After interviewing Axel Dorfler yesterday, in this second installment of Five Questions, we interview Robert Szeleney, the main driving force behind SkyOS. SkyOS has been in development since the late '90s, but for the past few years, it has seen rapid development. Read on for Robert's answers to the Five Questions.
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Member since:2007-02-22
As an open source application, SkyOS made less headway than even ReactOS.
As a closed source application, SkyOS has made more headway than that last four owners of Amiga combined.
Additionally, open-source inevitably means fragmentation, as forks lead to very similar but still incompatible versions of what otherwise would have been the same system.
Edited 2007-07-05 14:17
Member since:2006-11-30
"As an open source application, SkyOS made less headway than even ReactOS. As a closed source application, SkyOS has made more headway than that last four owners of Amiga combined. "
That's because it was open source only EARLY in the process. In the same spirit, I can claim that Linux made less headway when it was closed (the first five months or so), and a LOT of headway when it was opened.
"Additionally, open-source inevitably means fragmentation, as forks lead to very similar but still incompatible versions of what otherwise would have been the same system."
Inevitably? Despite popular belief, there is only ONE Linux kernel, for instance (but many distributions - a different thing)
ReactOS and Haiku are not fragmented, and they have even designed rules to prevent it in the future.
If you really would like to prevent distributions and forks, then it's a matter of license design (don't know why you would want that - forks still means stuff gets done)
See? Your logic makes no sense.
Member since:2005-07-06
Member since:2006-11-30
Member since:2005-07-06
Member since:
2006-11-30
Sixth question (this is meant well - I'm a big SkyOS fan)
** Why on earth not a dual license instead of the insane closed source approach? **
I truly believe that SkyOS would stand a better chance than, say, Haiku at surviving as an "alternative" OS and at attracting developers if it was open, at least having an open "community" version which would include the kernel and drivers, but zero or few apps (I'm sure there are other commerical models, including service, etc)
Edited 2007-07-05 14:11