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Gruber: The OS Opportunity

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Re: Gruber: The OS Opportunity

#21

Post by balakk »

cubicle67 wrote: post #18
balakk wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot has changed since then, so why are they still so reluctant? It's this premise that I find inaccurate. Sure there's open everything, but writing an operating system from scratch to support all this is still hard. Hell, give me one commercial operating system written from scratch in the last decade. The point is, why do it? Maintaining an operating system is big money. And you can't stop there - you've got to hav…

Why from scratch? If you remove that seemingly pointless requirement then there's quite a few examples, starting with the Litl OS which is based on Ubuntu Heck, there's plenty of good solid starting points. What about BSD? Linux? Android?

Still doesn't matter. Unless you create an ecosystem around your software, I think it still isn't relevant in the larger scheme of things. For eg., can Maemo, Android, WebOS etc all share applications, APIs, drivers, and other infrastructure seamlessly?

The point is you need to end up creating an ecosystem around your offering, which is non-trivial. Even if you do, you may still end up as a niche player. Litl is nice; but how well do you think they'll do against traditional netbooks?

Re: Gruber: The OS Opportunity

#22

Post by mbreese »

aristus wrote: post #15
GeneralMaximus wrote: post #14

I was born in 1990. The first computer that I could call my own was a custom built PC with Windows XP. This was in 2003. I cannot express in words how sad that makes me. I've heard older programmers talk fondly about the BeOS, the classic MacOS, Amiga Workbench (IIRC), NeXtStep and even Win3.1. Even older programmers talk about computers built by Tandy and the BBC, and the legendary machines built by Atari and Commod…

For what it's worth, people who are children now will have missed the wild days of the Web when everyone had their own API, data, and UI stacks and no two apps looked or behaved the same. I'm not sure I agree with the OP. When there is real competitive advantage in some newish layer of the tech stack, you will see incredible diversity. When the advantage moves on to other parts of the stack (eg applications, the web,…

And I think this is why hardware vendors could come out with their own spin on an operating system.

We didn't use to have a standard for sharing information. If you wanted to share a file, you had to have the exact same hardware and software. That is what led us to the local minima that is PCs running DOS/Windows.

Now, however, we have a well accepted standard. If you can have a good TCP/IP stack and run a browser, you're golden. With just these two things you can be productive on any operating system.

So now, the fact that the OS is the last thing that you consider, might just free manufacturers to come up with their own designs.

That does however leave one crucial thing out, which might just kill Gruber's argument: games.

Re: Gruber: The OS Opportunity

#23

Post by Hoff »

Building an OS is feasible for a small team or even a single programmer.

Providing enough of a subset of the expected APIs and the device support and the databases and web browser and the compilers and file systems the rest of the stack that the customers and third-party partners expect? That's a bigger project and a bigger budget.

Simply being better isn't enough.

Being faster isn't enough.

Being cheaper isn't enough.

Even running Microsoft Windows on your (non-x86) hardware isn't enough.

You need some combination of "betters" and of application and document compatibility, and you need to get to critical mass of applications and tools and device and hardware support, or you need to get to "massively better" in one or more dimensions to get enough early adopters on-board, or you need enough money to buy the tools and ports you need.

And then you have to get to big volume and to enough of a profit margins to get your prices down to where you attract application developers and resellers, or pay for the developers.

As for competition, you're working against Microsoft Windows on x86 and Apple, and FOSS limits your margins. Or against embedded vendors that excel in one or more dimensions.

There are little-known and niche and embedded operating systems and vendors all over the place. Wind River (now at Intel) is one. HP has at least three operating systems (NSK, HP-UX, VMS) and has retired others including MPE and Tru64 Unix and Domain/OS, and not counting embedded software platforms such as EFI and all those HP printers. IBM has its own OS offerings.

Building an OS is comparatively easy. Anyone with enough skills or enough cash can certainly build or buy one, and various folks can buy enough partners. But to create a self-sustaining environment within your target market and to avoid creating a massive write-off, you need to build an ecosystem around your operating system. That's a much tougher and much bigger effort.

Re: Gruber: The OS Opportunity

#24

Post by ajscherer »

I don't see any reason to think a company like Dell or Sony would be well positioned to create an operating system. What software have they created that suggests they could do it? If Windows is so unsatisfactory doesn't that suggest that merely having resources isn't nearly enough? If Dell decided to create an operating system they would have little advantage over anyone else, and would have the disadvantage of being a huge company attempting an equally huge software project from scratch. They might as well just light piles of cash on fire. The sensible way to do it would be to buy a company that is building an OS.

I think Gruber is underestimating the fact that Apple has been developing not just the Macintosh OS, but the ecosystem and community for like a quarter of a century. I don't know that there is a shortcut to the latter two. When I switched back to Windows from Ubuntu it wasn't because of any failing of the operating system. It was because I was unable to find suitable replacements for all the Windows applications (and drivers) I used.

Web applications have not yet usurped desktop apps across the board, and when they eventually do, won't it be a worse environment for a new proprietary OS? At that point what would a proprietary OS offer that a free OS on inexpensive hardware couldn't?

Re: Gruber: The OS Opportunity

#25

Post by rsheridan6 »

Hoff wrote: post #23

Building an OS is feasible for a small team or even a single programmer. Providing enough of a subset of the expected APIs and the device support and the databases and web browser and the compilers and file systems the rest of the stack that the customers and third-party partners expect? That's a bigger project and a bigger budget. Simply being better isn't enough. Being faster isn't enough. Being cheaper isn't enoug…

Note that both litl and chrome use Linux under the hood, so you don't have to do all of that to make a "new" OS, for values of "new" used in this article.

Re: Gruber: The OS Opportunity

#27

Post by gaius »

GeneralMaximus wrote: post #14

I was born in 1990. The first computer that I could call my own was a custom built PC with Windows XP. This was in 2003. I cannot express in words how sad that makes me. I've heard older programmers talk fondly about the BeOS, the classic MacOS, Amiga Workbench (IIRC), NeXtStep and even Win3.1. Even older programmers talk about computers built by Tandy and the BBC, and the legendary machines built by Atari and Commod…

If it's diversity in operating systems you seek, get into networking or storage.

Re: Gruber: The OS Opportunity

#28

Post by glymor »

tumult wrote: post #4
glymor wrote: post #3

I assume he means creating their own user experience. As all the examples he gives of companies creating their own OS are actually using Linux.

OS is more than a kernel and some drivers. Unless you would consider Android, Palm's WebOS, Nokia's various OSs, Arch and Ubuntu to all be equivalent.

All the "OS"s in the article run GNU userland, X windows, webkit or gecko browsers. So yes they are the same operating system. They just have different applications in different configurations.

Android is it's own operating system. It has own user space and GUI technology. But the article didn't mention it.

Re: Gruber: The OS Opportunity

#29

Post by steveklabnik »

balakk wrote: post #21
cubicle67 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why from scratch? If you remove that seemingly pointless requirement then there's quite a few examples, starting with the Litl OS which is based on Ubuntu Heck, there's plenty of good solid starting points. What about BSD? Linux? Android?

Still doesn't matter. Unless you create an ecosystem around your software, I think it still isn't relevant in the larger scheme of things. For eg., can Maemo, Android, WebOS etc all share applications, APIs, drivers, and other infrastructure seamlessly? The point is you need to end up creating an ecosystem around your offering, which is non-trivial. Even if you do, you may still end up as a niche player. Litl is nice…

Depending on how you architect your OS, it doesn't have to be impossible.

I have a little Exokernel project I devote my Saturdays to, and we'll actually be able to offer a POSIX-compliant libOS, and run anything that Linux does.

Or, there's always the hypervisor route, on desktops anyway.

Re: Gruber: The OS Opportunity

#30

Post by ugh »

mechanical_fish wrote: post #10
leej wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

can someone please tell me why it's downvoted? buy it or not these are my arguments against ones in the article and i DO think that OS does not have the same importance as had in 80s. what is wrong with this?

Your safest bet is to simply never use the word "fanboy" except to refer to yourself. It's name-calling, and is therefore both rude and a sign of bad rhetoric. (I would say ad hominem , but that's a cliche phrase on HN, so I do so with reluctance. ;) As for the rest of your post, here is Gruber's thesis statement: PC makers who want to succeed should create their own OSes Your statement that "Google succeeds without…

“The iPod, of course, is successful because of iTunes.”

Really?! Now maybe. But five years ago? I have a very hard time believing that.

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