Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Open OS Part II

Most of the computers (PC, server, supercomputer etc) or modern day devices (iphone, xbox, PS3 etc) have main functionality common, than way not create a standard to do computation, storage and Input/Output which can free us from platform dependent OS and in long run applications too. Today on Internet point A is independent of point B and that is the main reason cloud computing and P2P storage is getting attraction. In Internet you can compute, store, put or get independent of OS running on client or server side.

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

World needs an Open standard for Operating Systems

Operating System (OS) is one of the main components in today's device world. Every digital electronic device requires an OS to operate, control and manage the resources. These resources could be in the form of Hardware like Processor, Memory, keyboard, mouse, and printer or could be in the form of Software like Browser, Spreadsheets and databases. An OS is required for using mobile phone, super computer, PC, Laptop or even a car's board computer. The main function for every OS is same and that is "managing resources". There are four main types of resources an OS have to control. They are components use for Processing, storage, Input and output of information. I do not agree with following both definitions about an OS:

http://pcsupport.about.com/od/termshm/g/term_os.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operating_system

The main function of all operating systems is same. I think there is a need to standardize the main functions of OS. I do not mean to create an OS like Linux instead only standardizing the main functionality. An open standard base OS can provide the platform to develop HW and SW in much robust way. Just for example imagine a world without device drivers or single software for every kind of OS (Mac, Windows, UNIX, and Linux). An open OS standard can help accelerate the development of HW and SW at much faster pace.

The open OS standard should be viable to use on Car's board computer, Handheld, PC, Laptop, supercomputer or virtually on any device which perform the main functions I mentioned in the first paragraph. The standard should not delivery any code instead it should delivery the way a code should communicate with the device. In order to understand the concept we can use the example of IETF which define open standards for Internet. There are no programming codes defined in the IETF instead only the way it should be written to communicate with rest of the systems.
I would love to discuss this idea with any body who is interested in it.