Originally posted by AKIron
Some damn good flight sim software outta yer country Boroda. Obviously there are some talented programmers still there (many have left for greener pastures). Why hasn't someone written an OS? Could it be they're not so afraid no one would use it but rather that no one would buy it? No serious slam intended, software pirates abound here in the USofA.
You can laugh, but in Soviet time our brilliant government killed our computer industry by abandoning native projects (by 1970 we had really great machines, no worse then you did) and kept cloning IBM mainframes and DEC PDP or VAX minies. So we don't have any OS tradition, everyone worked on Western systems since early-70s.
We also don't have big software companies who can invest in making their own platform. Our biggest firms make nothing more then accounting software for Windows.
Now many Russians work on Linux. We have at least 3 teams that make their distributions.
What we have now is that you have to provide compatibility with "mainstream" systems, and only 2 of them left: Windows and Linux. You know, Chinese have a "national OS" project, but it's again "Red Flag Linux".
I can imagine our state investing into a "national OS" project, but it will be a disaster. 90% of the money will be stolen, and remnants will be used to develop a monster based on concepts drawn by veterans who still think perforated cards are the cheapest and easiest storage. It will be Cyrillic only, incompatible with modern hardware and will result in another endless money stream going into a production of our own hardware, on some Giants of Soviet Industry that 10 years ago have switched from computers to making talking dolls. Again, 90% of money will be stolen.
Every country must do what they do best. I think that now we should make tanks, missiles and airplanes, but the competition is too strong, 90% of the weapon market is controlled by the US, both economically and politically. Or invest in commercial space programms, with our production potential we can monopolize the whole market. But someone "up there" is not interested in industrial development. It's easier for them to pump oil and sale Coca-Cola and chewing gum to the population.