The story behind Senerenity OS is quite amazing:
It was October 2018 and I had just completed a 3-month rehab program at a state addiction clinic in Sweden. I was unemployed, staying with family, and had basically nothing going on.
With no drugs or other vices to pass the time, the days seemed impossibly long. I struggled to find activities to fill them. I enrolled in school for a while, but it wasnβt for me this time either. Eventually I turned to programming, since itβs always been my big interest in life.
Until that point, my career had been focused on web browsers (WebKit at Apple & Nokia). However, I had always been interested in low-level things so I began tinkering with some of that. I wrote a little ELF executable parserβ¦ And an Ext2 filesystem browserβ¦ And a little GUI framework with an event loopβ¦
Out of this tinkering, an operating system began to take shape. I chose the name SerenityOS because I wanted to always remember the Serenity Prayer. I was quite worried about my future at the time, and I figured that this name would help me stay on the good path.
My general idea was to build my own dream system for daily use. It would be a combination of my two favorite computing paradigms: the 1990s GUI and the no-nonsense command-line of late-2000s Unix.
Source: https://awesomekling.substack.com/p/i-quit-my-job-to-focus-on-serenityos-full-time
The author was a guest on the Changelog podcast. The episode was an interesting one, I highly recommend it
The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source: The serenity of building your own OS
Episode webpage: https://changelog.com/podcast/554
Media file: https://op3.dev/e/https://cdn.changelog.com/uploads/podcast/554/the-changelog-554.mp3
Wait, so thatβs a proper *NIX system? A non-linux system? Thatβs quite impressive!
Yes and they implement EVERYTHING in house. In case you havenβt heard they also started implementing a browser engine from scratch https://ladybird.dev/ just for fun. It kinda took off and they even got some nice donations, just to keep it going and see where it leads.
The βfoundersβ youtube channel is quit interesting. Especially the monthly update videos if you want to keep up to date with the latest developments. https://inv.tux.pizza/channel/UC3ts8coMP645hZw9JSD3pqQ
Yikes.
Building everything from scratch is one thing.
Maintaining it is completely different.
tried it out in a VM, I was truly impressed by that browser.
I mean, sure, lots of pages donβt work, but lots of pages DOES work on it, with no issues.
Never seen this on any custom, βbuilt inβ browser of an alternative OS.
Itβs a work in progress. Most sites wonβt work but some do. Check out this latest development update video: https://inv.tux.pizza/watch?v=giq5iXJntgQ&t=911 That link leads directly to the βdemo segmentβ where he opens some sites.
Why do groups insist on BSD/MIT/Apache style licensingβ¦
I donβt know about the creators of this project, but in general: So that they can use the stuff in their closed source applications while finding enough contributors to write software for them for free.
Because I like the 2-clause BSD license. I am not a fan of βcopyleftβ or forcing obligations on people in general. I want my software to be available for anyone who wants to use it.
He missed the entire point of copyleft which is a bit disappointing.
All well, at least it is libre. I respect his choice in the end as pressuring or forcing someone to use a copy left license us just as bad as proprietary software
The GPL is a better choice if you want to make money from the software. With a pushover license, your competitors can extend the program and profit from it in a way you canβt because they arenβt required to give the changes back. The GPL evens the playing field. Of course, you often see the original company requiring a CLA so they retain copyright over all of the code.
On the other hand, it does enable possibilities that you would be very unlikely to get otherwise. For example, Cedega (formerly WineX) forked Wine when it used a pushover license and brokered deals with game companies to make the DRM compatible with WineX/Cedega. That meant you could play these games on Linux-based OSes with Cedega, but not Wine. I really wonder if it would have been possible to make Wine compatible with some of these DRM schemes otherwise. Consequently, however, Cedega could not incorporate any changes from LGPLβd Wine, as that would have required them to license Cedega under the LGPL, too.
Thatβs another issue. You can incorporate MIT-licensed software in GPL software, but you canβt incorporate GPL software in MIT-licensed software. So going with the GPL gives you more options. As SerenityOS is building everything from scratch, this isnβt an issue, but you can well see how it could be. The LGPL is far less disruptive to people who want to release their software under a pushover license. It only requires you give back any changes to the LGPL-licensed part, and does not cover other parts of your program. Personally, I really like the LGPL. It levels the playing field while being quite compatible. Itβs not perfect either, of course.
Itβs a tricky question, and there are no right answers. Ultimately, the decision is up to the developer and I canβt fault any choice, including the decision to use a proprietary license.
Is it possible to run it in VM?
Edit: itβs meant to run on a vm. cool!
Serenity now, insanity later.
