Submitted by SkyOS Beta 6796 has been released. “This build features a complete new multimedia framework (the ISS), automatic file type sniffing, a new Media Center, new Panel, updated Viewer, new Application Manager and various other applications using the new C++ API. Furthermore: 28 additional API Classes, new and updated libraries, customizable WindUI theme, 220+ fixed bugs including critical boot bug fixes.”
If I am not mistaken,Skyos is pretty much a one man show.When I look at some of the stuffs happening here I wonder what 50,000+ people at microsoft are doing.Take 10
guys like this and Fista might stop fisting its back-end.
haha 10 Roberts, thats a scary thought!
i have a feel that it would be more arguing then coding then…
…Or what the millions in the FOSS community are doing
“i have a feel that it would be more arguing then coding then…”
“…Or what the millions in the FOSS community are doing”
I don’t agree with you.Linux kernel development is going faster than ever.Its true that sometimes skirmishes among developers boil over the line and make headlines everywhere.But thats the OSS way
Linux development may be going fast, but nowhere near as fast as the one man SkyOS. The origional poster chose to make a pretty lame joke (right up there with putting a $ in MS), even though FOSS software has exponentially more devs working on it.
“FOSS software has exponentially more devs working on it.”
How many of them work 50+ hour weeks, though?
Edited 2007-10-10 15:30
considering the commercial support linux has nowadays, I would say a few hundred thousand. More manpower then MS has at any which was the point of the joke
And you would be very, very wrong.
Unless, of course, you meant to say “a few hundred or a thousand”.
Source? You have no idea how many devs are working on OSS. And OSS covers all software, which is so much more than all of Microsoft’s creations, let alone SkyOS.
Yes, what Robert is doing with SkyOS is amazing, but comparing it to the output of other OSS developers is silly. You have no basis for comparison. Is it lines of code? Features? Usefullness? I suspect you’ve never worked on a big software project before. As the project gets bigger and more mature, large changes require more effort. SkyOS is in the unique situation that it’s basically written by one man, so there is complete knowledge of the code, and not really any backwards compatibility concerns, or massive numbers of users that will notice regressions. The two projects are so different you can’t really make any comparisons between them.
>> As the project gets bigger and more mature, large changes require more effort. SkyOS is in the unique situation that it’s basically written by one man, so there is complete knowledge of the code, and not really any backwards compatibility concerns, or massive numbers of users that will notice regressions.
I completely agree with that. It takes much more time and effort to change huge or well established software projects, especially if multiple developers around the world are working on it, where you have to spend a good amount of time with communication, coordination and optionally learning/debugging through foreign code.
Really? So you can make comparisons and crude jokes about vista, and thats ok, but when you mention linux (WITHOUT the gradeschool humor i might add), which while it may not have millions, but at LEAST more then the windows people working on it, people start flipping out.
And of course you can make comparisons. Just because different coding methodologies are being used, doesnt mean that they are incomparable, just that they have different strengths. SkyOS is a heck of an accomplishment, no matter which way you slice it, and just because it is a propriatary system done by one guy doesnt mean it is some alien life form, formed in some completely different way from everything else.
Yes, I have worked (and helped manage) large projects before. Not to the level of something like linux, but large. The reason that comparing stuff like windows or linux to something like sky is almost embarrassing is that there is no focus in either. Robert is out to make a good DESKTOP os, instead of doing a billion things poorly, he is doing one thing well. That kind of focus means that certain kinds of tradeoffs (like the age old throughput vs latency) are complete non-issues, and there is alot of work that simply doesnt even need to be done. MS and Linux do one os (with different configurations) for everything, from supercomputers servers to office workstations to home desktops to gaming platforms to mobile devices. I grew up on MacOS classic, which to this day was the most elegant single purpose OS I have ever used, and other then Be, that kind of design methodology has been completely replaced by a one size fits all mentality.
Anyways, sorry for the troll, I just like watching all the lusers (get it? almost as clever as Fista, don’t you think?) flip out once in awhile.
SkyOS is … basically written by one man, so there is complete knowledge of the code,…
That’s a key point. Multiple developers have to constantly be learning what the others have done. And even then, there may be lots of duplication of effort. But if one guy wrote the substantial portion, he already knows the issues that affect his efforts. And he doesn’t have to try to convince the other developers that the way he wants to do it is the best.
Yes, what Robert is doing with SkyOS is amazing, but comparing it to the output of other OSS developers is silly.
It certainly is, given SkyOS is not OSS–Open Source Software…
–bornagainpenguin
I totally disagree, of course.
A modern Linux distro supports virtually all hardware out of the box, it has several thousands applications, Wine, Crossover an Cedega have gone a looong way in supporting Windows applications…
Less is more!
Proving the law of diminishing returns.
Exactly. A few years ago OSNews IIRC posted a story on an MS coder that spent a few years there and he detailed his time spent on one ever so tiny detail of the new Start Menu for the original Vista. After all that work it wasn’t even included. Much of the engineering world is like that, unused effort, too many meetings.
The only really interesting software projects are precisely these mini OSes where the whole scope of it can be understood by their principals, SkyOS, Syllable, Haiku etc.
If I understand it, Robert is SkyOS’s head coder and Benevolent-Dictator-For-Life, but he doesn’t quite work alone.
Unless, of course, every other developer account making system development posts on the SkyOS site are in fact aliases of Robert…
Well, to be fair to Microsoft, MS’s developers are divided among about (literally) 1000 distinct projects… OSs (with lots of sub-projects) and office suites (with lots of sub-projects) and ERP suites (with lots of sub-projects) and games and video games and game system firmware and the entire “five years of free support for all products” thing.
The SkyOS team is pretty much equivalent to an elite coding team within Microsoft, and they have the luxury of designing from scratch and still knowing everyone on a first-name basis, instead of coding to support a previous team’s work. That entire “it’s done when it’s done” mentality saves the SkyOS team a lot, too (and it doesn’t scale up: just look at Microsoft after all the Vista delays).
SkyOS has been in perpetual beta for… how many years? And every time a new beta is out, there are radical changes. Why don’t release a freaking 0.5 release to be considered “stable” and then increase til reaching 1.0 which will be the “gold master”?
Syllable has been in beta for years as well, as well as other OSes.
I think Syllable is still in alpha, not beta.
Skyos looks not so bad from the screenshots, but on a modest pc I think it’s a little slow. As I can remember I thik it needs a lot of resources compared to syllable.
I must admit that the amount of work that robert put in it is very impressive. Perhaps he`s a robot and not a human 😉
Lots of debugging and unoptimized code running in SkyOS. Remove that, and it is much, much faster.
The dev guys say that’s mostly down to the debugging code left in during SkyOS’s beta releases. I think it should be safe to assume that the final release will be much nippier.
Syllable also doesn’t cost me anything to beta test it on my hardware, doesn’t pretend it will be done RSN, doesn’t pretend to have created everything (minus SkyOS of course…) from the coding of one man–50+ hour work weeks aside…need I go on?
–bornagainpenguin
No-one is forcing you to buy in to the beta.
Agreed with this one. Of course, it’s Robert’s baby and I respect his decisions (his call, not mine or anyone else’s) but I do agree that working towards something like a 0.5 release, including the live CD promised for ages now, would surely attract a whole lot more attention than these betas that come out every once in a while.
But hey, that’s just me. It’s not like I write operating systems from scratch on a regular basis
.
You mean the LiveCD which is available for months already?
You guys promised a live CD released to the general public (so not just beta team members). That’s what I’m referring to.
Sorry, that was probably me. I think back in January I put it as one of my predictions. I got it about halfway right; we do have a LiveCD, but unfortunately, we’re still not at a point where we want it to go out yet.
We have been testing a version of the liveCD that is supposed to become the public version in the end but that’s currently on hold for a few reasons. The liveCD has proven to be a very nice way to try and install skyos so the public livecd should come eventually.
I wonder if this project has any BSD code in it and if so to what extent.
None. It has skyfs, which is a modified OpenBFS which is under the MIT license.
Unless you include userland utils such as Bash, then it does and the source to Robert’s changes are on the website.
how about a usb stack and a tcp/ip stack, are they also written by him?
Not to mention the font renderer which clearly looks a lot like FreeType. I don’t think that it is as black and white as some people paint it to be. Robert probably picked some stuff here and there where the license was more permissive (such as BSD, MIT and to a lesser extent LGPL) and added into his code. And that’s fine as these pieces of software are intended to be used this way.
However, I don’t want to start yet another flamewar regarding GPL code in SkyOS as I have yet to see any evidence that backs up such assertion and it has been debated to death anyway…
Then why even post it? You have no evidence, only speculation. Robert says he did these thigns from scratch and unless you have proof otherwise, you have to take his word for it. It’s his code.
Every time SkyOS comes up, people post the same thing and get the same answers.
Well, I am just saying. I don’t think that it is feasible for just one man to be knowledgeable on everything about USB stacks, TrueType font renderers with anti-aliasing support and TCP/IP stacks and implement on his hobby OS when everybody else is putting literally thousands of man-hours of effort into these projects alone. I don’t think that even Andy Tanenbaum covers such subjects in details in his books.
I am more likely to believe that he borrowed some code from here and there where the license is more permissive than the GPL and that I believe that he is doing a great job incorporating it in his OS, where it feels nicely integrated. My point was that I have yet to see any evidence that shows that Robert used GPL code in his project as it always come up in SkyOS threads here.
No need to get the torchs and pitchforks yet!
Please note that I don’t want to belittle Robert’s accomplishments either. Robert truly is a code machine as far as I am concerned…
Edited 2007-10-10 16:33
He writes software for embedded systems at a company that specializes in automation in his real job. He knows a thing or two about OS development.
Every time SkyOS comes up, people post the same thing and get the same answers.
Don’t you mean lack of answers and an invitation to pay for vaporware?
–bornagainpenguin
Every time SkyOS comes up, people post the same thing and get the same answers.
Don’t you mean lack of answers and an invitation to pay for vaporware?
–bornagainpenguin
EDIT–Reposted deue to imprper moding and no responses. The rules say you’re supposed to reply not moderate down to oblivion anyone with whom you disagree with… And I challenge people to show me where I’ve spammed or used improper language in this post!
Edited 2007-10-11 13:57
I’m not even going to guess why you were modded down, but you were wrong on both points.
On lack of answers: the developers have been remarkably open, not only to the general public but to the preview team. We can ask “Hey Robert, how is X going?” or “What are you doing about Y?” and actually expect to get an answer. Kelly and the pseudonymous “Darkness” are the ones who answer most often (and you see that here on OSNews, too…).
On ‘vaporware’: the preview builds we are given access to are generally the same builds that the SkyOS team and the developers are doing their work on — so we can actually go out and download the next version and work with the changes that have been made.
Not improper. You’re an ass, and it’s an ass thing to say.
Not improper. You’re an ass, and it’s an ass thing to say.
Moreover, sir, which indeed is not under white and black, this plaintiff here, the offender, did call me ass: I beseech you, let it be remembered in his punishment.
–Much Ado About Nothing – Act 5 by William Shakespeare
Levity aside, what have I said to warrant such treatment?
I said there have been few answers with much controversy over the development of this OS. Have I lied? If I have then why do we have so many threads like this one every time the perpetual beta is hyped on OSNews?
I have also labeled the Final release of SkyOS R5 to be vapoorware…Hmmm…
Here’s the definition used by Dictionary.com:
Computer Slang. a product, esp. software, that is promoted or marketed while it is still in development and that may never be produced.
Sounds about right, doesn’t it? SkyOS has been marketed and is being promoted while still in development and given it’s closed source nature and the fact it is mostly the brainchild of one person who may or may not disappear tomorrow it indeed may never be released as a final product. Yup! That sounds like vaporware to me!
…now who’s the ass?
–bornagainpenguin
who said it is vaporware?
There are actual releases that you get to use.
There are actual releases that you get to use.
WHO gets to use?
–bornagainpenguin
People who pay?
People who pay?
Pay for WHAT?
Something that may or may not be a legitimate product? We still don’t know SkyOS code isn’t just an illegitimate reworking of GPL code! There is a reason the issue gets brought up so often you know…
Oh, and lest you dismiss me as being inflammatory or alarmist, allow me to remind you of the whole ZetayTab thing of not many months ago. All the hue and cry about that turned out to be pretty accurate, didn’t it?
And even if it turns out Robert truly is the legend he’s promoted as, I still have doubts about the future of any closed source Operating System–especially one supposedly the product of one man! If something would ti happen to him tomorrow, then where would his customers be?
I learned my lesson from BeOS, thank you very much!
–bornagainpenguin
You can’t just proclaim that something is GPL code without any proof. It’s a silly assumption, anyways; by the time that you have adapted said GPL program to work with your program, you could have created a solution for that problem from scratch yourself — and started testing it.
As to SkyOS, all open-source code — individual programs, not operating systems — have their licenses available right on the disc.
Heck, there’s a page on the SkyOS webpage just for disseminating the source code they use: http://www.skyos.org/?q=node/579
And here’s the API, look for any similarities yourself: http://www.skyos.org/documents/skygi/html/classes.html
If you are the kind of person that sincerely assumes all commercial programs are obfuscated GPL code, then you’re not a potential customer they have to worry about anyhow…
Yes, from scratch by him.
I love Linux but honestly?
SkyOs and Haiku are the two most exciting projects in operating Systems right now IMO.Cant wait till I can get an ISO of each to play with.Its fun watching these two grow bit by bit (no pun intended)into something solid.
Good work SkyOs team and congrats on the progress so far.
If you take for example the TCPIP stack you will see that almost every alternative OS has implemented a new one from scratch. (I even don’t know why so many people think that every OS does or has to use the BSD network stack , porting such a beast is an enormous amount of work, maybe even more than implementing one from scratch. Don’t get me wrong, the BSD network stack might be very powerful and stable, but a full featured, everything supporting network stack may not be the best one for a new desktop OS with a different design philosophy.)
And of course, the rendering engine used is freetype, which is an excellent piece of work, and man, I don’t even want to think about the sleepless nights someone had to put into it, making such a library possible).
…but I have to say it: every news item ever posted about SkyOS on OSnews has resulted in the identical set of comments and conversations, none of which ever have anything to do with the particular piece of SkyOS news that was actually reported. I’m fairly certain it would be trivial to write a bot that monitored the osnews website and posted a generic comment as soon as it saw a title containing the word SkyOS. And I’m pretty sure I could write about 50 such comments right now that would get modded up one by one with every SkyOS story, regardless of what the story actually said.
edit: typo.
Edited 2007-10-10 19:29
And I have a gift for writing comments that get modded down, and accused of trolling, when most of the time I’m only pointing out the faults of the zealots.
But hey, who needs facts when you have blind regurgitated beliefs?
Anyhow, yeah, you could write a bot. All you have to say is “GPL violation” somewhere in there.
Robert pretty much only handles the core kernel and some of the UI/APIs, rest are being worked on by his chosen helpers.
It looks nice but I shouldn’t have to pay to test a beta.
You don’t “have” to. It’s your choice not to participate in the beta program or not.
You should have to do whatever the software author requires of you. How do you suppose he’s going to finance this ongoing development?
Just put up or shut up. It’s like a broken record in here.
You’re nuts. It’s akin to paying for AROS. Looks pretty but has almost zero app support.
Offcause he hasn’t written every line of code himself – that would be unnecessary and plain stupid.
And actually, as long as no licenses are violated, it doesn’t matter one bit – who gives a flying……….
Instead of arguing about what bits and pieces are written by whom and why – you should rather enjoy the system even better participate.
What I’m missing is the opportunity to try the damn thing , before investing some mony in it. A free downloadable VirtualBox or WmPlayer image would be nice.
Edited 2007-10-11 10:50
Unfortunately SkyOS itself is a dead project. The forums get maybe one post per day if you are lucky. Notice how not a single person in this new topic talked about the OS itself. There is nothing really profound about it.
None the less, this dead project attracts a lot of attention and controversy, mostly because it happens to be a closed source, pay OS which leverages a lot of open source software. There is nothing wrong with that if it follows the licenses. But the thing is, many people continue to deny it.
I thought it was funny zizban (who by the way, knows jack about software development) was corrected by Robert himself.
Robert is a really talented programmer, but SkyOS contains plenty of third party libraries and code. Nothing wrong with that, but it’s dishonorable to say otherwise.
It’s good to have projects like this, but we need to cut out with the misrepresentation going on. It just pisses people off. Focus on the code on the OS will market itself.
What you’re saying is true in a lot of respects: many of the project’s regulars have found other interests or flat out stopped posting in the last year, and the community has very few if any left.
However, the magic of SkyOS is that it doesn’t matter. Robert gets little benefit from having a core of die-hard SkyOS fans. As long as people are reporting bugs and downloading the latest ISOs, the community fulfills its duty.
Maybe the community is stagnant right now. But it doesn’t matter, trust me. SkyOS itself is as alive as ever.
Edited 2007-10-11 17:34 UTC
The reason the SkyOS community was so large and active back then was because SkyOS was actually pretty interesting back then. Mouse gestures, dozens of new apps being ported each beta release, really good ideas for future directions.
The past year pretty much all that came for SkyOS was a live CD (a crippled one at that, half the apps don’t work on LiveCD mode), and a C++ API (could anyone believe this didn’t exist before)? Make an interesting OS and people will come. But lately Robert has been developing things other OSes have had since 1993.
All that is left in the community is a bunch of zealots and in general weirdos with little technical or development experience and really have no interest in SkyOS but rather worship Robert. The community is dead and the OS along with it. The only real thing alive about SkyOS is these controversies that generate a large amount of hits for another dying entity (OSNews).
I guess your definition of dead is different from mine, then.
A revamped UI is in the works, for the third time in its history. In a month or two SkyOS will seem shiny and “alive” again.
Really, what good is a UI redesign if you can’t even use the OS. No wireless support, no 3d acceleration, barely any Ethernet cards, and lets not get started on sound. It even fails to run on many virtual machines, for instance, Qemu and KVM. Making things “pretty” is not what SkyOS needs. Look at Ubuntu, they managed to get millions of users with a feces-like brown theme.
Actually, in the last year he has been doing exactly what you’re asking for: cleaning up and profiling code. It’s much faster compared to builds from a few years ago; the startup time for apps like Firefox has been cut dramatically. The C++ APIs are beautiful–check them out if you program. I’ve never had any problems using QEMU, and there are several instances I can find on the forum of people saying they’re successfully using it. Drivers are admittedly bad, but most people can at least get it to run in Vesa, including myself on several non-targeted low and high end PCs.
I promise you development speed hasn’t changed. Just because there’s nothing flashy like a new port to announce doesn’t mean important work isn’t happening.
>> All that is left in the community is a bunch of zealots and in general weirdos with little technical or development experience and really have no interest in SkyOS but rather worship Robert.
You must have some serious problems man. Isn’t bashing SkyOS what you do for years already enough for you? You have to get personal now?
Critizice every part of SkyOS you want, to be honest, I don’t care what YOU have to say about it. (for others who don’t know why I have this attitude to him, just read the recently posted SkyOS news, sirhomer had to say something about).
But, I tell you, stop to judge the SkyOS community because honestly, even the least informed comment from a SkyOS community member is much more worth than what you ever had to say about SkyOS.
And please, as I told you hundred of times already, lets stop this. (But I know you can’t resist, so shoot)
I almost modded you up, but I didn’t because I disagree that OSNews is a dying entity (prove that).
@Anonymous Penguin
OSNews used to be a much more lively place around 2005ish. Recently it’s becoming more an aggregation of Digg’s technology section. Just something I’ve noticed.
1) I don’t read Digg, so it’s kind of hard for me to aggregate it
2) This is off topic. If you want to piss on OSNews, do so via email.
Forum activity says nothing about the life of a project, any project. With SkyOS most of the activity goes on the Alpha Forum (which is closed to even beta testers) and on irc (freenode #skyos, #skyos_dev) and ICQ/IM.
I’m permanently idled on #skyos and #skyos_dev and your lucky to hear someone say something related to SkyOS once per week. I remember about two years ago the channel was buzzing with activity and so were the forums. Listen, I am not going to play the Monty Python routine with you zizban. “She’s not dead, she’s pinnin for the fjords!”
Edited 2007-10-11 17:27
That’s fine and dandy and fancy and all.
Honestly, I’ve looked at SkyOS several times over the last year and I have to say it looks AMAZING. I love the interface. I like the newer shell. The whole thing just looks great.
One question that I feel is pertinent though: When can I get a copy without paying the man to be a beta tester?
There will be a demo liveCD out soon (no installation, use all you want). Other than that, you pretty much have to buy a copy.
I did, only to realize that it would have been much better donating the money to Oxfam.