What are the goal of MOOSE

[ANDREASA@dhhalden.no]

One thing that is clear like norwegian mountain rivers are, we don't know
what we are doing, do we.

Everybody says, let's give her a name, then everybody says, let's not. We
must define what features this babe shall have. And they are right. Name
doesn't matter, not yet anyway.
Then everybody says, it should have this feature and it should have that,
and then I don't agree with you about that, or I do. Maybe, maybe not.
Maybe she'll never be born in other places than in our own imagination, and
that is possible where it should end, I don't know?
Do you wan't to give birth to this child? Are you sure she won't become a
bastard,... and then an orphan......
Let's not, I repeat, let's not let this happen, so maybe it's time to tell you
why, and what, if you haven't thought of it by yourself yet.
One part is missing, and do you, do all of us, do we all know what? Maybe.
Should this child be a UN*X like piece of work, considering the way it should
work? Or an OS/2, or a Mac? Get my point? What is the goal?????
What is the meaning to give birth to a child if we don't know the
meaning of life?


We must define a usergroup. Who do we want to use this OS. Should it be
targeted UNIX gurus, or PC fans, or Mac fans, or Atari fans (not the 8bit
Dennis, the 16 bit version :-), I actually had one of thoose 8 bit myself,
a wonderful machine, don't you think so? :-)

Let's face the facts, as looked upon through my eyes.
We are developing for the PC based market, aren't we. We are talking Mac,
PC, Amiga, we are talking 68020, 030 and 80386. The 80386 is commonly
equiped with an isa/eisa bus. Ide hard disk controller, svga card and mouse.
What do we know of the common PC users of today?
They sit with the mouse in the right hand pointing and clicking. Staring at
those awful windows. There are some exceptions, us - the programmers.
We like to have the power in the keyboard, not in the mouse, when we work.
And in that way, we are quite unique in the way we are using computers.
Most people use computers because they want something done, not because
computers are, as we do :-)
See my point. Are we going to build an OS that looks like UglyBuggly MS-DOS,
or as terrible, and half as powerful, as unix. Who are we targetin' at?
Is this OS only for programmers.
I say, let us _try_ to save the world from the powerful and bad and ugly
Gates Ghost.
Let's face it, 90 percent of us might want a text ui, because it is faster
(and better in all ways), but 90 percent of the computerusers in the world
don't want a text ui, _if_ it makes the computer more difficult to
communicate with.
Do you see my point, let's not discuss names and features now. We have
many different views, and since nobody pays us, we can use our mind freely.
Let's find out who is going to use our child.

I vote (not for a name:-) that we develop/dedicate this OS for all programmers
that build userfriendly programs under windows, and hates it because it is too
combersome, takes to much time and crashes to often.
I vote for making this program understandable for 99 percent of the 386
computerusers, not 5 percent of them.



When it comes to desicion, Dennis invited me to join this adventure, and
he asked me to come up with ideas. I don't want to put Dennis in the role
of a dictator, so I say 2/3 of us must agree/disagree when we comes
to decisions, and either give Dennis veto, or a weight vote.
When it comes to who should compile these revision etc. let Dennis continue
as long as he wants. After all, we are all invited by him alone.


Now, say whatever you want about what I have written. Take a printout of it
and use it as toilet paper, or anything else, I don't care, but let us
find out what the purpose of MOOSE is. If we don't it may still be structured
as heaven, but become a hack worse than hell...

Arff
sig.'s in for 1000 miles service
        --Andreas Arff          andreasa@sofus.dhhalden.no--