Re: [linux-audio-dev] [Fwd: AES, Linux and BeOS]

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Subject: Re: [linux-audio-dev] [Fwd: AES, Linux and BeOS]
From: Paul Barton-Davis (pbd_AT_Op.Net)
Date: su syys   26 1999 - 16:54:58 EDT


 [ .. excellent comments on BeOS and Linux elided ... ]

>We should all agree that BeOS and Linux are to be seen as the
>competition against MacOS and Windows rather than competing themselves.

I wish I could agree with you. But I don't think that companies see it
that way. I was very upset about Creamware ushering me out of the room
when a guy from Be came in. For companies with limited resources, they
have to choose between potential areas to put their efforts
towards. BeOS and Linux are not so similar as to make porting trivial,
and so these companies *do* have to choose ...

>I don't like Paul saying, wrt Steinberg :
>
>"They seem to have
>abandoned the idea of an IRIX port, and are focusing on BeOS. I gave
>them a brief argument why this might be a bad idea."
>
>It is quite useless to tell Steinberg that this is a bad idea, since
>
>a) it is a good idea ;-)

I said that *focusing* on BeOS was a bad idea, not Nuendo on BeOS was
a bad idea.

Alan Cox observed that BeOS is a really great OS for the current idea
of what a multimedia application should be. But the current idea has
been formed on systems like Windows and the MacOS which have not been
capable of the kinds of things that can be done on Linux. Integrating
large databases and networking into multimedia is going to be very hot
thing to do in the next 5 years or less. I don't see any evidence
that BeOS is going to be able to compete with Linux in these areas,
since we already have Oracle running, and we run "just over half the
internet".

Look at it another way. It took Ingo, with some prodding from Benno, a
couple of weeks to implement a solution that got us reliable
scheduling for sub-5ms RTT latency, supposedly one of BeOS's crown
jewels. How long do you think it will be before BeOS can support the
kinds of networking hardware and technology that Linux does ? How long
until it supports an industrial strength RDBMS ?

Right now, nobody thinks that this kind of stuff is part of
"multimedia", but I think that Alan is right; a couple of years from
now, and mark my words, people will be trying to buy systems to do
webcasting from their Nuendo setups, and if they can buy them, they
won't be running BeOS. People will want to use the kinds of tricks
that oracle have mastered to access vast warehouses of sound and video
samples. I don't see Oracle running on BeOS in the next 5 years, if
ever.

So, in summary, I think its fine for Steinberg, or anyone else, to
port stuff to BeOS. But by *focusing* on BeOS, they may miss the boat,
or alternatively, a boat that could be built easily never will be.

--p


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