OSDev.org

Xzyx987X wrote:I'm not expecting everyone to jump on the bandwagon right away...

...but eventually.

Sorry, not going to happen.

License? Going GPL will lose you a percentage of potential followers, going proprietary will lose you a different percentage.

Platform? Going x86, amd64 or "other" will, respectively, lose you a percentage of potential.

Language? C, C++, {fill-in-the-blank}...

Leadership? Benign dictator, not-so-benign dictator, meritocracy, democracy...

Target? Server, desktop, embedded, multi-purpose...

Do you see how every decision fleshes out what your project is about, yet makes less and less people interested in your project, specifically? In the end, most if not all people here are here because they decided none of the many, many existing, under-progress projects fits their ideas well enough, so they embarked on a project of their own. Or they wouldn't be here!

But one thing that tells me that I may have something worth pursuing, is the fact what I have already with my prototype code already looks significantly different from any other OS I've seen.

Which means you just lost the percentage of people who want to gather experience how an OS is written in general.

I think my design has a lot of potential.

Others have, too, but for different reasons. Because their authors wanted them to be different from yours.

It's good because it takes a completely different approach than any other OS, that naturally leads to better code.

If you can prove that, ideally with some sort of published abstract or paper, that would be a very good thing to include in your query for help.

If all you can offer is your word of honor, you've got other work to do than asking for help.

I think once I actually put up my design and short term roadmap for public consumption, I'll get at least a few people interested.

Yep. Come back then. Hint: Just present your idea. Don't go asking for people to join. Those who want, will ask.

EDIT: Just when I pressed "send" there was your latest post. A to-be-developed language on SH4 / Dreamcast... look up what I wrote about percentages above.

Man, I just love it how everyone around here is such a pile of optimism.

Solar wrote:License? Going GPL will lose you a percentage of potential followers, going proprietary will lose you a different percentage.

My whole strategy on this is to be a permissive as possible. This is an operating system, not a holy war. I'll be using the BSD license.

Solar wrote:Leadership? Benign dictator, not-so-benign dictator, meritocracy, democracy...

My leadership role will simply be that I'm in charge, but if we can't agree you can always fork the project. Or any individual element of the project for that matter. All I care about is the quality of the end result, my ego is irrelevant. And for the record, I'm a pretty easy going person, and not difficult at all to work with.

As for you're other comments, all I can say is I think you should at least reserve your judgment until you see what I actually have, and how I plan to develop it.

Xzyx987X wrote:I've decided the first step in the actual implementation of my OS will be to develop a Ruby derivative language to use for the coding, and implement it as a cross complier for the SH4 platform. (...) I don't want to touch x86 with a ten foot pole until I actually have my design working the way I want it.

I really would advise against both of those things. Writing a Ruby to machine code compiler will likely take more time than any other part of your project, and in the end will give you something that outputs slow code and has a backend that you will have to rewrite for x86 if you want your OS to be useful. In addition, the best you will get is an OS written in Ruby, when you could simply write the OS in C/C++/ASM (which are much more apt for OS development for many reasons) and port Ruby to it for userland stuff.

Using a non-x86 architecture is not a problem, but using one as obscure as SH4 is definitely a problem. First off, if you're implementing your own compiler, you would need another backend to port to x86 (or whatever your final architecture is). Second, a very large part of OS development is driver writing, and if you write all your drivers for the Dreamcast, they will become useless once you change architectures. Finally, there's lots of documentation concerning OS development on the x86, but likely very little for the SH4.

Basically, if you do those two things, you are making years and years of work for yourself before you ever get your concept system off the ground. If you have an innovative idea, simply implement it, and implement it in the easiest, most accessible way possible: in C/C++/ASM on the PC. Then you might be able to attract some developers (later, of course.) Also, you will have much better platform documentation: the wiki here is full of it.

Xzyx987X wrote:As for you're other comments, all I can say is I think you should at least reserve your judgment until you see what I actually have, and how I plan to develop it.

Well, that's the main point of criticism, isn't it? There's nothing yet to see or judge, yet you ask people to join your project. Which is right there in the FAQ under "Beginner Mistakes", which you decided to ignore.

As berkus said, this is constructive criticism. It just doesn't work the way you wanted it to. Just like writing an accelerated 3D gfx driver using BIOS interrupts won't work.

Anything that has less than 1 man-year of work already done isn't worth asking others for to join. All Linus did was implementing a well-understood kernel technology on a well-known and readily available hardware using a readily available toolchain for a well-understood language. There was nothing "experimental" about Linux, but it took him over six months to come up with Linux 0.01 and gather any kind of developer support, because people wanted Linux for themselves.

Compare that with your angle (own language, own compiler, own debugger, esoteric hardware with uncertain future most people would have to purchase or emulate, questionable benefit for potential users, ...).

All this doesn't make your project bad in any way, but it does make it not very attractive for others to join - and you should realize so, instead of blaming people for not seeing the greatness of your ideas.

Now hold on just a minute. I never said I would blame people for not joining. Actually, just the opposite. If six months from now I'm still the only one working on this, I'll be blaming myself for not bringing anything interesting enough to the table to warrant other people's attention.

That is an unfortunate consequence of having something for which the potential market is only one person in size.