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That would be wrong battle to fight first. Pick one special-purpose market it can win and take that. Rinse, repeat.

Dog knows IoT needs something a lot better than Linux to run on; fat flabby old-school hacker-culture footguns are absolutely not an option when smart tech is being built into everything and everyone. That tech must be small, hard, absolutely focused, and take ZERO shit from NO-ONE; starting with itself.

Remember, the only code which can be 100% guaranteed impossible to compromise is code that isn’t there. Today’s Linux kernel is around 20 MILLION LOC, and counting. No prizes for figuring what any competing product’s USP must be.

..

“General-purposeness” designed into the product at the start enables it to adapt to each new market quicker and easier, but it shouldn’t be a public selling point in itself. Because the moment you start pitching it as being “everything to everyone”, everyone wants to throw their own crap into it as well—and you’re back to building ”another Linux”, in a market that already has a resident Linux and no room or need for another. Think smart. Don’t covet all the things that Linux does well and try to replicate those. Instead, identify the things Linux doesn’t do well (and CAN’T ever do well because of why and how it’s built) and knock those balls clean out of the park.

Think about how Steve Jobs finally beat Microsoft at its own game. Not by building a better PC, but by fundamentally redefining what “Personal Computing” means; and then being first to market with the perfect product for that.




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