What are the goal of MOOSE

[Gary D. Duzan]

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

   Well, that would be about par for me. :-)

=>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.

   I've been pushing a bit for a name to help unify and solidify the
group. It is a lot easier to say "I'm working on Project X" than to say
"I'm working with Joe Random Group to put together the Foobar System."
When I say "GNU", you know what I am talking about, even though the
name doesn't specify it's goals. What's in a name? A rose by any other
name would smell as sweet. But would you want to call it "That Red
Flower"?  A name is just something to focus upon. That and the fact
that I really don't like "MOOSE". :-)

=>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......

   There is nothing wrong with being a bastard or an orphan. Obscurity
is survivable, if not particularly desirable. So long as the child is
one to be proud of.

=>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?

   With this philosophy, we would never have to worry about
overpopulation. :-)

=>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? :-)

   I'm a veteran Atari 8-bitter, myself, and I'd have to agree with
you on that point. However, I'm not certain that we need to define our
audience. The only thing the audience ever sees is the User Interface
and the Applications. We should have plenty of work to do before we get
to anything that the user will see.

=>Let's face the facts, as looked upon through my eyes.

   Facts, as seen through anyone's eyes, are perceptions.

=>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.

   Yeah, sounds pretty standard. However, if somehow we manage to get
people to like our system, we will probably want to be able to port
it to some of the more powerful systems.

=>What do we know of the common PC users of today?

   Far too much, in my experience. :-)

=>Is this OS only for programmers.

   The OS should always be for the programmers; the user interface
should be for the users.

=>I say, let us _try_ to save the world from the powerful and bad and ugly
=>Gates Ghost.

   David vs. Goliath? :-)

=>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.

   So we make both. The stuff underneath stays the same. As long as we
know from the start that we want to support both and build in the
required functionality, we should be fine.

=>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.

   My point would be that people don't use an OS, they use applications.
Even if we write the perfect OS, no one is going to use it if there are
no applications available for it. If wide acceptance is going to be a
primary goal, then we are going to need an application programming
group once we start getting close to release.

=>I vote (not for a name:-) that we develop/dedicate this OS for all programmer
s
=>that build userfriendly programs under windows, and hates it because it is to
o
=>combersome, takes to much time and crashes to often.

   That is certainly an admirable goal.

=>I vote for making this program understandable for 99 percent of the 386
=>computerusers, not 5 percent of them.

   I hope you mean the interface, and not the code. :-)

=>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.

   Deja vu all over again. :-)

                                        Gary Duzan
                                        Time  Lord
                                    Third Regeneration
                         Humble Practitioner of the Computer Arts