SkyOS has always been criticised for the fact that you have to pay for it in order to beta test it. I personally never saw a problem with this construction, especially since the price included a full copy of SkyOS 5 (they dropped the five) once it was completed. However, as of late, it has become increasingly clear that there may never be anything like a final version – or another test release for that matter. Update: In the comments, Robert Szeleney explained the current SkyOS situation in more detail. For future readers who find this article via a search engine, I’ve attached Robert’s comment to the actual story for completeness’ sake. The reply can also be found on the SkyOS website.
Let’s put things in perspective. The last news item we ran about SkyOS dates back to September 9, 2008. Now, you may think that between then and now there would be more news – but no, the news section of their website still lists that specific news item as the latest one. That’s almost five months without any news coming out of the SkyOS camp.
So, you think, they surely have released new betas between then and now, right? No, not exactly. The last beta release was build 6947, released on August 3, 2008. That’s six months without a release for their paying customers. The changelog, which is publicly available, hasn’t been updated since July 15, 2008. That’s seven months ago. The fabled free-for-everyone live CD is shrouded in a dense cloud of thick vapour as well.
I’m actually not the only one asking questions. The official reply (dated January 10, 2009) from Robert Szeleney, SkyOS god, states:
Development is a little slow lately, but mostly because I spend most time on a proof of concept for Intels Virtualization Technology which allows running Windows XP, Ubuntu, Knoppix and SkyOS right inside SkyOS already. (without any user mode application like qemu, bochs, etc…).There are still a few more things to figure out, but I’m pretty sure this will be a great addition to SkyOS.
Additionally I just bought a MacBook, trying to get new ideas from Mac OS and looking what people like so much about it.
While that sounds mighty promising and impressive, one has to wonder whether or not this is a wise thing to do if you have a large team of paying customers, who were more or less promised relatively regular beta releases to test, as well as a final release at some point in the acceptable future. This wouldn’t have been an issue in a free (as in, money) project, where the developer can do whatever he wants with his time – but as a paying SkyOS customer, I’d be pretty pissed off right about now (in case you’re wondering, my beta team membership was a gift years ago for my [minor] contributions to SkyOS over the years, nothing special though).
I used to be a part of the SkyOS community, and my interest goes back years and years, right around version 2, if I recall correctly. Between then and now, my interest in the project waned, mostly due to one big problem that has haunted the SkyOS project for a long time now: total lack of focus. Robert Szeleney is a marvellously gifted coder, and a very nice guy, but SkyOS seems to hobble from impressive feature to impressive feature, with none of them ever really getting finished.
SkyOS reminds of a little girl that gets sent by her mother to visit grandma on the other side of the forest. As she’s hopping down to grandma’s house, she gets distracted by a pretty butterfly, and starts chasing it. Then, she sees a squirrel, and all excited, she leaves the butterfly and starts running after the squirrel. Before she can take a good look at the squirrel, she notices a funny looking lizard on a tree stomp, and tries to catch it.
Whenever someone tries to take the little girl by the hand, and show her the way to grandma’s house, she gets angry, and suddenly, it turns out the girl has this group of evil minions by her side that will throw rocks at you while shouting things like “She can do whatever she wants!” and “She has no obligation to go to grandma’s house!”, and so on.
I know from experience that what I’m about to say will cause some ire, but I’m going to be open and honest: paying for SkyOS is a mistake. You get an operating system that’s in perpetual beta, that probably won’t boot on any of your systems anyway, full of promising but halfbaked features, and you’ll throw the disc away before the sun has set. You’ll then try to talk to the little girl, and get her to go to grandma’s house, but it will be pointless.
She’s been sent to go there 5-6 years ago. What makes you think you can get her there?
Robert Szeleney’s reply
Below is Robert Szeleney’s reply, as found in the comments.
Short version:
SkyOS development is currently halted.Long version:
The speed at which new hardware and technology gets developed has increased dramatically in the last few years. Trying to catch up with development of frameworks, drivers, applications, test, etc. got way more complicated than years ago. At that time, you developed a standard IDE driver and SkyOS would boot on 99% of all computers. There was only one way interrupts got routed, devices could be accessed, etc. More important, there was just a single CPU, no hyperthreading, mulitcores, multi cpus, etc. (at least not for computers the usual home user owned). A GUI was easy, in contrast to today, where you must have a 3D accelerated GUI. If you don’t have one your OS is said to be old, out of date. You must have WIFI, USB, Bluetooth, etc.Catching up with the development for all this is just not possible anymore, at least, not for one person or at least, not for me.
Currently, SkyOS development is on halt, and I’m trying to find a way to get out of this unpromising situation. At this moment I only see four resorts:Open source SkyOS Make SkyOS available for free Specialize on a yet to define niche Stop SkyOS development Eventually, I have to admit that I underestimated the speed at which new technolgy develops and establishes. And, a while ago I was able to spend more than 6 hours a day developing for SkyOS, for years. Recently, as my first baby was born this of course changed which made the entire developing situation even worth. Again I underestimated a few, personal, real life factors and their impact on developing.
I’m sorry if I dissapointed you, but I guess you favor me being honest about the current situation.
Anyway, I will do my best to find the best possible solution for SkyOS and its future. Be it with or without me.
Surprise, surprise, perpetual betas don’t work.
It’s like a chasing a rainbow.
Edited 2009-01-30 10:56 UTC
They do from time to time, see Google.
But you don’t pay to test Google Betas.
I like how SkyOS looks, it has several really, really good features there and it seems it’s also rather snappy. It screams with promise. But, unfortunately that is not the only thing it’s screaming with; lack of developers, lack of direction, lack of drivers.. For example that Crossbar thing..Sure, it looks neat, but does it REALLY have to be part of the OS? Can’t he just leave it to some 3rd party to develop? I know it’s a weird idea, to leave some cool things for others to develop. I must be out of my mind.
SkyOS is nice but it will never take off as a proprietary project. There are not enough developers and not enough differntiation from other projects. Besides paying for a beta is just crazy. I guess this is what you get when you take a chance like that. Buyer beware.
SkyOS has no niche and never has. I think that fundamentally that’s the problem.
SkyOS would much much greater if it was open source. Does this guy really think he can implement EVERYTHING alone? No one is that good
As from here we would have 7 SkyOs distributions. Everyone half baked and incompatible with each other.
On the other side if one provides clean interfaces for developer he doesn’t have to do it on its own. Must be a strange thought for Linux guys but drivers and apps can be developed without everyhing drowning in anarchy…
Do Haiku, AROS, Syllable or ReactOS have 7 incompatible distros? Are all Linux distros half-baked?
I’m sure they’d make more money open-sourcing the OS and running a bounty system like AROS or Haiku. Not huge amounts of cash, but I’m skeptical there’ll ever be a massive pay-off for the work they’re doing now.
“As from here we would have 7 SkyOs distributions. Everyone half baked and incompatible with each other.
On the other side if one provides clean interfaces for developer he doesn’t have to do it on its own. Must be a strange thought for Linux guys but drivers and apps can be developed without everyhing drowning in anarchy… ”
This is extremely bullshit. There could exist dozens of different distributions, each one with an specific reason of existence, or optimized for specific use, and even like that, they would all be compatible between then. Last time I checked, static c++ binaries would run on any modern Linux distro, so I really don’t get this “incompatible” argument
By the way, Linux is the kernel, and you can say that Linux kernel project is nowhere like an anarchy
While I agree the initial argument is a red herring, it is very naive to believe there are no incompatibilities between Linux distributions. Binary compatibility is one thing, but then you have locations of configuration or other support files, name of device nodes, etc.
That’s even more naive. There is nothing more anarchistic than the development of the Linux kernel.
Almost no GNU/Linux distribution ships with a vanilla kernel, and then you have all the development trees surrounding Linus’s. Defining “the Linux kernel” is just as impossible as defining “the Linux distribution”.
Quentin Garnier.
I was very much tempted to buy into the beta program, because I love fiddling around with different OSes. I am not a programmer, just a user, but as a user I love to see the different wys people develope stuff, what they think is interesting in an OS and its UI design.
I have always found SkyOS to be interesting in its look, but the UI design is not revolutionary or anything.
What stopped me from subscribing was the idea that a single, or very small group like that, could develop this OS at a fast enough clip to keep me interested, and paying for that frustration was not something I wanted to do.
To this day, I am still curious about it and if it was Open Source I would try it in a split second.
He created this by himself. He will finish it. He just is eager to release a superbe product that really makes people go WOW.
Thats my opinion.
What is not my opinion is that his little daughter may slow this down! So give him just a little more time and he will either release or continue developing!
He is developing SkyOS 5 for 6 years now. What makes you think he will ever finish it?
Well when is Linux “finished”? Its been in development for 16 years.
If SkyOS would be released now in many aspects it would be more modern than Windows and Linux today. (Sadly with less drivers)
And its better to be closed as to be open and a mess.
Well, Linux is not ‘finished’ as no software is ever completely done.
But Linux is enough good to be used in production environments by lot of companies…
How can I contact Robert Szeleney? The SkyOS website is down. We may be able to help SkyOS and give it a great future.
Best regards
Tedd Gallion
DiscreetFX Partners
Your comparison is not valid. Linux has stable versions, but SkyOS is in perpetual beta. Also, Linux is free and SkyOS is 30$.
“And its better to be closed as to be open and a mess.”
Um… no. Just look at Amiga. Or at BeOS. Modern systems that died because they were closed.
Edited 2009-01-30 13:25 UTC
Compared to BeOS, the Amiga Operating System isn’t really dead, since there’s still active development.
Are you serious ?
Amigo is not really dead but not necessary very strong…
The BeOS is being developed nowadays by the guys from Haiku
No, let’s not sugar-coat this – BeOS is pretty much dead. It’s important to distinguish that Haiku != BeOS – BeOS was a closed source OS that is pretty much buried at this point.
Just because Haiku aims to be binary and source compatible with BeOS, and picks up on many of the same designs as BeOS, that doesn’t make it BeOS.
However, I think it’s fair to say the BeOS dream lives on with Haiku
At this point it IS trying to be BeOS. In the future it strives to be more than that.
Hmm… probably splitting hairs, and definitely off-topic now, but I still disagree.
Even Haiku’s compiler no longer even defines __BEOS__ – and there are MANY MANY changes in Haiku that definitely differ from BeOS.
It’s a common misconception that Haiku aims to only re-create BeOS in it’s R1 release, this simply isn’t true. It only aims to be BeOS R5 compatible for the R1 release, saving anything that breaks such compatibility for R2 and later. It’s a very fine difference, but a difference nonetheless.
Perhaps on the surface, it re-creates the BeOS look and feel, and much of the same functionality – but that doesn’t mean it aims to be a drop-in replacement with exactly the same behavior.
Sorry about that. Your last sentence is pretty much I wanted to say
Thanks!
It’s been in active use for 16 years.
I can bet that even MenuetOS had bigger userbase than SkyOS.
Why not go to DistroWatch and look for a distro labeled “stable” or “final” and not a beta release? There’s no shortage of them. Meanwhile, the kernel itself is on a schedule which releases a “stable” version regularly.
I think you’re confusing the words “finished” (as in completely done; nothing left to do) with “ready for use.” And software never gets truly finished in that way, since even the most “complete” software will start to show limitations eventually. “Finished” in the context that it was used simply means ready for use by more than just beta testers.
His development model is not good.
He should develop each component separately, test it, then move on to the next one.
If he did that, in 5 years he would have developed much more software and not in beta quality.
Actually making a production release would probably make people go WOW!.
“the girl has this group of evil minions by her side that will throw rocks”
Don’t be fooled by the vocal minority who act like you described Thom. Those people are religious and there is no way to argue with them. Robert completely ignores them and they have absolutely no weight on his decisions. It was just unnecessarily petty to add the evil minions bit. He can and will run aimlessly without anyone’s help. There is a list that indicates what level of functionality SkyOS should achieve before announcing the final version, but I don’t think it’s being followed. Using your methaphor, it’s like having a shopping list for groceries in a mall, but running around in the LEGO section of they toys department instead, buying the coolest toys, putting them together 2/3 of the way and eventually discarding them.
Complete disregard for the community cannot be excused and I’m still at a loss as to why would anyone defend the stance of staying in total silence for so long. In the past when I complained about this I was always positively surprised at the outcome. This time however, I’m starting to become completely disillusioned. If Robert doesn’t release then there is really nothing new to be released.
I am a little disappointed at the recent lack of progress, but it’s good to hear that something is happening. I had my membership for a few years now and there has been significant progress in that time.
However, I didn’t “buy in” in order to get a serious OS at the end of it, more to see some of the (pretty good) ideas in action (and possibly poach some of them for my own embryonic project) and to support independent development.
My take: If Szeleney is serious about reaching .0, he needs to come up with a definitive list of things that will be in it and stick to working on those.
*grin* If I’m correct there once was such an list and until beta version 8 it really looked like it would get finished…
And then it started with an additional driver… an new interface element… an other interface element… an partially new API… an updated application delivery method… and apparently, VM is the new thing…
Next stop… Maybe some added software to launch spaceshuttles and buy a deliverypizza.
I am a bit puzzled, because for me at least the whole point of alternative operating systems is about “chasing butterflies” and not about reaching the “granny house”.
Granny house is already crowded with Windows, Linux and OS X, so there is plenty to do outside in the woods.
I also paid for the beta access, not because I’ll ever have a real use for SkyOS, but because I can’t resist supporting any effort that’s out of the mainstream. Actually the project has been progressing faster than I expected so far, and even if it stops right now, it paid itself off for me as it was a refreshing experience.
Edited 2009-01-30 12:28 UTC
That would make sense if it weren’t for the fact that people paid because they were promised a general purpose operating system. The team didn’t promise an operating system that would “chase butterflies”.
Cash is involved here, and as such, you simply do not have the kind of freedom that for instance the Syllable guys have. You have a responsibility to your customers to deliver, and if you fail, people will call you out on it.
And that’s just what I did. Harsh, I know, especially since Robert’s a nice guy.
Well it depends on what you expect. True, if you paid based on the promise above, you have every right to raise your voice. Actually, if that would give Robert a kick in the butt, I won’t be complaining either!
I, too, am a very long time beta tester, paying customer. There has been silence in the SkyOS camp for way too long. I can appreciate Robert and his interest in his new family but this project either has to move forward or it needs to die; and not a slow horrible death either.
While the recreation of this marvel is impressive but it is an invention by mostly one person, a person who has forgotten that he has taken folks money and made promises – albeit with no firm timeline.
Robert – we have invested in you and your dream for many years, move SkyOS forward or pass it to someone else to run with if you are too busy on other important tasks. The old say – shit or get off the pot …
One man shows like this are more about ego than a technical or commercial future of the product…
It’s just me or the skyos web page is not available…
It is not just you…I can’t reach it either but I didn’t mention it because I thought it was just me.
Neither from Spain at the moment.
I am, too, another long time beta tester.
SkyOS seems to have ground to halt. I argued for a feature freeze and a firm release deadline: Get, a,b and c done, then it’s release time. That idea was shot down.
Its extremely frustrating; I know Robert has a baby now but I PAID for this and a customer I am extremely dissatisfied with the lack of progress, the lack of releases and the lack of any meaningful communication.
I stopped going to the IRC channel and the boards. Wake me up when you reach a final release. In the meantime, I have better things to do than wait on one man’s whims.
In my opinion, if SkyOS wasn’t meant to be something, it would have already been, just like Linux got its deserved space even before you could claim it was half-finished.
I was interested into SkyOS years ago but the need to pay to get a BETA, coupled with the fact that it didn’t go into production after long time, already suggested me something was wrong there. The very same fact I think about ReactOS, actually, even if that’s opensource.
I’m not underestimating how difficult creating a new OS is but those folks maybe did. If you take 10 years to build it, once finished, it will be old already. It’s just that crazy.
A suggestion: Google step was important as they decided not to release their own OS but rather a platform to run inside other OSes. That means creating and mantaining a new OSes, plus finding a commercial space for that, is definitely too difficult now. That should teach us that is way better to go the Flash, Silverlight, Android way and build your own platform to run inside other OSes. It has been proved that you can achieve very good performance, though you won’t run native, and you will completely axe 90% of problems related to have your own OS.
Edited 2009-01-30 14:43 UTC
So what would it take to get SkyOS running in VMWare or something like that?
Could at that point could someone create a repository for different hardware that could be copied to that virtual machine. And from there could it be copied to a new partition on a hard drive and run?
Would something like that work? If not. What are the technical reasons for it not working. I DO NOT CARE about anything other than true technical reasons.
If people can do an end run around the guy so that they can at least get it up and running “on their hardware” at least you would have a semi useable OS.
When banging on a wall doesn’t get you through. Look for a door.
I would love to try out SkyOS, but I am not going take the risk of buying something that might not work on any of my computers.
Also, I am not sure I like the idea of funding Rob’s hobby – especially if development is slow and the OS continues to remain in beta.
I know my next comment will drive some people nuts, but I still maintain the OS would gain more if it was opensourced.
Why do people keep saying SkyOS is beta? I was mislead, like many, into paying for a Beta software that barely qualifies as Alpha. If should’ve been called a Developer Preview or just plain Alpha, since this dude needed developers to get interested and code for his OS, not users beta testing and reporting bugs.
“You get an operating system that’s in perpetual beta, that probably won’t boot on any of your systems anyway, full of promising but halfbaked features, and you’ll throw the disc away before the sun has set.”
Other than using the word “beta”, the above statement accurately describes my experience with SkyOS. I definitely wasted money on it but right now, I don’t care anymore if it gets finished. There is no feature amazing and useful enough to make me say it was worth the wait.
It must be coincidence.
I wonder if SkyOS wouldn’t benefit more if they had a kind of proprietary open source model. Have the license allow only a single, non-commercial community version which the community could manage and contribute to. Have a clause in the license that fully open sources SkyOS if Robert ups and leaves, to indemnify community contributers from losing their efforts. They Robert can continue to work away in his own bubble whilst the community turns SkyOS into a usable OS, and once it is ready for prime time, “SkyOS Corp” or whatever the trading name is, can make money from support and services.
Ideas…..
I’ve had Macs as long as I can remember. When the options were Windows or MacOS Classic (I’ve been using since the System 6.0.8 days), I went searching for something better. Because frankly, the options sucked.
Enter my fascination with BeOS, my dabbling with QNX, my learning about *NIX and becoming way too comfortable with GNU/Linux, branching into Solaris, futzing around with every OS I could get my hands on only to come back to….. BeOS and Haiku.
Then OS X came along. I saw the potential. I kept a G3 around for doing the things my BeOS system couldn’t. You know, the iLife suite.
Then I bought an iBook G4, and sold my BeOS laptop. My Haiku / BeOS development slowed down. I moved and had to leave my BeOS box behind for several months. I started liking OS X. It has slowly been becoming what BeOS embodied – An OS that stayed out of my way, let me do my work. Stable and responsive, OS X didn’t treat me like a moron, try to hold my hand, and made sense when I was using it.
I didn’t need BeOS and it’s dated applications anymore. I could get things done with my Mac.
I got my BeOS box back, but it was never the same for me. I quit using it for email (Mail.app kicked the MDR’s ass at IMAP) and it became increasingly useless for browsing (FireFox errr BonEcho was a DOG for performance). GoBe was useless to me the day iWork was released, and I jumped ship immediately.
It took me three years to finally accept what had happened and sell off my BeOS and other Alternate OS hardware.
The Mac did everything I wanted, everything I needed, and I’d learned what I set out to in my Personal Alt-OS Journey. I was done wandering, and I’d found a real ~/.
Do I miss Haiku and BeOS? Eh, parts of it. But not really. There’s some really great things in the concepts they have. But at this point, it’s sorta useless to me.
I’m willing to bet Mr. Robert has run into the same issue. Why bother re-inventing the wheel, when you can actually use the wheels that already exist?
I feel for the guy. He’s probably built a lot of his personal identity based on what he’s done or been involved in. It takes a lot to walk away from something like that, and it seems that’s what is slowly happening to him. It’s an internal struggle that sucks until you just decide to let go.
bryanv – I funny understand where you are coming from. Things have turned out pretty much the same way with me and OS X.
I used lots of OSs including OS/2 (now eComStation) and while OS X certainly isn’t perfect, it’s the best right now “for me”.
I doubt the problem here is him not open sourcing the project, but that he is trying to be superman. It’s impractical that someone make an OS that is 100% modern, and do it on his own. When he nears completion, the next gen OS of the time will blow him out of the water.
What he needs to do is hire some people (on volunteer basis or not) to sit down with the source code and help with the work. If he could do what he did in 6 years, think of what 10 of him could have done in those 6 years.
I paid, I wanted to help and was thinking it would be cool to have something nice to use, not Linux.
And well, we never got something that could boot with current (or even last-gen) hardware. Nothing is finished.
I wonder if we all e-mailed Robert and asked for money back, what would he do?
Err – maybe, “frak off”? God, how people are naive (sorry, man).
Each time I was reading about Sky OS, I was thinking:
“Wow, that’s great OS. What a waste it’ll be dead soon.”.
It doesn’t take a rocket science to figure out that OS without hardware platform, that’s not open source, that is used only by geeks won’t make it.
So…do I and the other posters who predicted this very situation get to say “We told you so” yet?
More importantly, are all the flamers who labeled myself and anyone else who criticized the way things were going and recommended Robert return to the open betas of R4 days, open source SkyOS, or at the very least release a live cd for people to try without having to prepay for a final release that could never come–are they willing to eat a little crow now?
At the time any of us who made any comments about the situation were slandered, told to shutup, called theives, etc…are those people willing to offer apologies now? Because I really think this is ‘I told you so’
–bornagainpenguin
PS: Batting two for two now, first Zeta and now SkyOS…. Who’ll be next?
It seems to me that SKYOS has had some great features for a while and, to my reckoning at least, they should stop churning out the betas and release V1 (or whatever they want to call it)
it’s not going to be perfect, of course not, but it would be a release of a product – Windows 1 wasn’t great (arguably not great yet) – nor was MacOs, or Linux or Solaris etc..
But you’ve got to start somewhere, there’s been nearly 7000 builds, its’ got be of V1 release quality by now surely?
From v1 you can go to v2 or SKYOSX or whatever, but from the public perspective a released V1 is surely better than a perpetual beta.
Of all the alternative OSs out there, SKYOS has looked the most polished and innovative since BEOS – please let the world see it.
And therein lies the problem
I can’t get it to boot on most of my hardware – so how can you call that “release quality”?
If you read back through the comments, you’ll note that the focus seems to be on new features, or rewriting areas of SkyOS, and less on making it actually work on the majority of hardware thus allowing it to become release-quality.
I suspect Windows 1.x worked on most hardware available at the time… I’m probably wrong, because I never had the “opportunity” to use it.
Looks aren’t everything…
Short version:
SkyOS development is currently halted.
Long version:
The speed at which new hardware and technology gets developed has increased dramatically in the last few years. Trying to catch up with development of frameworks, drivers, applications, test, etc. got way more complicated than years ago. At that time, you developed a standard IDE driver and SkyOS would boot on 99% of all computers. There was only one way interrupts got routed, devices could be accessed, etc. More important, there was just a single CPU, no hyperthreading, mulitcores, multi cpus, etc. (at least not for computers the usual home user owned). A GUI was easy, in contrast to today, where you must have a 3D accelerated GUI. If you don^aEURTMt have one your OS is said to be old, out of date. You must have WIFI, USB, Bluetooth, etc.
Catching up with the development for all this is just not possible anymore, at least, not for one person or at least, not for me.
Currently, SkyOS development is on halt, and I^aEURTMm trying to find a way to get out of this unpromising situation. At this moment I only see four resorts:
– Open source SkyOS
– Make SkyOS available for free
– Specialize on a yet to define niche
– Stop SkyOS development
Eventually, I have to admit that I underestimated the speed at which new technolgy develops and establishes. And, a while ago I was able to spend more than 6 hours a day developing for SkyOS, for years. Recently, as my first baby was born this of course changed which made the entire developing situation even worth. Again I underestimated a few, personal, real life factors and their impact on developing.
I^aEURTMm sorry if I dissapointed you, but I guess you favor me being honest about the current situation.
Anyway, I will do my best to find the best possible solution for SkyOS and its future. Be it with or without me.
Well, it’s good to hear the word officially. One thing I don’t get is why the course of action is such a hard one to decide on. Obviously the F(L)OSS route is the way to go. Ending development would be a simple waste of your effort as it would lead lots of the cool work you did simply falling into a hole never to be seen again. Moving to a niche might be useful — if it weren’t for the fact that apart from the Netbook/MID/PDA-on-steroids market, in which many device-maker sponsored alternatives have already firmly entrenched themselves, no other niches really exist for an OS as completely Desktop/user-oriented as SkyOS. Finally, the binary freeware option is pointless, as that will simply increase the number of people making demands on SkyOS, without actually providing any more of an avenue to channel those demands into action and improvement than the current situation does.
Just my $0.02, but in this economy, maybe they’re worth something.
I’m sure most would prefer “Open source SkyOS”.
If it is open sourced I’m sure you’d still be able to control the direction of the project. You could also dual license it under GPL and a proprietary license like Trolltech used to but Nokia no longer does with QT.
I think the bottom line is that you need help from the community.
Disclaimer: I’ve never used SkyOS
you did not disapoint. you did amazing things in short time that many of us only could dream about. I paid into the beta program 2 days after it was announced with the idea that i may never see a final version. I was ok with that because i was jus amazed with the project as a whole. Robert, you have done great, but i think its time to finally open source the OS to build a nice community around it, before the community goes away entirely. its time, and we are ready to help, lets do this
Well, I’ll go back on my previous comment and say again; can I have my money back?
Open Source SkyOS. At least give something back.
open sourcing SkyOS would give you something back, the code
. as far as i am concerend refaunds arn’t requited. you paid to get into the beta, and thats what you got. I am saying that as someone who also paid to get into the beta, for what thats worth.
I agree, as far as im concerned my money was well spent for a hobby of mine, experimenting with alternative OS’s, ive spent more on less thats for sure, and the shear progress robert made had me and my friends amazed. I hope at least to see it open sourced, so it doesnt fully die out like BeOS (I know I know, the haiku project is around, but ya get my point).
Thanks for your time, and effort Robert, I hope to see activity return to this incredible accomplishment.
Thanks for the status update.
IMNSHO you only have two choices:
Let the code bitrot and wither and die.
(Proposed route if you hate the code and everybody who supported you.)
OR
Pick a license (there are many) and set the code fee! (Proposed route if you love your project)
Robert,
Thanks for the update, I’m sure we all appreciate that we now know where SkyOS stands. Your reasons for not working on SkyOS are obviously very good ones – your family and children are much more important than a bunch of 1s and 0s.
As for the route to take – even though I’m not a de facto supporter of open source (I just want stuff to work, damnit), I think it’s pretty obvious that if you want to see a future for SkyOS, the open source route is the best possible option.
Now, even though SkyOS might not move forward as a project, by picking the right license, you could allow other projects to benefit from your work. So, in the future you might not see SkyOS as an entity survive, but you may see bits and parts of it all over the alt. OS landscape – Syllable, Haiku, ReactOS, who knows. And with picking the right license, I obviously mean MIT/BSD.
In the end though, the choice is yours
.
Robert, I am glad you are finally admitting what I have been saying for years:
1)A modern OS can’t be developed by one person or by a small team. We have seen how difficult it has been for Microsoft (especially the Vista fiasco), with all their money, or for Linux with so many developers (Wi-Fi is just beginning to work properly, and only if you have a supported card. X can still be a pain, especially if you have an ATI or NVIDIA card, just to mention a couple of problems).
2)I am glad that you are eventually realizing that SkyOS should be free and open source. When some of us used to say that, we would get attacked and modded down to hell by your teenage zealots.
But you have finally opened your eyes, so credit where credit is due.
Classy. I’m sure Robert appreciates the “I told you so” triumphalism.
StephenBeDoper snipped…
Probably as much as the rest of us appreciated being call zealots, communists, or assholes who just want something for nothing.
–bornagainpenguin
So you hold Robert responsible for ignorant and obnoxious comments made by advocates of his OS? And somehow that justifies making equally-ignorant and obnoxious comments directed at him personally?
Oh, and from what I remember of most SkyOS-related discussions here, neither side of the “debate” had a monopoly on idiocy. Has there been a single SkyOS story here that didn’t have someone demanding that Robert open source SkyOS, or making unsubstantiated implications that SkyOS violates the GPL, or outright accusing Robert of being a “thief” for using open source code?
StephenBeDoper replied…
I didn’t see him disclaiming or moderating any of it and seeing as how he’s the leader of the SkyOS project….
Besides as which while I admit to expressing incredulity over the speed at which he was churning out new code all on his lonesome, and expressed annoyance at how all sorts of FLOSS code ended up being ported over to SkyOS while the OS itself was completely closed and required payment just to see the betas with no assurance of a final release; I have always made my biggest concern the likelyhood of the entire codebase disappearing if Robert grew tired of it. Hmm..what is this article aabout again, I seem to have forgotten…
We’ve seen this time and time again now, first with AtheOS, Zeta, and now we’re starting to see it again with SkyOS. It simply isn’t sane to expect a closed source OS to succeed in today’s environment, especially one headed primarly by oe person. Investing in one will only result in wasted time, energy, and money–the best bet for anyone trying to make a new desktop OS is to keep the code as open as possible, in the event something happens to the coders, so it can be revived by those who care about it.
—bornagainpenguin
So you hold the leader of a project has to explicitly disclaim the actions of any users / fans of that project, or you hold them personally-responsible?
Aside from sounding like a parody of the concept of personal responsibility, it also begs the question: do you apply that same standard to (say) Linus Torvalds? Or Richard Stallman? Or Steve Jobs?
Two points. One, it doesn’t really matter to me whether or not your concerns were prescient – that has no relevance to the point that I was making. And two, that point is: having been right doesn’t make gloating, “I told you so” comments seem any less churlish or juvenile.
When there have been years of harsh differences of opinion, you can’t expect people to behave like saints.
And besides, much of this topic has sounded like “eventually, some sense!”
Or, worse, “Where is my money?”
My post didn’t have any triumphalism, or at least it was not my intention. And I don’t want my money back.
On a sidenote: it wasn’t only Robert’s fans behaving like mindless zealots, but also his close cooperators.
StephenBeDoper returned…
First off, (as has already been pointed out) some of the worst stuff was by people directly working for Robert.
Secondly, you’re being a bit disingenuous with your comparison to Torvalds, Jobs, and Stallman with the current situation. Just ask anyone whose first experiences with Linux involved a heavy bit of RTFM if they blamed Linux as a whole for the actions of a few misguided idiots? As for Jobs and Stallman, they’re both a bit outside the scope of this conversation, aren;t they?
Perhaps to your eyes, but maybe the next time this type of situation comes up as it inevitably will people won’t be so quick to flame and ignore the issue at hand (closed source leaves you high and dry if the primary coders quit on you) while flinging ad hominems around…
–bornagainpenguin
Oh boohoo, cry me a river. Get over it already. You called it, bravo, go you Einstein you, here’s the pat on the back and a lollipop.
Now shoo.
You got a very good answer already from bornagainpenguin, he describes exactly how I have felt.
But on top of that I am one of those who actually *did pay* to be beta testers.
I don’t want my money back, but at least allow me to be happy that my money is (probably) going to be invested more wisely.
Sale us the code & lets open source it.
Donation and the rise of an open organization.
With the money Robert will get a last pay for a little part of his work.
A little part cause we knows we could not raise much as he deserve it.
– Open source SkyOS
Or make it Free Software < if you really want to see some support.
– Make SkyOS available for free
Can’t see how this’ll help you in both – financial and support from community.
– Specialize on a yet to define niche
MIDs? Netbooks? Sounds right…
– Stop SkyOS development
What a waste! But not judging, this might be best option.
I see your point but my opinion is not only to open source it but co-operate with Syllable or Haiku and merge efforts. It is more cost-effective and helps innovation. Why shouldn’t this bring money if you sell a cd to support development? Maybe you can’t become rich but this is a flawed economic model anyway. This is a job. But Syllable also seems a bit stagnated, I think these are the people to co-operate with and use-improve their drivers or even help them with Genode. The same goes to SkyOS developers. I feel that there is an opportunity there.
Am I the only one who finds it kind of disgusting how people here are now like ghouls all over SkyOS (which is not even dead yet!) requesting the source code, like they had some kind of right to get it, saying “oh, you’ve finally seen the light”?
Although I was never a SkyOS user, I have much respect for Robert Szeleney’s work. I hope he will find a solution which he can be happy with.
I know of no Open Source project which has succeeded without a dictator at the helm. If SkyOS is open sourced, would it be possible for Robert to be a Linus (eg dictate general direction and approve patches) for a while?
I would hope so. The whole thing IS his “baby”, so even if it “grows up” and leaves the house, I’m sure it will call home for advice, “loans” and help doing laundry
1. I’ve always admired Roberts coding skills.
2. I would really like to see SkyOS open source.
3. Do not let SkyOS go linux path: multiple distros, multiple package managers, no working desktop OS, never ending API changes. I hope that whatever Robert does there will be one and only one open source operating system.
Please, contact graphic chip makers (ATI, nvidia, intel) before you release code into open source.
What we really need is one open source operating system that has stable API and working suspend/hibernate/3D support.
For me, only an OpenSource OS is acceptable.
There existing already enough closed-source OperatingSystems like Windows and MacOSX (where the kernel is OpenSource, but the needed rest like the NextStep port ans so are not).
Make it OpenSource. If there are people interested in it, they will create driver and more for it.
But it’s not a guarantee. The development of AtheOS goes also faster with the author of AtheOS, then today the development of the AtheOS-clone Syllable with the Syllable community.
But making SkyOS OpenSource is the step, which SkyOS most help.
I always thought this was going to end in a mess. I can talk about this because I have paid for SkyOS.
I always thought it should be Open Source. For the longest time a lot of SKY parts were open source. Web browser, file manager, mail client etc.
I think Sky could be great. The problem with Linux versions is that there is no one version to standardize on.
Sky could be that one Open Source Desktop OS that could become a standard.
Personally, I have always been interested in this project, just couldn’t see forking out the money and probably having unsupported hardware. I can see his point about having to develop drivers for so many pieces of hardware, and think that since Netbooks, at least at this point, would be a natural fit, since most of the hardware is the same even among manufacturers.
Two or three wifi chipsets, same for bluetooth, and he would basically have supported 99% of netbooks. Then maybe he would actually have a chance of making some money off SkyOS. I would love to see a custom built OS not based on Linux or Windows for Netbooks with an open API for third party development, and would pay for that OS. And what about AROS? If SkyOS doesn’t fill the Netbook niche, I would like to see AROS or SYllable or anything optimized and customized for them.
Thanks.
Mehh. Ive gotten more than my moneys worth honestly. Besides the $30 has been gone for like 4 years now. Its not really that big a deal.
Now Robert could go and stamp the current version as V5.0 and release it as final (as unfinished/buggy as it is) and no one would have reasons to complain.
(Windows has also tons of bugs when it’s released…)
If Robert decides to open source this project…
why not give the code to the ones that supported this project with their money?
Don’t know how many of these people would have the skills to do OS coding, but at least the community would not die because they have/had a special interest in the project and with this the OS would be kept alive.
my 2c
Finishing SkyOS can be done, and done well. Using a blended open-source model in which interested developers can create an account to gain access to one branch of the sources – call it exp
However no direct code submissions can be made – period. Tickets are opened to accomplish a task, some developer signs up for the ‘job,’ and submits a patch candidate for the ticket – which all registered developers can see and download. The patch must go through an approval process, and be checked for absolutely consistency.
Each patch is designed to apply to the latest exp branch – which at times will be updated with a group of accepted patches, thus incrementing the version. An official build can be made on a schedule in this way, and most builds will be usable. I would suggest a three-six month approximate schedule.
Don’t worry about all the frills, but DO worry about hardware’s current flow ( multi-core bonanza, shared caches ( L2/3 ), 64-bit (and beyond) ) – you need to be modern enough to at least WORK on the new hardware – you don’t need to take advantage of all the features (not yet at least).
Create several teams of developers for each big project / goal. Find a niche! I would suggest finding out the best thing the OS has going for it – performance wise – and capitalize on that.
SkyOS needs to be released from the dungeons so that she may see the light of day.
And, as a paying customer ( twice ), I would like to see my money not go to waste. Open sourcing, in a controlled manner, would be the way to go, IMHO.
–The loon
-EDIT: typo
Edited 2009-01-31 02:00 UTC
It’s nice that Robert gets to keep our money. I remember promises of shipped discs.
Running a tight economy at home?
The amount of money you’re talking about is nothing compared to what you probably spend on toilet paper in the same period of time…
30 or 300
It’s not the money, it’s the breaking of a promise.
Nothing in my plan prevents shipped discs. I’d like to have a finished product and an official CD as well.
I paid twice because the first time ( years and years ago ) I purchased the full version only, without the betas. I never expected such a long delay
Finally, after seeing the many changes that have happened in SkyOS, I decided WTH, I’ll buy in to the beta, and just get two discs.. or at least help support the development in some way ( OSes are complex to develop – I’ve been there, y’know ). I like the betas, even though they have some bugs.
The haiku file system’s inclusion is very nice, and the system does run well, with a fairly decent layout. I haven’t had a good look at the API, sadly. Performance generally seemed above par, and progress was going like bonkers.
Having kids generally destroys people’s lives, and I see no way for this to get done any time soon without bringing in more talent.
Of course, the saddest part of this all will be when the money-back demands begin in earnest. I won’t be doing it, personally, though I may try and get my hands on the sources to try and keep the project alive ( I know SMP like nobodies business ). I would accept the code access as payment
Oh well, this is why I hoped to never have kids…
–The loon
Don’t blame it on the Kids. It can be anything.
In the case of AtheOS, it was that Kurt Skauen eventually got bored with coding, got a pilot licence and spent most of his time playing around with a plane he bought ( see http://www.atheos.cx/news.php3 ) Fortunately, AtheOS was GPL’ed and was reborn as Syllable. Software, which depends on a single person is never safe. Less so is proprietary software. Last example was ZETA, now SkyOS is just another demonstration of the same, but the first one where the blame is put on kids. But this is ridiculous. If a project can fold just because one coder has become a father, then something about the project is fundamentally wrong. In this case: That is is proprietary but without having the resources you would need if you really want to support a proprietary product.
I hope this discussion doesn’t get nasty because I think that Robert, after all, had in his heart the best of intentions. Those who paid for the beta’s in the hope of getting a full product – consider your payments a donation to the future ‘SkyOS Foundation”
Personally, I think he should open source the whole lot under an LGPL or CDDL licence. SkyOS is in a far better shape in many regards to the infrastructure set up for future development – in other words, it isn’t as though an open source community would have to rally around and create something from scratch.
With that being said, given the current doom ‘n gloom in the economy, the number of people who can dedicate time to such projects may be very few indeed. I remember not too long ago FreeBSD suffered from a similar problem in regards to the economy and low contributions. It’ll be interesting to see if the idea of open-sourcing the project would suffer a similar fait.
Open the source in a license that encourages a community-driven development effort. If things have gotten way too complicated for a single developer to tackle, why not ask for help from people who obviously care a lot? I’ve always thought this an interesting OS that I haven’t ever had the pleasure of trying out. The people that paid for this software with the promise of an eventual full-version release are owed at the very least a chance to see that full-version release. Open-sourcing this project and inviting the community to work on it is the only way that goal will be achieved. We don’t really need anymore specialized OSes that aim for a niche that eventually will be made irrelevant one way or another.
I would suggest if you want to continue on your own, pick a “limited” platform, such the upcoming NVidia ION and make SkyOS be the best OS on this platform. By just focusing on single platform you have eliminated the need to support every hardware out there.
@Tedd Gallion – Hi Ted, not sure if I’m remembering this correctly, but wasn’t Discreet FX in some way involved with Amiga OS? What would you do with Sky OS??
@Nycran
We love many none Windows operating systems.
> I hope this discussion doesn’t get nasty because
> I think that Robert, after all, had in his heart
> the best of intentions. Those who paid for the
> beta’s in the hope of getting a full product –
> consider your payments a donation to the future
> ‘SkyOS Foundation”
Unless Robert sends out refunds to every person who ever paid for SkyOS, I see a lawsuit in his future. Whatever his intentions were are irrelevant. The fact is, paying customers got shafted. Paying customers were promised a product he did not, and it appears is not going to deliver. They have every right to demand their money back.
That’s not being nasty. It’s simply how the game is played. If you are going to sell customers a product, you better deliver on your promises. If you can’t or won’t deliver, you better be prepared to give refunds.
He was not asking for “donations to the SkyOS Foundation” He was selling a product he failed to deliver. There’s a big difference.
Maybe he should have thought twice before charging people if he wasn’t sure he could deliver the ultimate goods they payed for.
Edited 2009-01-31 10:59 UTC
Where they? Do they?
I paid for SkyOS a few years ago, and from what I recall what I was promised was access to the beta and a copy of the final version if and when it was finished. I got access to the beta, and I have no doubt that if a final version ever ships I’ll get that to. So as such I got everything I paid for, ie access to the beta. I’m a happy customer and feel no need for a refund and certainly no need for a lawsuit.
If a final boxed version ever appears and the beta crowd don’t get their copy then we can start talking refunds, but until then at least I feel I got everything I paid for.
I don’t know what is promised to the beta testers, but this reminds me of the BeOS 4.5 -> 5.0 issue. Be was forced to release a 5.0 version for free I think because they included some GPL-licensed software. So, couldn’t that be the case? He might could open source one version, and still give the beta testers some (no offense) stupid version that has some pointless feature so legally they still have a “beta tester” version of the “upgraded” edition.
Or, similarly, not release the kernel, but allow 3rd party development of everything else. Also allowing 3rd-party drivers.
Just thinking out loud here.
The release of BeOS 5 had nothing to do with GPL software. There was a free version and a version you could pay for that had a few extras. This was at the time of the famous “focus shift” which had much more to do with BeFree than anything else. There were no GPL issues involved.
I bought the Beta; It seemed it was a reasonable fee to pay to take a look at a new operating system. (rather than say the 57th variety of Linux.)
As for open source; it does not solve all problems; sometimes a company open sources some really interesting and unique software; and it just rusts away from lack of maintenance or ends up forked to death.
Does anybody remember the arguments for turning SkyOS into closed source back in the days?
If I don’t remember wrong, one of the reasons for going closed source, was to keep focus on one direction, rather than suffering from the lack of focus in open source.
Anyway, since the hardware development seems to be making things hard for Robert, it might be a good idea to switch to a different kernel. Why not run SkyOS userland on the BSD-kernel? Or a (most likely heavily modified) linux-kernel if the GPL is acceptable?
Otherwise we might as well run GNUstep.
IIRC, that was one point – another was that, with v5 and on, SkyOS would mature and be overhauled to the point, it would pose a competitive alternative to commercial desktop OSs
and actually it was posed to be so, even its security model has very very little short of the one from NT/2000+
or to open source the OS under a license that can benefit it by allowing linux drivers to be ported (although the fact drivers are bound to the main kernel license wise, is something i truly despise… for non trivial devices reference code should be available for everybody to use and adapt, under non restrictive licenses imho)
no, please… the beauty of SkyOS mainly lies in it being a true altenative OS (rather than yet another linux distribution or unix variant), and in its kernel
why not on the haiku kernel instead?
after all, haiku and skyos have similar goals (being usable *desktop*, rather than server, OS’s – being tuned for desktop responsiveness, skyOs’ kernel actually remind me more of haiku’s than bsd’s, mainly envisioned for server workloads) and technologies (eg skyos’ FS indexing was in fact inspired by the BeOS/haiku system iirc), haiku seems gaining momentum as of late (which lets one hope for more support in the future), and its code is BSD/MIT licensed
or Haiku …
I have not read all of the other posts. So, my apologies if this has been said.
First off, be proud of what you have accomplished. Don’t think of it as a failure. If you “can’t”, that’s one thing. If you weigh the pros and cons, then “choose” not to, that’s not failing.
Secondly, your family is your priority. Kids grow up too quickly. Don’t miss a second of it. This should probably have been number 1.
Third, give SkyOS to the community where it might have a chance to grow.
With your talent, I’m confident that you can put less effort into something that will pay bigger returns. You owe that to yourself and your family.
I guess this article has created enough of a stir to get people flocking to the skyos website in numbers it wasn’t meant to handle, because I have not been able to get skyos.org to load since it came up.
http://web.archive.org/web/20060104042708/www.skyos.org/getcd.php
SkyOS 5.0 beta program membership
– Access to download links for all recent and future SkyOS 5.0-beta versions
– SkyOS 5.0-final as downloadable ISO image
– Newest copy of SkyOS programmers book (PDF)
– All available software packages for SkyOS 5
– All available libraries and device drivers
– All older SkyOS versions as .ZIP file
– Videos of SkyOS 5.0-beta in action
– a position on the team as a beta tester
– access to the beta team forums where you can post any bugs or feature requests
– extra technical support, with questions answered directly in the beta forum by Robert and other members of the SkyOS dev team
$ 30
——————————-
Okay, so $30 is not that much, but we where supposed to get all the Beta AND a final SkyOS V5 ISO.
It was never “IF”, a final release was supposed to happen.
So yeah, Robert could be in trouble. People who paid could ask for a refund.
I don’t know if opensource is the way to go. It seems that every single project that has problems becomes opensource and there is too much wasted efforts. My sugestion would be to merge with some other project and use the best of both, Maybe Haiku, after all they share the same filesystem although SkyOS has some really radical stuff on it. Maybe both projects could establish some form of standard API for devices that way developers of both worlds could make more broad drivers.
I don’t want my $30 back. He can have it. I have already wasted too much time on SkyOS.
I payed $30 for SkyOS beta as well and I have absolutely no problem with the current situation. I’m surprised at how many of you feel like you were scammed out of your money. I mean… how many open source or ‘hobby-ware’ projects fail for each one that takes-off and becomes a bonafide success? You simply bet your money on a horse that may or may not finish the race.
> I’m surprised at how many of you feel like you
> were scammed out of your money. I mean…
> how many open source or ‘hobby-ware’ projects fail
> for each one that takes-off and becomes a
> bonafide success? You simply bet your money on a
> horse that may or may not finish the race.
It’s not like people were investing money hoping to get a monetary return on their investment. It’s not a horse race either. You bet on a horse in a horse race hoping for a return on your investment. He wasn’t asking for venture capital or donations here. He was selling people a product he never delivered. So people have a right to be angry.
It’s true that most open source / hobby OS’s fail. But most aren’t charging people for a product they never deliver. The vast majority of open source / hobby OS’s out there are free.
No one is claiming he intentionally scammed people out of their money. I don’t think anyone believes that. But the end result is the same. People paid for a product they never received.
Edited 2009-02-01 07:27 UTC
In the meantime my account at SkyOS seems to have been deleted. What gives?
As I said, I am a beta tester. My username there is “Alessandro”.
For the sake of honesty: my account is active again.
Okay, so Robert is having a hard time following the fast changing hardware world. So, lets limit the hardware…
Why not change the focus of SkyOS and take aim at Netbooks?
Limited hardware, all Intel, ATOM, GMA 950, small SSD/HDD. I don’t know about drivers or stuff, but my guess is it could be easier to do and maintain. Even if Intel release a new chipset (Poulsbo), the change are less fast in the Netbook market than in any other.
Just a tough….
I just want my money back for failure to deliver the purchased product.