An OS without a web browser is hardly an OS anymore; Microsoft won on that regard (credit to Bill for recognizing that).

But in general if you have something like this, it's often better to let it go where it wanders, even if it never attains the success of Linux, etc. Forcing a restricted scope often leads to burnout which kills it even faster.

> An OS without a web browser is hardly an OS anymore; Microsoft won on that regard (credit to Bill for recognizing that).

Sorry, but no, just no.

MS (correctly) recognized the threat that browser poses to OS through webaps. They bundled IE with Windows, however their bundling was a simple and effective (and monopolistic) strategy to take away market share from the then-leading browser, Netscape.

Yes, OS needs a browser. No, MS and Bill had nothing to do with that (and they artificially slowed down web the best they could - hello IE6!).

I do agree with the rest, but to credit MS that every OS needs a browser nowadays... Just no.

It seems like you -are- crediting MS for bundling a browser with an OS.

Their reasons are irrelevant.

OSs didn’t come with browsers. Microsoft bundled IE with Windows. Now every OS comes with a browser.

Of course they did, or if they didn't, browser was one of the first things installed. Windows was nothing new in this regard.

What was new was that OS was deeply connected to browser, so that uninstalling it was not an option. But that is not what GP claimed, and that is of course not a rule with newer OSs.

But anyway, let's talk about this great new SerenityOS instead. :) Over and out.

As proven by Web widgets on mobile OSes, game consoles and TV firmware, they were just ahead of their time. :)

Feature creep kinda defines the project. It's not a bug, it's a feature. :^)

Absolutely agreed. I've watched lots of his long-form videos on all those topics and initially I was always scratching my head as to why he'd want to reinvent all these wheels from the molecules up, but as I watched more, I realized that he's a journey guy, not necessarily a destination guy. To his credit, he's attracted a similarly-minded following of contributors along the way.

while endearing, it does endanger the trajectory of the main feature. 'how many paid FT devs are being added per feature' is what should be asked.

The only question that should be asked is "is this fun?"

> how many paid FT devs are being added per feature

Well, considering this is a fun project being worked on by volunteers (some of whom are sponsored by the community), I'm going to go out on a limb and say the answer to this question will always be "zero".

I'm not sure what the financials of the SerentiyOS project look like. It sounds like he streams the development. If that's his primary source of income, then doing the fun stuff seems like it enhances the revenue stream?

> People asking "Is it fun" are missing the point.

Are they? I thought the whole point of the entire project was fun.

Well, there's been a spreadsheet app for a while :^)

https://github.com/SerenityOS/serenity/tree/master/Userland/...

Just need a MacWrite-grade app that can export to PDF and SerenityOffice can be sold in a nice big box with a pile of floppies.

You missed GML, the compile time markup language for the UI:

https://man.serenityos.org/man5/GML-Introduction.html

Ex.

https://github.com/SerenityOS/serenity/blob/master/Userland/...

In general the scope creep is because Kling and co are all about fun and code beauty. And to their credit, the code is beautiful. :)

Would it still be feature creep if the number of competent volunteers/workers increases in equal measure? Couldn't we just call that a more robust feature fulfillment pipeline?

For many people a web browser and an office suite is all they use a computer for. If anything an office suite should be expected.

I have trouble believing that an OS, especially a graphical one, can be effectively developed/tested without having some GUI apps developed in parallel. Eat your own dog food and all.

this is actually mentioned in the article, by one of the quoted people.

It works out because of loose coupling + many contributors. People will work on the web browser and others will work on the main OS, and there aren’t too many conflicts or places where each team has to coordinate.

It also works because making a basic OS or web browser or programming language is not hard, 90% of the work goes into the final 10% of perfection. You can a) make minor improvements to the base OS, or b) create an entirely new program and a burst of seemingly-rapid development; SerenityOS is a passion project, so many people choose b.

Furthermore, many of the people working on the OS are still doing so, and some of the people working on the web browser may not have joined without it. So maybe it’s slowing down progress on the main OS but not by too much, the main OS is still improving.

Honestly I kind of predict people will start to branch off and work on a Serenity office, and Serenity painter and Serenity DAW and Serenity calendar and Serenity game engine. This is basically what KDE has done.

Well, there’s tons of room for improvement over that tools that exist on other OSs/platforms, so why not?

To stay true to the theme of being 90s-inspired, the office suite will have to include: Serenity Works!