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the guy DID write a kernel and a GUI stack all on his own. That's nothing to sneeze at, but still, SkyOS IS decidedly FOSS hostile given the fact that it relies so heavily on FOSS components.

SkyOS IS decidedly FOSS hostile given the fact that it relies so heavily on FOSS components

You must be joking... FOSS-hostile, in my opinion, would be something like intentionally using proprietary technologies, formats, and APIs, refusing to give out the specifications, and then maybe use trademarks, patents, and anti-reverse-engineering laws to attack and sue FOSS projects that attempt to reverse-engineer, recreate or, even coexist with the product.

If you believe porting and using FOSS software, including those released under non-GPL licenses, on a closed-source operating system is "hostile" toward those same FOSS projects, then I'm certain there's a lot of people that disagree with you.

Robert has contributed back to several of the open-source projects that he uses.

Strongly-opinionated, biased people with half-assed "facts" annoy me to no end.

Yeah, I can see where you're coming from. He's abiding by the licenses and gives credit where credit is due. He is clearly hostile...

Am i the only one who thinks that the only reason this project could exist is open source. Things like freetype,gcc,gecko,openbfs,cups.

Hey, where would linux be without all those open source projects?

Linux does not have the single right to this software...

It's the nature of open source to be used in different projects. Be it open or closed source...
Even if SkyOS is closed source, it does not keep changes to open source projects from their creators. Check the different projects and the skyos site, if you want the sources of some of those packages, they are freely available since most of them are just the standard releases (sometimes with only a few minor patches). Those patches are available to people that bought SkyOS so there is no GPL violation there...

Edited 2007-11-27 01:55 UTC

Actually, a minor correction, these patches are available to everyone. If you want the patches just drop Robert and email and he'll send to you. IIRC he has already submitted patches back to the projects, but a good many of them one could class as useless since the changes are SkyOS specific and thus don't benefit anyone outside the SkyOS beta testing team.

As for why it is 'closed source' right now - does it actually matter? as far as I see, the only people clammering for the source code in this forum are those who know nothing about programming and simply want to 'give it a try' rather than anything to do with contribution.

As for the future; its all up to Robert, for all we know he could start selling Intel based machines loaded with SkyOS like what is done with Apple Mac's. It'll be great once it gets to the stage of being ready for 'public release'. As for his reason, I'd say control - opensource isn't the panacea for all problems, and when it comes to developing user orientated applications that need alot of focus and control, the opensource model isn't always the best one - sometimes a mixture is (open and closed source components working together).

And, is not the very principle of Open Source?

The fact that the host system is proprietary does not detach from the fact that the Open Source technologies used in userland are great solutions.

Are open source projects on Windows looked upon with the same amount of scrutiny that SkyOS is given? Does Mozilla Firefox not exist in Windows? Is there no GCC in Windows?

Sorry, but I fail to see your point aside from trying to stir up trouble.

"Are open source projects on Windows looked upon with the same amount of scrutiny that SkyOS is given? Does Mozilla Firefox not exist in Windows? Is there no GCC in Windows?"

This comparison is not at all apt. Microsoft doesn't use Firefox to provide a browser. They don't use GCC to provide a compiler. Microsoft is not building a proprietary OS with a great many OSS building blocks.

That's what they are there for, so I have no problem with Robert doing this But please use a little critical thinking and realize that OSS folks porting their stuff to a proprietary OS is not at all comparable to someone using OSS to build (or fill in the gaps if you prefer) a proprietary OS.

Microsoft would be perfectly happy without Firefox. SkyOS on the other hand would not be perfectly happy without Freetype etc. It's not the same thing. What Robert is doing doesn't bother me, but it's just not the same thing. You can't dismiss people who are annoyed by it with a comparison that doesn't fit at all.

Yeah, the moral of the story is: Roberts project, Roberts rules. If you don't like it it's your problem, not his.

Nothing in the licensing of those projects prohibits what he's doing. I also notice that the projects themselves never whine about this, it's only hanger-ons and people not actually involved that do.

Yes, you are.

Code like Gecko, CUPS -- that's just copyleft cruft. The meat of the OS, what you pay for, is closed-source software.

You take out the open-source cruft from SkyOS, and you have an operating system. You take out the closed-source code, you have some silly binaries floating in space useless to anyone.

Wait, what? BeFS, GCC and FreeType (To name three) are "cruft"?



Not even Robert would agree with you, I'd wager. If all of the OSS components were removed Robert would have a lot of work to do, not least of which would be finding a compiler that could build everything. He chose to use OSS components because he doesn't want to do that work, and because they're good quality.

I can never decide if you're a troll, or just don't know what you're talking about. At the moment I'm leaning towards the later.