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Debate Question: would Linux have done so well without the wintel monopoly/monoculture on which it spread?
Debate Question: would Linux have done so well without the wintel monopoly/monoculture on which it spread?
You mean “IBM PC clone”. “Wintel” wasn't really a thing until Microsoft’s dominant consumer and business OSs were Windows, starting with Windows 95, by which point Linux had already done a lot of spreading.
[1] I mean "BIOS" in the CP/M sense of a layer that completely abstracted the hardware to the BDOS.
> I'm doing a (free) operating system (__just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu__) for 386(486) AT clones. [...] and it probably never will support anything other than AT-harddisks, as that's all I have :-(. __just a hobby, won't be big and professional like X__ probably is how most of the startups get started.
Not anymore. :-( Sell before you build a product! Don't build what you want, build what other's want! Build what other's are going to pay money for, hell, sell it, get a contract before you write a line of code! If you don't have a market size of multiple billions is not worth doing! Are you going to make billions upon billions? No? don't do it! Hobby? It's not even worth of a side project.
Building what I want, because I want it to exist. Showing it to nobody else to test or get feedback on; no focus groups, no beta testing, no external input. Solo founder effort. Not taking VC; not under any circumstances or terms. Not selling or promoting anything before it launches. It's commercially minimalist by design and ethos, ideally it takes in the least amount of money necessary to fund its own expansion. There's no exit, hopefully it lasts perpetually; I aim to at least guarantee and pursue its operation for the next decade (it'll take that long to really build it out). It's thin on both the front and back ends, inexpensive to run and scale. Something like it doesn't currently exist and it will benefit humanity very modestly if I get it up to scale.
It's the first time in the last 20 years I've built something very large in scope that wasn't about making money in any manner. Something that is more important than my own ambitions in life. Going to launch it with a Show HN in the next two months or so. Hopefully it works out, either way it was a lot of fun to build (it will have likely taken seven or eight months of work from conception to kicking it out the door).
Debate Question: would Linux have done so well without the wintel monopoly/monoculture on which it spread?
Depends on what we had instead. The fact that Wintel systems had unlocked bootloaders was absolutely critical. But it could equally have been started on any system with an MMU. Certainly it's been ported to a lot of systems.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Based on the pitches I’ve seen, it’s very much the opposite. ”We are about to completely upend the X industry, with a market potential of hundreds of billions”
When I hear this, My instinct is to roll my eyes. So much hyperbole in startups, it’s one of the large reasons I don’t see myself working for a startup.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You mean “IBM PC clone”. “Wintel” wasn't really a thing until Microsoft’s dominant consumer and business OSs were Windows, starting with Windows 95, by which point Linux had already done a lot of spreading.
Windows 3.0 and especially 3.1 were where it took over from DOS in the business world.
Although I’ve read this probably a dozen times. What I think about this today, as I’m about to reviel my next project is that it’s so crazy how things evolved for open source. Nowadays people compete with companies and having an announcment like this usually includes : - website explaining as a pitch what is better about your software - ready to use examples and templates to support your claim - branding with a logo…
And yet with all that ... I likely still won't understand what exactly the product or thing is or does. Meanwhile I understand Linus's email well enough.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
And yet with all that ... I likely still won't understand what exactly the product or thing is or does. Meanwhile I understand Linus's email well enough.
That's probably due to OS is much more well known than some random open source software.
> I'm doing a (free) operating system (__just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu__) for 386(486) AT clones. [...] and it probably never will support anything other than AT-harddisks, as that's all I have :-(. __just a hobby, won't be big and professional like X__ probably is how most of the startups get started.
Not anymore. :-( Sell before you build a product! Don't build what you want, build what other's want! Build what other's are going to pay money for, hell, sell it, get a contract before you write a line of code! If you don't have a market size of multiple billions is not worth doing! Are you going to make billions upon billions? No? don't do it! Hobby? It's not even worth of a side project.
I actually don’t see a conflict between that advice, which is aimed at people trying to start VC funded businesses, and what Linus did, which was an open source passion project that grew into something more.
people give Jobs and Gates a lot of credit because they focused on commercial products that were marketed to the public -- Linus, for me, is probably the single most important person to technology (software) in the last 35 years. With Linux and Git alone, it as impactful and game changing in this industry that I can think of. I cannot think of any person that's been this important to my career and my income.