[openbeos] GCC 3/OpenBeOS & Standards Question

Hi,

I have two questions for today, people may want to split these into two 
seperate threads when replying...

GCC
===

When we eventually get to an R1 release of OpenBeOS, it will probably 
be compiled with GCC 2.9x.

What I have been thinking recently is - is there anything to stop a 
user getting a later version of GCC, specifically GCC 3.x and 
recompiling the whole source tree, and having a "newer" system, but one 
thats incompatiable with the official OpenBeOS release? Would there be 
any speed/performance increase if someone did this?

OpenBeOS Standards
=============

I have also been thinking of the distribution model that we seem to be 
moving towards with OpenBeOS.

It looks like OpenBeOS is going to provide a minimal system, much like 
BeOS R5PE, and then third parties such as BeUnited are going to create 
a distribution for people to purchase that will include other programs, 
libraries, software and media.

I quite like this idea, but what I *don't* like is the idea that in a 
few years time we get companies making software *for these 
distributions*

I think that we should say now that the OpenBeOS-Rx release are 
standards, and if another party such as BeUnited.org create an OpenBeOS 
release, they can have it "certified" to meet an Rx standard.

This way companies/individuals can target their software at these Rx 
standards rather than distributions and this should skip all the 
problems Linux is having now with vendors trying to manage software 
installations for a million different distributions. It should also 
help create an equal playing field for the smaller comapanies or 
individuals who want to make a distribution of OpenBeOS, as all the 
software that is out already will work on their distro as long as they 
stick to the standard.

Just a thought for discussion....

Thanks

Andrew Edward McCall
OpenBeOS Preferences & Applications Team Leader
mccall@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
--
OpenBeOS - Join The Revolution Now!
http://www.openbeos.org/

Other related posts: