off" other groups that might want to use it.
<Captcpu> here's one: <scanty> What can we expect from the OBOS POSIX-layer ?
<mphipps> Hopefully, functionality. I would *love* to see it work as well as R5, plus mmap and select.
<Captcpu> cute. fuzzy. animals? <elver> Linux has Tux, BSD has their cute little demon. Should OpenBeOS have it's own cute animal? If so, what should it be?
<mphipps> OpenBeOS will not have a cute animal. Whether some other, different name has one or not is up in the air. The admin staff is about 50/50 split on whether it is a good idea or not. It would have to be a good one.
<Captcpu> <Zaranthos> Question for mphipps How much time do you spend on OBOS? Do you work full time and then work on OBOS?
<mphipps> About every waking minute. I do indeed have a full time job. (And a wife and 2 kids). I work on OBOS an average of 4 hours a day.
<Captcpu> Packages? for Me?: <RageMax> are there any plans for a _standard_ package format for program distribution, possibly for R2?
<mphipps> Plans? No. This is a veyr good idea. And I think that it ties in to the installer/updater mentioned earlier. (Pardon my dyslexia).
<Captcpu> Cash? Money?: <earlcp> How configurable will the VM and DiskCache be for users? Example I would love to devote 512K to just the DiskCache.
<mphipps> Ideally, not at all. Very briefly, the ideal VM/cache system would need no tuning and would always have the information you want to access in ram. I know that we won't be *ideal*, but very good would be nice. I would like to think that mundane details like disk cache and VM size would be something that the OS could handle on its own.
<Captcpu> <Der.is> Will you release a commercial version of OBOS (for companies), so that you can afford OBOS-update servers or such? <Deris> =) sorry!
<mphipps> I think that the question here is really "How will you afford to run OBOS without any money?" Part of the answer is that we will cross that bridge when we come to it. Part of the answer is that I am hoping that distro makers see good reason to "give back to the community".
<Captcpu> <elver> What about firewalls? Do people have to code their own firewalling software (like in windows 9x) or will the firewalling be built into the kernel or the net_server? (more like Linux)
<mphipps> When you say firewall, you could mean a couple of things. BeOS, by default, had all of the ports closed. Now, I am not a security guru, but that seems very secure to me.
<Captcpu> <monolith> does he aim to try and get market share in the desktop arena, taking from MS, or does he plan on creating the best possible OS, with no compromises made for the less technologically-capable folks that make up the general public?
<mphipps> This is really a marketing question. Think about Linux for a moment. We are more like Linux (the organization) than Be. I am not here to change the world, necessarily. I am not here to sell N boxes per year. I am here to make an OS that I want to run and that you want to run. But I also want to make it work for my Mom (a non-techie). I don't believe that these two things are mutually exclusibe.(exclusive)
<Captcpu> and now.. for the last question for this session.
<Captcpu> <Zaranthos> Is there a timetable for an official OBOS name so we can start grabbing up domain names?
<mphipps> I am assuming you mean "to help out the project".
<Captcpu> I would also like to express the many private messages I've recieved thanking Mike and his team for all the hard work they have put in.
<mphipps> I think that we will probably do this either weekly or every other week. We will get the logs posted shortly... Bye, all! Thanks again!
<Captcpu> And that ladies and gentleman is the end of the session. Thanks for Attending!
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)
Re:palm and BeOS (Score:2)
OpenBeOS is not, nor was it ever, linux or any form of linux, with the exception of some ported cmd line utils its all written from the ground up using the original beos api for a guideline.
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?
Yeah, go ahead... (Score:1)
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.
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!
Re:Marketing is CRUCIAL (Score:2)
In any case, I don't recall anyone askin the guy building the helicopter in his garage if there was a market for the thing. Or the handyman who puts together a skiff out of some plywood and marine glue and fibreglass.
In my opinion, the folks working on OpenBeOS are highly skilled craftsmen who are using their tallents on their own time, to work on a project that interests them. If the end result of that project is a product that only they use, I doubt that they are going to be particularly disapointed.
At the same time, I am one of perhaps dozens or hundreds who are looking for an update to BeOS that will allow me to use new hardware that BeOS does not support. Not because I can't use BeOS now, I do. Because I would like to go back to using an OS that performs the way BeOS does, and that I can use newer hardware and peripherals with. To me that makes OpenBeOS worth while, and worth following.
Then again, I won't force that view down your throat. If you insist that the handyman building a boat in his back yard, on his own time, do a marketing study on the demand for personal watercraft, I think I can afford to compliment him on his work and help him get it to the water when he is ready to do that.
-Rusty
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:Cool, but (Score:2)
The MAIN thing that killed BeOS was Microsoft actively blocked computer manufacturers from putting it on their computers. If it had been shipped with computers you can be sure that plenty of developers would have been developing apps, and Microsoft knew that.
Even the Bush anti-trust settlement forbids Microsoft from stopping manufacturers, so OBOS would have a shot at getting on computers. BeOS was much more user friendly than Linux, so this is a possibility.
Re:More readable version (Score:1, Redundant)
Re:More readable version (Score:1)
Jaysyn
Re:More readable version (Score:1)
Re:More readable version (Score:1, Funny)
look at it again. There are NO NAMES, you cant tell whos talking. JESUS.
Re:A Meta-Question (Score:1, Troll)
Personally I only get everything on tape. so if it's not too much trouble can you please have Taco or CBN read everything and mail me a tape. Thanks k buhbye.
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:A Meta-Question (Score:1, Offtopic)
Er.. no (Score:1, Offtopic)
Accomodate other readers eh... lets see... what accomodates more people. A plain text document that can be read by pretty much every computer capable of accessing the Internet, or a proprietary binary format that is only viewable by Windows AOHell users... hrmmm.... tough choice.
Re: (Score:1)
Re:BeOS is excellent (Score:2)
I believe OBOS will fail, and it will be a shame. But it will fail because it is a large project managed like a commercial project, and people just aren't jumping on board.
When I gave up on Linux and decided it didn't have what it took to be a desktop OS, I went looking for something else to contribute my time to. OBOS seemed like the thing. An OS whose primary thrust was the desktop, not as a server!
However I quickly found that all the things that Linux did right in the early days (and still doing right today), OBOS is *not* doing. Take a look at their join us [sourceforge.net] page. It looks and feels as though they are filtering applicants. It isn't like Linux where the source code is out there, easy to get, easy to hack, easy to submit a patch to the other developers and eventually have your fixes make it into the code. You don't come out of nowhere and submit something to OBOS, you Join up and hope they put you on to "that team".
Of course this is necessary because all these team members have CVS access and can create a nightmare for everybody else. If it was just anybody posting patches to a mailing list the problem would not exist.
Thus, sadly, OBOS is going to fail because the OBOS Powers That Be don't understand what Linux did right. As a result, nobody wants to go through the "commitment" of "joining" - especially now that they're talking about removing people who aren't contributing... Now joining carries an obligation... What if I just want to play around and hack a little and ask others to try my changes?
Sorry OpenBeOS... I *really* wanted you to work.
Re:BeOS is excellent (Score:1)
Re:this will be nothing like beos.... (Score:3, Interesting)
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!
Re:The Kernel? (Score:2)
That does not mean that it would not be possible to build a varient of BeOS that runs with a Linux kernel, in fact there was an effort to build just such a platform. I have not heard a lot form them lately, which may be an indication of the people involved all being short of time, or possibly problems with the implementation of the vision.
On top of everything else, the developers made a decision to go the direction they took. That decision may not jive with your opinion, it may not even jive with documentable facts. However the decision has been made, and they are running with it.
If you really want to figure out why they made the choices they did, feel free to go to their web site and see if you can understand from that.
-Rusty
Re:the intent of the coders (Score:2)
Or maybe producing an MS killer is their intent and they are just smart enough to realize that teaming up on some linux project is precisely not the way to do that..
Actually, in all reality, their goal is pretty simple and has been stated over and over, its to replicate beos r5 from scratch and eventually expand upon it.