It may sound like the writer is implying lack of financial success is bad, but I don't think that's their intention. I think the word "product" is just a filler here - it could equally be "something" or "an executable".
In that case the videos are the product. But the author has since clarified here in the comments that they did actually mean the commercial value of OS itself.
One thing that makes TempleOS less approachable is the extreme idiosyncrasy of some of its design decisions - e.g. limiting it to 640x480 with 16 colours even though supporting higher resolution and colour depth would have been little extra work, an intentionally very garish user interface, refusing to implement any networking support for ideological reasons. It was never going to be a mainstream OS, but it might have attracted a larger community of tinkerers if it were not for those decisions. (There are forks which improve some of these aspects, but a fork is never going to be as popular as the original.)
That said, extreme idiosyncrasy is relatively common in schizophrenia.
It is notable for its intended use of the random number generator - Terry envisioned that it was a number chosen by his God. If you follow that path and reasoning through, you see what he meant with the OS being a temple.
Ask your colleagues if they heard about, and if they heard about it what is noticeable about it.
Majority of internet see “Ooh, that’s not Linux, Windows, Mac and has a lot of custom things written from scratch”. And also funni racist genius schizo.
I'm pretty sure none of my colleagues have heard of the James Webb Space Telescope either but I'd still say it's a notable thing. You're conflating mainstream fame with notability. Honestly I doubt many of my colleagues are familiar with Linux either (I work in a supermarket).
From talking with other people online, most people and articles fetishize the disease and the posts with racist words, and never really paid any attention to the OS itself.
Which to me is the saddest part. Before Terry started being banned from every place in the internet, he was chatty and always trying to drum up interest from others in hobbyist communities. Almost nobody paid attention (perhaps because everyone was also trying to do the same for their own OS), and those of us who did eventually got burned for obvious reasons. And the worst is that most people still don't care. His personality, his death, his disease, and his different practice of faith became more famous than the work he cared about, and that's all laypeople talk about. In HN people at least have a realistic view of TempleOS.
TempleOS is rather unusual for a hobbyist OS is being written in its own programming language.
There are people who develop their own operating systems as a hobby. There are people who design and implement their own programming languages as a hobby. For a single person to do both, in the one project, is actually pretty rare. Most people find trying to do both, together, is biting off way more than they can chew
I am not saying that TempleOS wasn't a technical marvel. It was. I am merely stating the fact that its usage was (mainly) limited to recreation. Not that that's a bad thing, but my own ambition is to produce something with more than margi... small product-market fit.
Edit: I'm sorry if I come across as arrogant. I still have the "decoration" (programming-wise) of my elite education I am trying to trim. :(
I think enough people in this very comment section have brought forward good points regarding what exactly they find noteworthy, impressive or inspiring about TempleOS, while that person has left nothing but dismissive comments without substance.
I think the author is just trying to say that the reason TempleOS didn’t receive widespread—or virtually any—regular use has more to do with its lack of inherent utility to most people, rather than a conspiracy to suppress its adoption as Terry apparently believed.
From what I’ve seen from videos where Terry was talking about TempleOS, it seems that a large part of the point of the OS and the programs that shipped with it was as a way of “talking to god”. Where he’d run a program and it would generate some random output and he said that those were words from god. I have to assume that this was very much because of his condition. Either way, a temple to god is part of what this OS was. TempleOS.
Furthermore, TempleOS validated many of his ideas of how an OS could be built differently from how many other OSes are made.
TempleOS is like a modern day Amiga or Commodore 64 operating system.
And I could easily imagine a world in which TempleOS was distributed preinstalled on some kind of non-networked home computer that they could have in Sunday schools around the world, as a tool for bible study and as a way of learning about computers, engaging youth who are interested in technology.
> he’d run a program and it would generate some random output and he said that those were words from god. I have to assume that this was very much because of his condition.
I actually think that seems perfectly internally consistent from the perspective of someone who seriously believes in a god. If (pseudo)random numbers and therefore the output of that program aren’t controlled by god, what is?
It amazes me how much terry latched onto that idea, even binding the "god says" functionality to the F7 key in TempleOS.
Sometimes I wonder how he would have reacted to ChatGPT and LLMs.
> it seems that a large part of the point of the OS and the programs that shipped with it was as a way of “talking to god”
That was just a personal interest of him, and something that the rest of the internet latched into heavily.
I personally remember him preferring to talk about technical stuff whenever possible.
Unfortunately he failed to find communities that wanted to talk about his preferred flavor of tech with him. The more I type those messages the more I remember: he just wanted to chat and drive attention to his OS.
> And I could easily imagine a world in which TempleOS was distributed preinstalled on some kind of non-networked home computer that they could have in Sunday schools around the world, as a tool for bible study
Every religious group (Christian or otherwise) I know of uses the internet, and the web in particular, to spread and discuss their ideas. The Vatican has a website that has the catechism, encyclicals, documents of church councils etc. There is lots of material about things like the interpretation of the Bible. A Jehovah's Witness I know recently sent me links to pages on their website promoting creationism. I replied with links to biologos.org (a mainstream Christian website about evolution and science) debunking her claims.
I have also found websites about every variant of every religion I have wanted to know about. I could do with a good explanation of Sikh concepts of God though if anyone can point me to one - I am sure it exists though.
Why would a Sunday school want to cut themselves off from all this material? Within a high controlling cult maybe. Not in general.
I think a world in which TempleOS was widely used would require lots of people to share Terry's beliefs about what technology was desirable and what was not.
> a way of learning about computers, engaging youth who are interested in technology
I have not tried TempleOS but it seems to be made to be tinkered with so sounds promising for education.
> Why would a Sunday school want to cut themselves off from all this material?
They could still have their iPads and internet connected laptops and other computers.
I’m not saying they should use TempleOS and nothing else.
I’m just saying it could make for a fun additional curious thing that they could have there and which the kids could use both for bible things and for technological interest.
What I am saying is that it is inferior for "bible things". What could you do on it that you could not do better with something like Ubuntu Christian Edition?
I don't even have any idea what it says or means anymore.. There's no reason (anymore) for macros to only be at the beginning of the line. But will this requirement ever go away? I doubt it.
One thing i do not understand, why bother writing this format directly instead of using some WYSIWYG editor (none exists - that i know of - for manpages specifically, but... why?)? All you need is to have some autoformatting for the output so that diffs in source control (if you care for that) are readable, but beyond that you shouldn't need to care at all about how the source looks for something that is essentially a rich text document - and rich text editors existed since the dawn of personal computing.
My experience with most *nix environments is that it’s mostly written for machines by programmers. Doesn’t seem like there’s much in the way of user researchers figuring out how to make it useable by non-programmer humans. Apple products excepted.
The example Makefile in this article is contrived, here's an example of a simple Makefile: https://git.suckless.org/dmenu/tree/Makefile. I can find plenty of other such examples.
What happens if you want the child to inherit other fds?
Or set other attributes such as the session, euid, egid etc?
The elegance of fork() is in avoiding the complexity of requiring every attribute of the process to be explicitly stated in order to create a new process. We simply inherit our parent's attributes and if that turns out not be desirable it is fixed in the child with the usual syscalls.
Your "avoiding the complexity" in fact turns into its mirror image: in order to ensure sane behaviour, you have to have a preamble to avoid inheriting things you don't want. This results in people writing things like http://www.linuxprogrammingblog.com/threads-and-fork-think-t... : the list of things you have to remember not to use in order to use the "elegant" API.
I'm not positive that it's elegant. It may also be considered an ugly hack (not sure either), and I'm pretty certain it's been responsible for many security holes.
It would be interesting to see in what ways Unix (especially shell scripts) would be different if processes would not inherit all the baggage by default.
Attributes is just another word for "global state". When we speak of elegance in computing, it often means functional programming languages where eradicating global state is the primary motivation.
So really fork is the opposite of elegance. It makes state implicit, not explicit.
That may have been fine in 1970, when there was very little to inherit (no thread handles, no named pipes, no semaphores, IIRC) and security wasn’t a big concern.
Nowadays, I think ‘whitelisting’ what the new process can do is the choice to make, not forking and then (hopefully) ‘blacklisting’ what you don’t want (that’s especially important if you eventually will be running code you didn’t write or, maybe, don’t even have source for)
That also is easier to test for. If you forget to specify a capability before forking, the bugs you see will be better reproducible than when you forget a thing you don’t need.
I can’t find it now, but try googling an article on how to properly fork a process nowadays. It is insanely difficult to do right.
My guess is the controversy around this issue makes it difficult to discuss. What I like about this article on various init systems is the relatively objective comparison of the different features and approaches of previous inits.
In several instances being honest has cost me socially. There doesn't seem to be a solution that doesn't ultimately result in rejection. Unless ofcourse you're willing to lie.
Recently I tried to help someone who I had known for a few years and who I respected then as soon as I did this, they turned on me and put me in a really difficult position.
The irony is that this is someone who claims to pride themselves on their higher moral values.
From now on, I'm going to be extremely cautious with people who present themselves as idealistic. Maybe it's also the sign of a manipulative psychopath.
Our society is littered with psychopaths these days. So much so that even those who aren't psychopaths are forced to pretend to be psychopaths just so that they can fit in.
For example in elite colleges/fraternities, they have some pretty twisted initiation rites... This is essentially institutionalized psychopathy. You have to prove yourself to be devoid of moral fibre just to fit in.
During WW2, the Captain of U-boat 156 sunk a passenger liner. He then immediately set about rescuing survivors, and began broadcasting his position and the humanitarian nature of his mission on all available channels. An American B-24 in the area began to attack, despite the Captain's pleas they were killing their own men and the U-boat was trying to save lives. Afterward, U-boats were explicitly ordered to never render humanitarian aid under any circumstances (the Laconia order). The B-24 pilots were given medals for bravery.
In 1757, the British admiral John Byng was executed for failing to sail his ships into a storm. The enemy was besieging a fort, and although Byng engage the enemy fleet he didn't pursue and annihilate them - heedless of the danger - and thereby the relief troops were unable to reach the fort before it fell. This was considered a capital offensive despite being sound strategy (the loss of the fort was bad, the loss of Byng's fleet would've been crippling) - making the right call got a man shot by firing squad.
These two incidents are always in my head when people discuss morality or honor or any such topics. The truth is "moral" for most people means nothing so much as "Did a thing I like" and immoral means "Did a thing I didn't like". That B-24 crew attacks the enemy, which is good and therefore moral - that it was a supremely cowardly and bloodthirsty thing is irrelevant.
It's just how people are, I suppose. Well, most people. Some are genuinely good eggs, and those are the ones to befriend.
IMO you are reducing complicated situations into a false black and white in order to argue that people are ultimately immoral beings.
You use the benefit of perfect hindsight, then adopting a particular consequentialist utilitarian framework and saying 'this is all there is to morality', but morality has multiple (often conflicting) objectives. I think denying that any conflict exists is really the essence of evil.
In the theatre of war, soldiers do not have perfect information or context. People who purposefully disobey orders generally put the lives of their own comrades and countrymen at risk.
Loyalty to your fellow soldiers and putting a measure of trust in them is moral. So is courage in the face of danger (in the case of admiral captain).
Even if we adopt your utilitarian framework, in the case of the U-boat attack, you are presupposing that the lives saved by allowing the rescue to continue will outweigh all the future damage and people killed in the future if that U-boat is allowed to continue to operate unimpeded. How do you know that's true? How would the pilot know in that situation?
In the case of the admiral, how we know his strategic choice was superior to the Admiralty's? It seems like you're assuming that he made the clear right move and was punished for it.
> That B-24 crew attacks the enemy, which is good and therefore moral - that it was a supremely cowardly and bloodthirsty thing is irrelevant.
Note that they were ordered to attack despite that they reported survivors
on board. Attribute the cowardice and bloodthirst appropriately in the command
chain.
Depending on the specifics "I knew I'd be killed if I didn't do it and was afraid" is a perfectly valid excuse.
The reason it's not accepted is because it's too difficult to discern if it's a lie in order to (attempt to) avoid punishment.
Following an order to attack an enemy in time of war, when you'll probably die for not attacking them ... if you knew for certain the enemy wasn't trying to trick you, and were genuinely saving civilians, then of course you should disobey, ... maybe ...
Even if that particular captain was saving civilians, it may still ultimately save lives to sink the enemy ship; that's the "glory" of war. Taking a pragmatic approach then, sinkng the ship can be considered "moral".
Indeed taking such an a priori callous action could require a degree of bravery.
OP is arguing the moral principle in reply to someone trying to justify a moral wrong, but OP's original point is that the practicalities observably trump morals, despite this being wrong. I don't think it's helpful for you to switch tack back to practicalities again on this branch.
Good stories. It inspires the thought that immorality "bubbles up" until the cost to address it (court-marshal a general, impeach a president, both destabilizing) is too high to pay. This is why leadership in a good society is moral, and broadly it means not just competence, but a willingness to accept the existence of evil in oneself, and in ones organization, and exercise appropriate amounts of self-restraint. (And the utter lack of this quality is what makes Trump so dangerous.)
I've been dealing with non-profits for most of my life. I started working with orchestras when I was about 7 or so, and these idealists (at least in the U.S.) are the absolute worst people to work for.
Almost every so-called idealist I've worked with is something close to a cultish sociopath. The non-profit world is full of these people where only true believers can fit in.
It's toxic. And the non-profits get a special status for their pathology that helps drive their insanity.
I remember doing a market research study for an orchestra that will remain nameless. The point of the study was to do an honest assessment of optimum price points. How to maximize either revenue or attendance.
I was serving on the board of this orchestra and did the study at my own expense. When I delivered the numbers, they didn't align with conventional wisdom.
And numbers weren't crazy. The bottom line was that people who buy season tickets are more hard-core supporters. They aren't looking for the cheap deal. They are looking for more opportunities to support the orchestra. The one-off people who just buy tickets at the door on a lark are much more price-sensitive.
So the solution is to ignore the bulk deal appeal that season-ticket buyers are getting offered. Raise the prices on those. And lower the at-door ticket prices. Lower the barrier to entry for casual users and raise the price for people who are going to pay whatever anyway. It's kind of obvious.
That's the math of the situation. Merely talking about these results and presenting them to the board got me kicked out. The orchestra did the exact opposite of that, and suffered the fate that the distribution said it would.
A few years later, they decided to try my idea. It worked. Who would've thunk?
Liberal, artsy, idealistic brats are no worse than conservative, religious, idealistic brats. They are all immune to logic and science, and just want to keep doing things that don't work because they sound good.
I think you should be cautious. People claiming to have a handle on all the world's problems are usually a part of the world's problems.
I recently read 'Quantum Night' by Robert J Sawyer, which explores psychopaths, people with an "inner life/monologue", and "philosopher zombies" -- people who don't have such an inner monologue and therefore are fairly manipulatable.
Part of the book's setting is that most people lack an inner monologue, a fair amount of people are psychopaths, and few people are "normal" non-psychopaths with inner monologues by a ratio of 4:2:1.
Even if you don't enjoy science fiction, it's an interesting read.
It's an interesting question - how many people do have those inner monologues?
I would recommend "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" if you're interested in this stuff. It's non-fiction but it's basically a story.
A "true" p-zombie would believe and claim that they have an inner monologue, and thus would be no more or less easy to manipulate than a "normal" person.
It may well be a good book, but it's an abuse of terminology to suggest that p-zombies are distinguishable from normal people by external characteristics and behavior.
I don't know the details of your experiences, but I've learned to not consider that kind of rejection to be a bad thing. Rather than try to please everyone and be mediocre(and unmemorable), I would polarize people so I can know which people might become real friends and weed out those who wouldn't accept me for who I am. A lot of people don't like me because I refuse to act out a personality, and I don't mind that. Most people are a waste of time.
That's not to say that I never lie, but I keep my lies relatively harmless. 90% of the few lies I tell are really lies by omission, and the remaining are just exaggerations around true stories. People just enjoy a good story, and it's my job to make those stories entertaining.
> so I can know which people might become real friends and weed out those who wouldn't accept me for who I am
There is a healthy balance between full conformity and full renegade. Rejection is a social signal. You shouldn’t automatically accept it. But it shouldn’t be automatically thrown out, either. “Who you are” is fluid.
People pretty quickly learn whether or not "blameless retrospectives" are actually blameless. There are a number of examples of corporate culture that is enforced from the top down where being honest is rewarded. The most extreme is probably Bridgewater.
Being able to convey the various types of lies is an important part of social interaction. If you can't or won't people dislike you, because you are not giving them the answers they want.
That's what I said on the article comment. There's a medium reference of gray honesty. The people not wanting honesty are probably scared about some previous negative event that led them to hide some things.
Society converged onto the idea of different degrees of honesty. Probably for a reason.
Because providing a 'product' is the sole criterion for success? The author is missing the point and doesn't understand TempleOS.