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John Carmack's arguments against building a custom XR OS at Meta

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520 points OlympicMarmoto | 1 comments | 29 Aug 25 16:45 UTC | HN request time: 0.205s | source
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lukev ◴[29 Aug 25 17:53 UTC] No.45067307[source]▶
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.

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1. jmull ◴[29 Aug 25 18:20 UTC] No.45067633[source]▶
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.