I've been writing on and off about using the Linux kernel as a base for OS projects with closed but stable and centrally architected designs. Here's such an experiment already in progress: SkyOS.

SkyOS -- a desktop OS platform, albeit a closed-source one -- had been under development for a while now. It looked quite nice, although it was only available to a limited selection of alpha-testers. Then as of January, things ground to a halt. "The speed at which new hardware and technology gets developed has increased dramatically in the last few years," wrote SkyOS's main developer, Robert Szeleney. "Trying to catch up with development of frameworks, drivers, applications, test, etc. got way more complicated than years ago."

As of early this week though, Robert started experimenting with the possibility of leveraging Linux or BSD as the core for the system, with his proprietary front-end still in place. That would save him the trouble of having to re-develop all of the hardware support needed for a desktop environment, and give him a whole slew of other goodies he'd never had time to develop in the first place.

Good luck to him. Let's see where this heads; it might be an interesting model for others to watch.

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