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Want to build a new OS today? It's going to cost you $1.4bn (or more)

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zridling:


Amanda McPherson, marketing and developer programs VP at the Linux Foundation recently released a paper, Estimating the Total Development Cost of a Linux Distribution, in which she estimated that it would cost $1.4 billion for a company to build the Linux kernel from scratch today, and $10.8 billion to build an entire Linux distribution similar to Fedora 9.

Will we ever see another new OS in the next 25 years?
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http://eftu.co.cc/counting-the-cost-of-free-what-value-linux/

40hz:
I want a copy of that poster!  :-*

f0dder:
Will we ever see another new OS in the next 25 years?-zridling (June 08, 2010, 03:31 PM)
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Nope, and this is a pretty good reason to bash linux... we could have had a decent alternative to Windows if all those man-hours had been used on something proper, rather than what began as a minix offspring >_<

40hz:
^Better something workable today than something perfect never.

Gerry Weinberg said it best: Things are the way they are because they got to be that way.

Torvalds didn't set out to change the world, or prove anything, when he wrote his first minix-based kernal. He wrote the system he could write. And everything followed from that.

Anybody could have changed the roadmap of Linux at any time by just going back and rewriting that kernal "properly."

But they didn't. They took what they were given and built upon it.

Linux isn't really a designed system. You can't design in a group because a true design is the result of one person's vision and thinking. GNU/Linux is an evolving and emergent OS. It uses a Darwinian model of successive refinement and improvement. Those parts of it which work the best (or are hardest to replace) are what survives.

Not terribly efficient or pretty. There's always bloodshed where Darwin's "survival of the fittest" holds sway.

But it does work.

And, like life, it often produces some truly beautiful offspring.

 8)

Curt:
I want a copy of that poster!  
-40hz (June 09, 2010, 07:45 AM)
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-then read the next lines from your link...

If the DIY approach is too daunting, Linuxcare will be printing a run of posters at 120cmx168cm (about 4' x 5'8") for sale. If you are interested, send us mail.

A preview version was also sent to Everything Linux in Australia, so they may have them available for sale soon, too.
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