OSDev.org

Hi,

Schol-R-LEA wrote:

Brendan wrote:There are people who are writing an OS just for fun, and that's fine. There are people who are writing an OS to learn, and that's fine too.

Then there's people who want to go further than just "fun" or "learning" but for one reason or another don't try. Then there's people like me, who are willing to try (despite the odds) and therefore need to do whatever they can to increase their chances.

But that's my point: that your purist approach is likely to ruin your chances of success, as is your apparent assumption that you will succeed. The problem is that while excellence is a necessary condition for success, it is never a sufficient one, and it generally is not the key factor in a product's acceptance.

It's obvious to me that you're not even smart enough to understand the difference between "trying to succeed" and "assuming you will succeed"; but I have little reason to care and it's more entertaining for me to just roll with it, so...

Failure isn't possible unless I stop trying (e.g. if I finish my OS and it doesn't succeed I can just try again, and I can keep writing new OSs until one does succeed). I won't stop trying voluntarily. There are only 2 possible outcomes - either I will succeed eventually, or I'll be forced to stop before I succeed (e.g. I'll die trying). However; if I'm forced to stop trying, then maybe someone will have been inspired by what I achieved or will learn something from my attempts, and will use whatever they've gained from my work to achieve their own success. If that happens, I will be responsible for a small part of their success. It's "partial success by proxy", and means that even my death isn't enough to guarantee 100% failure.

In comparison; most OS developers reach "guaranteed 100% failure" before they begin, simply because they choose not to try.

Schol-R-LEA wrote:Obviously, being a purist myself, I have no problem with hewing to an impractically idealistic line. You seem to think you can do that and still succeed in the marketplace, and that is what I am call you out on.

Have you ever read the Worse is Better papers (a series of essays on the practical aspects of 'success' in the software world)? The original was written by Richard Gabriel, one of the designers of the Symbolics lisp machines and a member of the Common Lisp standards committee, as a chapter in an extended essay on why the Lisp Machines and Lisp in general had fallen out of favor in the late 1980s. His contention was that Unix, while technically inferior in many ways (not only to Genera but also Tenex, ITS, WAITS, RSX, and several other contemporary operating systems), was more 'adaptable' - or in modern terms, agile - because it was inexpensive to license, portable, had lower hardware requirements than most of the other systems then in use, was written to require lowest common denominator of hardware features (not the same thing as the previous statement, but related), and provided just enough of a system to support the basic operations, which was just enough combined with the lower up-front cost that the TCO issues were ignored.

Does any of this rambling (some snipped) have a relevant point? Are you saying that Unix was technically superior because it was more adaptable and "won" because it was technically superior (more adaptable)? Alternatively, are you carefully selecting what you do/don't consider "technically superior" to make lies seem plausible?

Schol-R-LEA wrote:But even this isn't the real problem: the real problem is that, despite claims to the contrary, you frequently criticize others here for not having the same ambitions you do, and for failing to adopt your puritanical outlook at the same time. You don't seem to realize that you are trying to impose your own attitudes about successful operating systems on people who are just trying to learn. You say you support the more casual members, but your actions say otherwise.

No. What happened here is that Sourcer asked everyone if they implement user-space programs themselves or ported their user-space; and I said "neither, my plan is to make my OS impressive"; and then I got attacked by a rabid rambling retard because I wrote an honest answer.


Cheers,

Brendan

Brendan wrote:Are you saying that Unix was technically superior because it was more adaptable and "won" because it was technically superior (more adaptable)?

RPG's argument - and you can read it yourself if you wish - was that the technical merits of the LispMs were trumped by pragmatic (non-technical) issues that favored Unix. Now, quite honestly, even I can see that he was overselling the LispMs and Common Lisp - they were not as superior as he made out, and regarding the hardware, their failure had more to do with the failure of either LMI or Symbolics to develop a workable system of mass production than anything regarding either the LispMs themselves or the software they ran - but the basic point is that technical merit is only one aspect of successful software, and by no means the largest one.

I will admit that I have been reading too much into your aggressive self-defense regarding the issue of practicality; I honestly got the impression from many of your previous posts that you were convinced that it would be ASMoP and both Microsoft and Apple would roll over for you, at least in the high-reliability business systems niche you seem to be aiming for. I was at fault on this.

Hi,


I think I misunderstood then what did you mean by "competitive phallometry". I thought you meant whatever new ideas are developed by the members you listed. Instead, you meant the discussions about them in which the members you listed participate, right? You should had made it more clear.

If this is the case, then I still think such discussions are good to happen in order to improve the original ideas, combine them with ideas of other people, or drop the specific idea since someone else suggested a better one. I however don't really like when they take too much time from the participants' day and/or have been derailed into flamewars.


Regards,
glauxosdever

Fair enough; I will try to be more exact in what I say in the future.

Success in an OS project for me is the ability to maintain it and develop applications for it and getting paid for it. The ultimate success is that you can keep this up for 10 years or more.

I really don't care if I can sell it, if 1000s of people are using it or developing applications for it. My main objective was that I could work on it for a living.

By that measure, I certainly succeeded with my OS project. I've been paid for working on it for close to 10 years now, and I anticipate I will use most of the remaining 10 years up to my retirement for working on the OS or the professional applications, and that I will never again need to write anything for Windows or Linux.

Also, I hope that the new Java framework is stable when I retire so I don't need to support anything after that point.