Computing has evolved. Personal computers are being replaced by disposable devices that are impossible to upgrade or repair; with a yearly incremental release cadence.
All of these devices want you to use apps bought from their store that send your data to their advertisers.
These platform companies are grounded in the belief that regular people are not smart enough, not capable enough, not self-aware enough to operate their own computer.
So fine. Fuck them.
We'll use theirs.
ourOS is a single-user federated operating system that runs on public cloud providers without giving. There are two interfaces to ourOS:
- The Human Interface, where you launch and operate ourOS apps.
- The Inter-Computer Interface, where your ourOS installation sends data to and receives data from other ourOS installations.
All ourOS apps are available via a web browser, and some have native apps for Mac, Linux, iOS, and Android devices.
Because ourOS delivers its human interface through a web browser, apps have near-infinite flexibility. Everything from gestures to gamepads to virtual reality to payments and so many more broadly available web apis.
Every ourOS instance has a public Port that listens for events from the broader Web. Events may come in as Webhooks or WebSockets and are passed through to event handlers registered by ourOS apps.
ourOS is installed onto a public cloud provider, like Glitch or Heroku. Once you've installed ourOS, you can use it from any device with a browser.
Apps on ourOS are installed by adding them to your ourOS installation's
package.json and configured in apps.js. The default ourOS distribution
comes bundled with a number of small apps designed to bring the benefits of
cloud computing to you.
- RecipeBox — Save, remix, and share recipes (and their delicious results!) with your friends and family!
- Koype — Your thoughts are yours. Keep them and share them with the public.
- PostNote — Collect pages, pictures, music, and videos from around the web; organize them; and (if you want!) share them with friends.
- SlipVector — Do you have what it takes to govern a planetary system? Find out in this space colony simulator where you tell the story of a post-scarcity humanity as it reaches for the stars.
ourOS is written in JavaScript, the lingua franca of computers. Both the Human Interface and the Inter-Computer Interface are built using web standards, so apps written for ourOS are portable to other web platforms.
ourOS apps use Express for their Human Interface and register event handlers for their Inter-Computer Interface.