[openbeos] Re: bedevtalk digest: August 17, 2001
- From: "Cedric Degea" <cdegea@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: openbeos@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 18 Aug 2001 23:16:30 +0200
>Subject: Re: Developers - which direction?
>From: "Marcus Overhagen" <marcus@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
>On Fri, 17 Aug 2001 10:57:27 PM, "Cedric Degea"
<cdegea@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>>* maybe a BeOS rewrite "from scratch".. was very reluctant to the
>> very idea proposed by a friend a few montsh ago, but now
>> I think I'll offer my help to him. It's been extremly late
>> already for me, but it seemed indecent to me to envision
>> a BeOS repalcement as long as the company was still "alive
>
>This is an option, too. But I think this would be the minimum that we
would need to have:
>
>* The OS must be open source
The one project I was thinking about http://blueos.free.fr
isn't.
Ouch, I can hear everyone's scream from here :-) But the
reasoning is, free software is the way it is (with the only
exception of Apache and Linux which you may consider
success stories for their wide acceptance if not for their
technical excellence) because one has no interest to invest
his soul and heart in doing a kick-ass design for a work
that will be basically given for anyone to rip/dissect..
BlueOS is a kind of odd concept in this day and age where
"FreeWare" as defined in e.g. the amiga days seems to belong
to history: it's a project where the source is "proprietary" (the one
that will be added on top, not the modified GPL one of course)
even though the "product" will probably always remain
free-as-in-beer.
As it was one of the first questions I asked Guillaume
when I first heard about this, he pre-emptively replied
to this concern in the FAQ, something like ~"we're a differnet
kind of mothership [from Be] as we'lucky enough to be free
from any obligation of making benefits, so even though you
don't get the source, BlueOS's future is safe as long as there
is user interest in it"...
Thus maybe I'm already off topic for this list too, then,
since it's dedicated to discussing OSS rewrites of BeOS only?
>* Features like indexes file system, live queries, MIME based file
typeing, UTF8 support
everything we know and love in BeOS.. with the the very very
hard work involved: BFS took more than 1 or 2 years Dominic
to complete, not to mention BONE (and from a semi-recent discussion
on BeNews it would seem integrating the BSD stack in a
MThread OS is a no-no or what ?)
>* Starting at some point when our OS becomes useable, we will have to
provide
> binary compatibility (not compatible to BeOS, but to earlier
releases of our OS)
> so that serious companies can release/SELL binary programs without
source code!!!
> I is impossible to force the use to recompile every program if he
updated his OS,
> and no serious company will create software for your OS if you keep
on braking the
> compatiblity.
"we" should not be Linux with their infamous glibc.so, exactly.
Much more like BeOS.
>* It might be the best decision to take the Linux or freeBSD kernel and
modify it
> until it fits our needs, rather than write the whole thing from
scratch (this would take years)
BSD has a much much friendlier licence (and community.. try to
picture the BSD crowd making our life miserable because
they don't like what we're doing and threatening to sue our *ss
to court.. you can't? right, I cannot either) but with Linux
we get XFree w/ OpenGL (accelerated in HW) and more drivers...
>* We would need a BWindow BView compatibility library, so existing BeOS
programs
> can be ported by recompiling.
Yes.. imagine that, we're actually discussing the possibility
of re-implementing the App&InterfaceKit and its 10*? man-years
of work (count'em).. shiver. But it's the most important part,
or second most.
>* We should have a *much better* GUI from the programmer's side of
view, fixed coordinates are
> evil, for example font senisitvity is needed.
if we want to be source-compatible, we have to provide the same
BView ctors et al, period.. Which doesn't preclude having
another layer on top of that. (sorry for the "definite" wording,
GUI is a pet peeve topic o' mine :-)
>* No longer maintained BeOS should be forgotten. We don't need BeOS
binary compatiblility,
> only to be able to run a few ancient programs.
>* I personally do think that many programmers are available that would
participate in such a project.
> Most of them are not interested in BeOS programming nowadays because
it is not free, and it has
> no future. The new OS project wouldn't have such problems.
exactly, people often talk of AtheOS, but Kurt isn't
interested in having true binary compatibility, and
that should be a big enough show-stopper for everyone
to forget about the idea of pulling AtheOS from under
Kurt's feet and "force" another version.. A _true_
clone of BeOS on the other hand, would "belong" to everyone
in the community, and much liklier to ignite a grass-root
effort, developers and non-devs alike working each on
their stuff.. though, compared to apps writing it's a
proejct hell-bent over coding rather than doc writing et al
of course.
Wow, that's what I call to concur with your point of view.
(except for the OSS thing..)
>* Oh well, no X-Server please. WE should be able to do better.
ah, but with XFree we get 3D and 2D drivers.. if there was a way
to have "the best of both" (a custom made frame buffer abstraction
like AtheOS or BeOS have for a "business apps" version of
openBeOS and one based on XFree for a gamers version of OBeOS)
but it's probably even more unrealistic than the rest,
coordinating people to write on top of the ugly X11 API
will be hard enough w/o having two implementations live
side by side as it is...
cedric.
>* And yes, I know about AtheOS. But it is not the future of BeOS.
>
>regards
>Marcus Overhagen
--
http://cdegea.free.fr/ | BeDev E-16870
"God exists, and she loves Bill" -- BMessage
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