On June 22, 2006, Pau García Milà received a special gift for his eighteenth birthday: a reportage by the journalist Camen Secanella and published in CIBER PAÍS in which, for the first time in a relevant media, the EyeOs, a web-based operating system that replaces the network with your computer's hard drive. "The first thing that surprises about this project is the youth of its creators," that article began. Today, more than two years later, the freshness of its creators continues to attract attention, but their commitment has become a real alternative to the large American brands with more than 400.000 users and after going from 30.000 to half a million users in this period. downloads. A success that, according to himself, shows that if you don't like it, you can confront Microsoft's monopoly "without a euro."
With the laptop under his arm, Pau, who has gone to the Campus Party in Brazil to give a conference about EyeOs, comes down from the production room looking for a connection to access the Internet with the rest of the Internet users: "I just have a problem" , confesses this Barcelonan who admits with a laugh like someone who knows that his situation is incurable that "it's hard for him to disconnect from the internet" and that, although he turns off his cell phone at work on the weekends, he continues to keep an eye on his iPhone even at the movies. : "If it vibrates I always look at it."
After starting to develop small projects at the age of 15, he is now finalizing the next version, 1.9, which will be released in March of the operating system he created together with Marc Cercós and David Plaza. Of what he considers to be his "player to face Microsoft or Google face to face", edition 2.0, he does not dare to give a release date. Although he assures that it will be before the end of 2009.
Regarding the future of the network, he assures that "the monopoly will not be held by the manufacturer of an operating system", as is currently the case with Windows, "but rather that the market will be dominated by who controls your data, your life", he states. . The key is in his opinion that the implementation of "the servers online in which you save your Word documents, your photos and your songs and to which you transfer your rights", will give these companies the power to control users. But, unlike them, Pau affirms that "in EyesOs, they do not "You are giving away the rights to the files you upload."
"Facebook or MySpace could release an album with your music or an album with your photos and, even if it turned out very nice, you wouldn't see a penny," says this resident of the Barcelona town of Olesa who left his engineering degree after six months. Computer Science at the UPC to focus 100% on his project or, as he himself highlights in his blog, to "leave the pond to think about oceans." His decision caused him to be left without enrollment until, in one of those contradictions of life, he returned two years later to give a lecture. "They reopened my resume but I didn't return," he settles the issue. Instead, she opted for an intensive course at JBS in Cambridge.
However, this is not the only paradox in his career. In fact, after receiving a revelation award from Yahoo in 2007, EyesOs found itself fighting just a year later alongside Yahoo itself, Microsoft, Google and Apple - that's nothing - for the Webware 100 awarded by CNET to the best project. annual.
Sitting like one of the campusers, Pau affirms that the success of the development of his operating system, generated from open source and that allows it to be modified, it is based on the community, the desire for everyone to be the owner of their files and its commitment to "the use of the Internet for everything."
In this sense, he admits that "it is true that Microsoft cannot decide what people think, but it can control your life and although many users speak badly of it, they continue using its products," he reflects before ensuring in reference to the origins of the project and its subsequent success that "if you don't like it and want to change it, you can." "We did it without a euro," he emphasizes.
Now there is money, they have even received five purchase offers that have been successively rejected "because it represented a change of approach and some even wanted to take it simply to close them" and rejects the cliché of David against Goliath. In any case, whether it turns out well or badly, the future does not worry him since, at "twenty-one years old, there is plenty of time to do other things."