OSDev.org

I saw people posting their OS here and realized that there are lots of OS that has been created and developed(they often do the same thing). But I wonder that, if every contributor herein unites and starts a project from scratch, with the help of a tool like Github so that everyone will be able to work coordinately.There may even occur a final product which can be done in months with every contributors support. Are you interested ?

I'm in ! I've been thinking of this for a while, and yeah, I agree that there can be a community-made OS. Hope there will be others soon.

I play with OS development for fun and to educate myself. I'm guessing that some others here have similar motives.

I have no interest whatsoever in being a small part of some mega-collaboration. There are plenty of those available already if I were interested.

As iansjack said, if I wanted to contribute to some large project I‘d choose something like Linux.

For my own project, I won‘t let anyone tell me what to do or how something is going to be implemented, I want to be my own master there.

Similar for me. And I like to have run code that _I_ have written.

I once in a while try out other small OSs (like Haiku) as an end user, but they mostly lack applications, so I use GNU/Linux for my "bread and butter" computing. Not that I like Linux, but I use it. If Mozilla Firefox were ported to one of those OSs, maybe I would use that. But only as an end user, not as a system programmer. (Maybe later I will. But currently I am in the kernel development phase.)

Greetings
Peter

There have been projects like this in the past, some made it quite far (e.g., Tyndur by a German OSdev community). However, instead of persuading other people to join a common project (that simply won't work ), it's probably more effective to just join an existing project yourself.

Let me also remark that managing a large project introduces some overhead; people sometimes tend to neglect this fact. Additionally, the challenge of making a successful OS (or another open source project) is not so much the initial development effort but more the consistency and dedication required to keep the project alive over longer periods of time. Various projects (ToaruOS, Serenity; I'd also like to think that my Managarm project is among these) have proven that one can achieve impressive results in little time but maintaining a production quality OS over longer periods of time is an entirely different challenge. For Managarm, I could name dozens of boring maintenance tasks that are necessary for the long-term health of the project but that do not lead to impressive new capabilities of the system. Lastly, let me remark that newcomers often do not really grasp the amount of work required to develop a fully-featured OS. When you start OSdeving, it seems that the grand challenges are things like an USB stack or native graphics drivers. However, at some point you notice that this is not true: you can cook up a USB stack or a graphics driver in a few weeks of dedicated work. But in the long term, the time that you invest into maintenance is an order of magnitude larger than the time that you invest into shiny new features.

I, too, agree with everyone else here. Though a mega-collab would be interesting to see, I wouldn't take part. I might ask people to help contribute to my OS, for example, but I'm perfectly fine if they don't. Like everyone else here I started mine to learn. If my OS does get somewhere and it does turn into a true collaborative project, awesome. But I won't complain if it doesn't. Hell, I'm going to have to slow the development speed down considerably because I'm in college and need to do other things besides OS dev.

For those who are learning how to create an OS for educating themselves, that makes sense. But I think for those of you who wants to create a unique OS, so that you can change certain things in computers, and you may even be able to change the world, I think there are people like that here too. And in my opinion, it would be literally waste of time if people work on different projects but actually the projects have the same goal. Anyways, even if people here don't wanna build an OS together here(which also makes a lot of sense because this is a huge community with thousands of people), I hope some day a worldwide well-known OS project from someone here will be created. Thanks.

Yeah, sounds good. But there are already impressive projects which you and others can join. Haiku, managarm, Hurd, ReactOS, BSD-systems. And many more. Oh and not to forget Linux. So perhaps it would be a waste of time to build a new system here while mature (or alpha-stage) projects with the same goal might already exist.

And the goals here are very different. Some want something small, some want a PD OS, others a fast Assembler system, some want a microkernel, other POSIX, or a cool GUI. And many more, I guess you get the idea.

Happy hacking
Peter

Do you know how to join those projects ? If there's an application process, etc. ?


Thanks

You normally subscribe to the project's mailing list or enter the proper IRC and ask what you can do. Of course you must tell them about your skills so they can assign you a proper task. On the other hand you can simply download the source code and see if you can handle it and what you would like to contribute. My suggestion: Start with something small and easy.

And first check which project you like.
What license model do you want to use? There are GPL systems, BSD license systems, PD systems, proprietary ones. And others.
What feature would you love in an OS? Real time? GUI? Assembler? C++? Small? Big? Persistent? Gaming? And many more...Your imagination is wanted here, sky 's the limit.

If you want some suggestion, I recommend ReactOS (open source Windows clone), Linux (you don't have to contribute to the kernel, there are other system parts, too), Haiku (elegant), and perhaps Hurd (modular system servers/services).

Greetings and happy hacking
Peter