Ask HN: How much would it cost to build a new commercially viable OS?

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Assume you’re an eccentric centi-billionaire that wants to create a new desktop/server-class OS that can match Windows, macOS, and Linux in performance, compatibility, and security, and be sold commercially as a competitor.

What would it cost to develop from scratch? How many engineers do you need? How many lawyers?

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Commercially-viable? Windows and MacOS are both basically given away for free these days. It's been this way on the server for decades; commercial viability means the user pays nothing.

You could probably spend a trillion dollars reinventing the kernel and still lose out to Linux in a world where the internet still exists. If you insist on a commercialized outcome then no amount will really be enough.

You'll probably have to spend more money on marketing to try to get people to use it than you will on engineering just to create it.

You could look at BeOS to get an idea and then try to extrapolate and adapt your estimates for today's market and circumstances:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BeOS

90% of the cost will be building the business. Product dev cost are minor! Do you want a business or great software that nobody uses?

I'm not eccentric or rich, that's not my problem to solve. Good luck!

Anyway, why do you think that's a problem you need to think of?

All the current commercial operating systems today are basically interchangeable, not counting a handful of design decisions (e.g. Finder vs. Explorer) or hardware compatibility.

They're all basically the same thing.

Heck Android and iOS are basically the same thing.

Would a new commercially viable OS be able to offer anything that current ones don't? If not, it's not really commercially viable.

Apple started with UNIX and built on that.

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