Re: Progress on AdaOS (Was: Re: How Ada could have prevented the Red

["Marin David Condic" <dont.bother.mcondic.auntie.spam@[acm.org>]

There isn't anything wrong with the notion of having money somehow involved
in a project. Granted, if someone comes along with $100m and says "Please
build me an OS", the Golden Rule applies (He who has the gold makes the
rules). Is this somehow "bad"? Notice that Bill Gates did exactly this in
funding the development of WinNT. Say what you will about WinNT and how
good/bad it is relative to other operating systems, but it is not easy to
get around the fact that it is there, it works, and it is installed on
millions of platforms - probably outnumbering Linux installations.
(Existence, functional behavior and installed base are three things AdaOS
does not have at the moment. Hence WinNT is infinitely superior in my mind
and the model on which it got built can't be all bad if it produced an
infinitely superior product.)

Now if a bunch of hobbyists get together and hammer out an OS for fun and it
finds a following, there is nothing wrong with that either. Its just that to
hobbyists, the project is just that - a hobby. No committments to ever
getting anything out there that meets anybody's expectations. If something
comes out of it - great. If it gets tinkered with forever and never produces
anything useful - fine. Nobody is paying anything for it so there is no
committment to anybody to deliver anything and when it stops being fun and
starts to look like work (or other "hobbies" become more interesting, like
gardening or taking the kids to the beach) the whole thing gets put on the
shelf.

The above process is just not one of the more likely ways an OS is going to
get built.

A middle ground exists between Daddy Gatebucks funding an effort and a bunch
of hobbyists doing it for fun and as a labor of love. A bunch of hobbyists
can agree to develop something that might result in sales/services for $$$
and the development is an investment of sweat equity. Suppose 10 guys agree
to build an OS and in exchange for meeting certain project requirements they
each get 1 share in "OS's R Us" - the company that owns the copyright on the
product. If the company ends up making some money - their "hobby" paid off,
didn't it? Hence more incentive to produce something than just doing it
because you have endless love for the hacker community and want to give them
a free OS.

Now does that mean the OS can't be "Open Source"(tm)? I don't think that is
the case. It could be put under the GPL and "OS's R Us" could still make a
buck from the effort. It could also be made "Source Available"(yet-to-be-tm)
meaning that people get the source with a distribution, the source is
available to tinker with, etc., but it doesn't necessarily impart a right to
sell a product based on the source. The "OS's R Us" corporation could sell
the OS (with source) for $29.95 and make a buck that way.

Any number of arrangements are possible with any number of levels of
"Openness" to the end product. My belief is that so long as people see some
possibility in the future of making a few $$$ from their efforts on an OS,
they will likely invest more time and energy in actually producing that OS.
People might do some "charity" work for a while, but sooner or later they
will take their free time elsewhere if they don't see anything coming of
their efforts on a project.

Anybody who thinks otherwise is welcome to come to my house and mow my lawn
free of charge if they like. :-)

MDC
--
Marin David Condic
Senior Software Engineer
Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
Enabling the digital revolution
e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com
Web:      http://www.mcondic.com/


"Didier Utheza" <ddutheza@bu.edu> wrote in message
news:Pine.A41.4.10.10108211745510.112048-100000@acs5.bu.edu...
> I thonk there is a misunderstanding about the benefit of the project. The
> system is under GPL. No direct profit is supposed to be gain from the OS.
> I think that if you put money, that means somebody will have to do it. In
> consequence this somebody has some right (even if he says no) on the way
> the project will evolve. The explosion of Linux was due to the fact that
> it was free (free source and 0 kopecks - and this is important: a lot of
> programmers went into the project as an hobby and since the kernel of the
> project was stirred by Linus, it got somewhere. Now about the GNU