OSDev.org

Looking for one or more partner's to help in the development of my OS.
Please note that the only reason I prefer an AMD cpu is that it provides the required features in all of it's 64-bit CPU's. (I am not so sure about Intel). The OS currently boots, checks the required features, & enables the A20 Gate. It will print a message about why it failed to boot if it does. I am currently working on setting up the pages, then the GDT and IDT, and switching to long mode.

Requirements:
* Intimate Knowledge of x86-64 Assembly Language
* 64-Bit CPU
* Preferably an AMD CPU (Athlon 64 or Later). Any x86-64 bit CPU will work as long as it has the following features:
* SSE Extensions
* SSE2 Extensions
* PAT (Page Attribute Table)
* MTRR (Memory-Type Range Registers)
* PAE (Physical-Address Extensions)
* MSR (Model Specific Registers)
* DE (Debugging Extensions)
* NX (No Execute Page Protection)
* FPU (x87 Floating Point Unit On-Chip)
* APIC (Advanced Programmable Interrupt Controller)

Before you go about looking for partners to help you Dev, you should try to develop a competent, workable kernel with Memory Mgmt, Multitasking, Hardware detection, Vesa, and basic API, etc, so that you will be, without a doubt, the main developer, and proprietor of the OS.

I mean: you're asking someone els eot come in and do all the nitty gritty for you. Anything cold happen, and then you could have YEARS of court battles just to be able to continue to work on your own ideas. I would recommend against looking for partners right now.

Finish your kernel's basics, and then gather a competent team.

I would agree that you need to have something decent in order to attract anybody, as well as a very good plan for the future. Mostly everyone here has their own projects, and although there is one cooperative project (Pedigree), most have egos large enough to stop them from joining other projects. If you build something spectacular, then you can get developers to join you.

holypanl wrote:I mean: you're asking someone els eot come in and do all the nitty gritty for you. Anything cold happen, and then you could have YEARS of court battles just to be able to continue to work on your own ideas. I would recommend against looking for partners right now.

I'd say this is a pretty moot point. If you do any sort of proper licensing on your project, you can't really run into any legal trouble from a co-author copyright-wise. (Conversely, you also lose some control, but neither of you can restrict the other.) Still, you aren't going to find an available *and* competent partner right now, so it won't matter.

Yes, unless someone is explicitly looking for a kernel that is just starting out and has the features yours has, others will most likely not join. Not only do others usually have their own kernel, their own kernel usually already has more features than yours does (because they have been working on it for quite some time) and will most likely not drop their hard work in favor of someone else's work where they'll need to do it all over.

Wait until you have got a few tens of thousands of lines of code, and then ask again. People will need to see that you have got something before they even think about joining it - especially if you are going to cast yourself in the role of lead developer, without some already existing code to justify it.

You are not exactly the first to post something like the above on this forum, and I don't suppose you will be the last. If you wanted it to be a two person project from the outset, it would have to be a joint design (rather than just your design) and, more importantly, it would need to aim at an innovative goal which you were both enthusiastic about. (Enabling the A20 line is hardly an a sure sign of gee whizz inovation.)