9. To what extent would genuine compatibility make sense,
particularly
as concerns pure software OpenGL?
That is again a matter of how it's implemented. The present version of
MESA can be
used as a drop-in replacement for Be's software
OpenGL (despite a couple of bugs). But no-one would
demand in this case that we artificially restrict the functionality to
rendering in software, if later on we have another option. That
kind of thing is not essential for maintaining compatibility.
To give another example: Just because BeOS is poor at handling extended
and logical partitions, that doesn't mean that we have to preserve its
poor behaviour, since the way we implement that, as with most other
things, doesn't affect compatibility.
10. What is your take on Bernd Kortz's Zeta operating system, which
is
not open source?
The only thing that I can say about that is that it is not yet ready
and not yet available in the market. I hope it revives the BeOS market
a bit, which we are after all a part of. In any case I wish Bernd lots
of luck
11. Do you believe that long term it makes sense to be offering
or developing 3 open source flavours of BeOS and 1 commercial?
Definitely not, but it's really not too bad. If the developers
can't all unite on what route to take, they will obviously take
different paths.
None of our projects, except Zeta, is out for financial success, we
have no business plan to fulfil, and no time pressure, etc. So why
should someone freely devote himself if he doesn't fully support it
(after all he's not being paid for it)? Unfortunately this sort of
thing doesn't get done just for the good of all, of course.
But, apart from the various goals of the projects, they will all
benefit, for example, from Marcus Overhagen's implementation of the
media
kit; and we are letting them benefit from it; our licence stipulations
explicitly allow them this kind of use. That means that even if our
different goals have led us to different projects, and some parts will
inevitably be
reduplicated, we are still automatically also working together. So far
that has been limited, since we are all still more or less
at the beginning, but such co-operation is definitely going to take
off. For
example, Bill Hayden, the developer of COSMOE, even has
write-access to our repository.
To cut a long story short: Our prospective users aren't
necessarily seeing the benefits of the current situation, but I
expect we will find ourselves back
on a common path again.
12. Doesn't history show us that operating systems are most
successful
when developed for their "own" hardware? (Amiga, Commodore, Apple,
Microsoft + IBM-PC XT/AT)
No, actually it shows exactly the opposite. One particular operating
system achieved the widest distribution without having its own brand of
hardware,
but by being able to run everywhere. Linux is following in its
footsteps. Thus, I'm sure that whether or not we succeed will not come
down to hardware.
13. Would you say that a computer like the BeBox with greater
production would have made more sense? Or is BeOS still around because
it runs on normal PCs?
The latter. If the BeOS community only consisted of BeBox
owners, it would probably not be around today.
