animats explained QNX's design and results very well on a HN thread. Google isn't giving me crap even when I type his exact words in. Only does that on HN for some reason. I pastebin'd my copy here:
http://pastebin.com/2K119Wtj
Far as BeOS, I found this word document where some people wrote up a summary of design decisions that boosted performance, reliability, and how easy it was to develop on vs eg POSIX.
