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OSBC Panel Looks at the Future of the OS (eWeek)

[Posted March 27, 2008 by cook]

eWeek covers an Open Source Business Conference panel discussion on the future of the operating system. "James Hughes, a vice president and fellow at Sun Microsystems, said operating systems do nothing without applications. The choice of operating systems is done by developers on the basis of how long it takes them to get their job done using that system. "So, the future of the operating system is to enable application developers to get their work done. They also want true and real support for their operating system, where someone actually answers the phone rather than just sending out e-mails to the community.""

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Corporations better than community

Posted Mar 28, 2008 10:10 UTC (Fri) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link]

...said the representative of a company that sells phone support :-)

At the same time, I don't think there's any weight in Intel's criticism of the lack of non-Sun
contribution to OpenSolaris.  OpenSolaris is now free software and as well as using the code,
users can read, modify, and publish modified versions.  That's great progress!

And, FWIW, I remember Simon Phipps saying it's partly an infrastructure problem that will be
sorted when they change their source code repository system.

Going GPLv3 would probably also help them.

Choice of OS

Posted Mar 28, 2008 20:15 UTC (Fri) by Max.Hyre (subscriber, #1054) [Link]

The choice of operating systems is done by developers on the basis of how long it takes them to get their job done using that system.

Izzat so? To a first approximation, all sane (commercial) developers choose the OS based on what will make them the most money.

(Of course, the second approximation includes those developing commercial Linux/BSD/Solaris/... applications.)

OSBC Panel Looks at the Future of the OS (eWeek)

Posted Mar 28, 2008 20:29 UTC (Fri) by Max.Hyre (subscriber, #1054) [Link]

Later in the article James Hughes (Sun V.P.) observes

So, the future of the operating system is to enable application developers to get their work done.

which puts me in mind of one of my favorite quotations, from Neal Stephenson's In the Beginning was the Command Line:

Applications create possibilities for millions of credulous users, whereas OSes impose limitations on thousands of grumpy coders, and so OS-makers will forever be on the shit-list of anyone who counts for anything in the high-tech world.