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With free software and properly documented hardware, you would never need to miss an OS; you could just use it.

by madez 9y ago

wpietri 9y ago
I think that's highly, highly unlikely in this case.What you also need is a supply of skill and labor sufficient to keep things running. There is a lot of new hardware out there. Most manufacturers don't even do real updates for their own phones; I can't imagine what it would take to get WebOS running on the variety of hardware in circulation today. And in this case, having a 2009 v 1.0 phone OS running on new hardware surely isn't sufficient. Our ideas of what a phone should do have expanded significantly. So we're really talking a large development effort. One estimate I see says Apple has 1000-2000 people working on iOS. Given Android's much larger hardware ecosystem, I'd bet the number of people working on Android one way or another is larger. Matching that with an open source effort seems implausible to me.
- madez 9y ago
  > Matching that with an open source effort seems implausible to me. You don't have to because it is an inadequate comparison. You don't need much effort to continue using old software. There are people who still use SNES with the original OS. Where are the people maintaining that? There are none, because none are needed. If you think an "old" OS isn't sufficient because we now demand things of an OS the old one doesn't deliver, then you would rapidly stop missing it after using it for a while. So, not much development needed either.
  - wpietri 9y ago
    We're talking about a phone OS here. If they just wanted to haul out a 2009 phone out and use it, they could do that just fine, with no open sourcing. You can still buy them off eBay. Since they haven't done that, you might consider that they want something else. I also disagree that using one of those today would make somebody not miss it. What they could reasonably miss is what it could have been. That's certainly what I'd love to see: a WebOS grown up, with a decade's investment along the lines of the original.

With free software and properly documented hardware, you would never need to miss an OS; you could just use it.

by madez 9y ago

With free software and properly documented hardware, you would never need to miss an OS; you could just use it.

I think that's highly, highly unlikely in this case.What you also need is a supply of skill and labor sufficient to keep things running. There is a lot of new hardware out there. Most manufacturers don't even do real updates for their own phones; I can't imagine what it would take to get WebOS running on the variety of hardware in circulation today. And in this case, having a 2009 v 1.0 phone OS running on new hardware surely isn't sufficient. Our ideas of what a phone should do have expanded significantly. So we're really talking a large development effort. One estimate I see says Apple has 1000-2000 people working on iOS. Given Android's much larger hardware ecosystem, I'd bet the number of people working on Android one way or another is larger. Matching that with an open source effort seems implausible to me.

madez 9y ago
> Matching that with an open source effort seems implausible to me. You don't have to because it is an inadequate comparison. You don't need much effort to continue using old software. There are people who still use SNES with the original OS. Where are the people maintaining that? There are none, because none are needed. If you think an "old" OS isn't sufficient because we now demand things of an OS the old one doesn't deliver, then you would rapidly stop missing it after using it for a while. So, not much development needed either.
- wpietri 9y ago
  We're talking about a phone OS here. If they just wanted to haul out a 2009 phone out and use it, they could do that just fine, with no open sourcing. You can still buy them off eBay. Since they haven't done that, you might consider that they want something else. I also disagree that using one of those today would make somebody not miss it. What they could reasonably miss is what it could have been. That's certainly what I'd love to see: a WebOS grown up, with a decade's investment along the lines of the original.