Thanks, Dave!
Re: The 'historical document' aspect -- that one instance of '2001' is... 1991?
---
When it comes to 'reading' this, I won't pretend to speak for him, but the mention of
KOSH should be a flag. That was/is Fleecy's project (in the sense that it was his focus, I'm not sure where he did or does live with it organizationally), and whether or not it could ever fly - so far it obviously hasn't - you can't say it wasn't an attempt to be forward-looking. AInc. has kept its sights on the same goalposts (portability, modularity, network-abstraction), even if they keep changing the playing surface and their gear. [The original 4.0 plan with the Escena AmigaOne was actually the odd duck out, the 'Fine, we give up, let's do what the community thinks it wants' project... Given the dramatic success there, the hobby-hardware approach ended up on the floor anyway, and the much-delayed 4 is of a form that can at least serve a base for an 'AG2' if there's anyone left to write it. Back to square one, but at least it's a nice, self-righteous square to be at.]
So that's AInc.'s recurring theme. Genesi's recurring theme, if there is one, seems to revolve around becoming a a rocking convergence/entertainment company; MorphOS looked like it was going to be "the stable one" up against 4, but as soon as the pressure turned up and the spotlights came on, running everything, or at least the UI (which everything has to touch, especially the sort of conveniences and toys likely to come as untrusted code*) in one memory context became a feature?
Enh, I'm being a jerk. ;-) But the thing is, AInc. set itself up to at least try to look like an 'OS' (okay, 'runtime,' for a brief period) company. Barring apparent or actual acts of stupidity, their own plan promotes getting it right and keeping things open (the most dramatic missteps have happened when that's failed, as with the NDA'd-forever SDK updates, or the PR stumble with the 'certification ROMs' and OS bundling**); Genesi are going the 'platform' road, tackling a different and orthogonal set of problems; a few months ago it was improving and lightening the STB space, this week it's saving the music industry, all well and good while nearly unrelated to the design of the underlying OS. The code just has to be good enough to run the 'platform.'***
Problem is, if they end up against the wall, they'll be in the same position Apple was in with the CHRP market.**** The services, the XPerience are become the product, the OS is just that thing that makes it happen, and maybe maintains some hacker appeal for people who want to write snazzy demos fast without putting up with current tradeoffs for stability. [C vs. LISP, anyone?]
---
*All I can say is one compound word, starts with the letters "B-o-n-z..."
**Yes, it sucks that it's cheaper for a strong company to be 'ethical' and able to ignore the impact of piracy. The corrolary problem is that, right now, the 'name' needs to attract as many people as it can who'll at least *think* of happily exchanging money for goods and services at some point. If the main intention
was to piss off Thendic/Genesi, sheesh, just say it -- "We work on royalties here, call us when you have a platform where a port will be worth more than our development time?"
***I'm trying to use 'platform' to connote the sense of interally developed/organized projects here, in the sense of iTunes, iMovie, iDVD, iPhoto, iChat, iBoughtaMacforthisstuff sowhatiftheFindercorruptseverytenthtimeitgoesintosleepmode? More seriously, I don't see Genesi getting quite as tight as Apple here, but that 'added value' is the fun part to the management. Which itself is cool and all, a computer is only as useful as the stuff you can do with it, but then you've got guys like me who'd rather not waste any more brain cells on technology unless there's some vague hope of making it set-and-forget. Both products are evolving, I'm sure the architectural issues will all get touched and shuffled around at some point...
An Apple-type "platform" arrangement does have more 'freedom;' as-demonstrated, you can kick your customers from one OS to another and a majority won't complain as long as the artwork is shinier and iTunes still works.
****But hey, it's not hard to be smarter than Apple, and Genesi have the opportunity here. Just bundle all the cool 'free' services to the hardware rather than the OS, and let cloners run with it; charge (affordable but profitable) entrance fees for everyone without the hardware-buy season pass, and you're bringing in the dough either way. [
Edit to acknowledge that this is, in fact, what Apple's doing right now, except they've figured out how to stick it to their own customers, too. The Music Store is conceptually orthogonal (ain't that a fun word?) to anything that has to do with OSes, though in practice, they're making it easy on themselves by keeping it limited to platforms with strong DRM.]
Plus, that makes the peons who'll stick with *NIX happy, and convinces them to invest in your platform as open, friendly hardware. ;-)
