>In terms of complexity, it can be placed next to Adobe Photoshop or GNU GIMP.
This must be a joke.
This must be a joke.
Basic stuff is there, yes. But compare it even with a GIMP is a joke.
How?
How so?
Put it in the context of operating systems, and the guy was saying "This is the next Windows." That would be laughable.
Again though, good for him, fight the giants. But, he's got to expect some eye-rolls and giggles when making such lofty claims.
That happened in real life!
Consider what the launch of Linux looked like:
http://www.thelinuxdaily.com/2010/04/the-first-linux-announc...
It’s reasonable to think a hobby project won’t get big, and saying it will certainly is talking a big game before it’s actually happened, but even in the OS counterexample you provided, strange things can happen.
Some side projects die, and some side project ends up taking over the majority of the server and all of the supercomputer OS market.
The concept of a desktop operating system is dying.
Different distros of Linux are very capable desktop operating systems, they are fully featured and competitive with Windows in pretty much every facet. They may not be the next Windows but that doesn't matter. 95% of the use case for an OS now days is the ability to run a modern web browser.
Regardless, you shouldn't dismiss something just because it doesn't have mass adoption. Mass adoption doesn't necessarily reflect the amount of engineering and quality of the platform.
The whole Windows vs Linux debate is pretty much obsolete and becoming less relevant every day.
But Linux being the next windows or not, the point here is that one guy's hobby project can change the world, so dismissing something because it's just one guy is dangerous. I have seen many cases where one passionate developer has produced something a large corporate team would be proud of.
Just because someone spent millions on a software doesn’t mean it’s impossible to do the same for multiple orders of magnitude less. An extreme example, AT&T spent millions on their Unix, but nowadays many CS university students recreate an OS in the corresponding OS design class.
Going back to Photoshop, PS is written in C++, it contains decades of legacy code, its first version was designed to run on 7MHz CPU with 128 KB RAM. Another things is, it contains rarely used stuff (e.g. legacy formats support) and also stuff irrelevant for web (such as COM automation interface).