May 9th, 2006
WebOS conversation heats up - EyeOS claims Orca is vaporware
My post on WebOS candidate Orca has stirred up a heated debate in the Talkback between representatives from WebOS companies Orca, EyeOS and XIN. I’ve already profiled two of these WebOS solutions, XIN and Orca (also see my overview of the WebOS market). My review of EyeOS is coming soon.
But I’d be interested in some outsider perspectives on this ‘healthy’ debate going on in Talkback. ZDNet readers, what do you make of these 3 products? There seems to have been some kind of fall-out between the Orca and EyeOS team members in the recent past, but behind all that are some real questions about the products:
1) Is Orca currently "vaporware", as Eduardo from EyeOS wrote:
"eyeOS is live and 21,000 users strong at http://eyeOS.info. As far as I can see Orcaa is vaporware, you announced a "launch" on Apr 14. Well, now it is May, what can you show us ?"
Eduardo follows up with more on the ‘vaporware’ theme here. Leon from Orca responded to that charge here and here - he points to www.orcaa.com and an app called Minitop as evidence it’s real.
2) There is also some confusion about whether Orca is open source. The others say it isn’t and Eduardo from EyeOS gives his reasons why:
"Since Orcaa was "based" in the eyeOS code, and eyeOS being GPL, we assumed that Orcaa code would be GPL too …."
However Leon Bollerup from Orca wrote in response:
"Orca has at NO POINT been based on eyeos core, the closest we ever got to you was with VIKI.OS, based on x-desktop."
Leon also noted:
"The core of Orca is not going to be gnu/gpl, the but Orca minitop & OrcZilla is, thats what i call fair bizz.. dont you ?"
Mikael from XIN (which btw is not open source) has made several comments on all this, including this one regarding how his product compares to EyeOS:
"I work for a project codenamed ‘Xin’, and we are doing not so much a webOS as a system to relieve the serverload when running multiple apps, but I and my companions have long admired the work done by EyeOS."
3) What do ZDNet readers think of Orca’s "umbrella concept"?
"Lets picture orca as a warehouse, were people can join in, add their software, and maby.. just maby make some money on it the way they want."
As I said, I’m not sure who’s right or wrong - and really I’m not interested in the personal battles and accusations. But it would be good to get some external perspective on the relative merits of Orca, EyeOS and XIN from ZDNet readers. What do you think?
