From: cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net   
      
   In article <88894e43-6c97-4ee0-b927-5001f20ebee8n@googlegroups.com>,   
   muta...@gmail.com  wrote:   
   >On Tuesday, March 21, 2023 at 9:00:17 PM UTC+8, Dan Cross wrote:   
   >   
   >> >No-one is going to own something so fundamentally   
   >> >important as the operating system.   
   >   
   >> With all due respect, I suggest you double check   
   >> your priors.   
   >   
   >Pardon?   
   >   
   >MVS 3.8J was public domain, but can't be maintained   
   >because it can't be built from source, the source is out   
   >of date, the source is in assembler, and a lot of that   
   >source is generated.   
   >   
   >MVT has a subset of those issues.   
   >   
   >What's the equivalent of PDOS? The other one I know of   
   >is Temple OS. Is that what you're referring to?   
      
   I'm not particularly interested in pursuing this matter, but   
   since you asked, what I mean is that this, as a goal, seems   
   mostly uninformed and very uninteresting.   
      
   I don't think most people much care about whether their OS is   
   "public domain" if it is available under some reasonable   
   license, which many operating systems are.  A lot of lawyers   
   have spent a lot of hours going over these issues and have   
   come to the conclusion that copyleft licenses, permissive   
   licenses, and the ones in the middle are pretty reasonable and   
   fine.   
      
   So apparently someone does own the "fundamentally important"   
   operating system, and I don't see a problem with that.  Linux,   
   for example, runs on literally billions of devices, and the GPL   
   has been tested in court.  TempleOS and PDOS, on the other hand,   
   are toys.  PDOS doesn't even appear to have a process   
   abstraction, let alone memory protection, both of which are   
   requisite for any sort of serious work these days.   
      
   On the other hand, people _do_ care about being able to use   
   their computers to solve real problems.  Neither TempleOS nor   
   PDOS appear to be particularly useful for that.  Consider the   
   context of this thread, for example; PDOS apparently can't   
   exist without making use of a BIOS or something similar.  Well,   
   who owns that?   
      
   So the premise, that "No-one [sic] is going to own something   
   so fundamentally important as the operating system" seems both   
   meaningless and untrue.   
      
   Moreover, the world has moved on from 32-bit operating systems.   
   I can't imagine why anyone would feel compelled to use PDOS for   
   serious work, let alone TempleOS.  Goof around with that stuff   
   to learn how simple program loaders and the machine works?   
   Sure, why not.  But as a basis for serious work?  Delusions of   
   grandeur notwithstanding, that's not going to happen.   
      
   	- Dan C.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)