This is completely right from a product point of view, which is Carmack's argument.

But I have wondered why one of these companies with billions of dollars to burn hasn't tried to create something new as a strategic initiative. Yes, there wouldn't be any ROI for years, and yes, the first several products on the platform would probably be better off on something more traditional.

But the long term value could potentially be astronomical.

Just another case of quarterly-report-driven decision making, I suppose. Sigh.

> But I have wondered why one of these companies with billions of dollars to burn hasn't tried to create something new as a strategic initiative.

See Google's Fuschia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuchsia_(operating_system)

> But the long term value could potentially be astronomical.

Such as what?

How does it pay off in the long run?

If you're competing against nothing, then I see it: it opens up a wide variety of product possibilities. But linux exists. Why not spend 1/1000th the time to adapt linux?

That's not even counting the rather substantial risk that your new OS will never approach the capabilities of linux, and may very well never become generally usable at all.

Option A: spend years and millions on a project that may never be as good as existing solutions, diverting attention and resources from actual products, or...

Option B: work on products now, using an existing, high-quality, extensible, adaptable OS, with very friendly licensing terms, for which numerous experts exist, with a proven track record of maintenance, a working plan for sustainability, a large & healthy developer community exists, etc.

It's hard to imagine how it wouldn't be a complete waste of time.

Apple bought one of those in the 90s, and they are still reaping the benefits of that strategic initiative. But the thing is, NeXt allowed Apple to think up new, differentiated products. If you come at the problem of the OS from a purely technical perspective, you'll waste time for no gain.

Microsoft had Singularity - canceled after 12 years in development

Google has Fuchsia - is about 10 years in development. Recently was a target for layoffs

This is what Google has been trying to do with Fuchsia and the fact is that you can't escape the product point of view because the products exist, already have an OS stack, and get pretty defensive when another team tells them they're going to replace their OS, or their core if the product team is Android or Chrome OS.

How would that be better than just grabbing a bsd and starting with that, PlayStation and Apple did it and actually ended up with functional products

But I have wondered why one of these companies with billions of dollars to burn hasn't tried to create something new as a strategic initiative.

They have; Taligent comes to mind. You may not have heard of that -- or more likely, you have but just forgot about it -- but it's a good object lesson (no pun intended) in why a successful new OS is hard to just conjure into existence. There has to be a crying, desperate need for it, not just a vague sense that This Time We'll Get It Right.

You could probably cite OS/2 Warp as a less-obscure example of the same phenomenon.

Western companies haven't thought about long term value in decades

While I appreciate Carmack and all, I'd love to hear from someone like Dave Cutler who's been over that bridge at least a couple of times successfully about if and what he'd do if he had resources to create whatever the hell he wants.