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Score: 17.
WTF???

I think the non-refundable tickets part refers to things like plane-tickets and other travel stuff which, under certain conditions, aren't refundable.

I was referring to plane tickets.

That depends on the issuer. One of my credit cards is a premium card geared to travel, and I can get a credit for any flight delayed more than 4 hours. That's the credit card's policy, they don't recoup that from the airline. It's effectively a self-funded group insurance policy offset by the ridiculous fees I and all the other suckers pay annually for the card.

Generally speaking, credit card companies will not provide a chargeback for a delayed/bumped/re-scheduled flight; if yours did then it's likely the airline never bothered responding to their claim (which is a standard procedure for charge backs), or you've got a gold card or similar specialty card. As far as the credit card companies are concerned, you're purchasing a service, and that service is to get you from point A to point B. The airlines have enough claims and waivers in their terms and conditions that they are pretty much absolved of liability for being unable to provide a seat, unless they are unable to get you to your intended destination in a reasonable amount of time.

Discount/web fares tickets are a great way to save money when flying, but you get what you pay for, and the airlines are pretty blunt about the terms and conditions, though few people bother reading the fine print. When the airlines sell seats at that rate, they're gambling on the statistical probability that customers purchasing higher fare (and higher priority) tickets won't actually be boarding that flight. Customers in turn are gambling on the airlines ability to gamble, by taking that cheap rate, although many don't necessarily realize it at the time. When the airlines don't gamble correctly, flights get oversold. Sucks, but it happens. A lot.

Point being, chargebacks against an airline because you couldn't board your flight are generally overriden unless the airline failed to provide a reasonable alternative to get you to your destination. So you either got lucky or were simply exercising a privilege your card provides, but I wouldn't promote it as a failsafe method. If you're going to fly discount, you're taking chances the same way as when you rent a car without the add-on insurance (another liability covered by some credit cards that many people don't realize). You'll probably be ok, but you'll curse up a storm and have no recourse if something goes wrong.

Not every OSS project is backed by a big company (like RedHat, IBM, etc). So please do not get frustrated if people's voluntary efforts are not professional enough.

I'm sorry, but if anyone here got stabbed in the back, it's the people (like myself) that spent hundreds of dollars on airfare only to have the rug pulled out from under us without any warning.

Just because Haiku, Inc. administrates an OSS project doesn't mean they get a free ride when it comes to piss-poor business sense.

Granted, they're still not anywhere near the level of YellowTab.

Keep in mind Haiku, Inc. != Haiku. Haiku can live just fine without Haiku, Inc... but it sure helps to have the business entity around. The problem is, they need to start -acting- like a business entity, instead of someones hobby.

I've wasted a substantial amount of real, hard-earned money only to have the primary reason for a trip to be canceled without warning, and now I'm a bit pissed off.

Just so it's absolutely clear - We the FalterCon organizers and attendees praise DarkWyrm's efforts and attempts at pulling off WalterCon this year despite his late start.

I'm personally a little frustrated that the "cry for help" didn't come prior to the cancellation announcement, as I think the rest Haiku community *could* have stepped up and made it work.

This to me was simply a communication problem, and I think maybe some things could be learned from this.

FalterCon is not intended as a public stab at Haiku or WalterCon - the name is a joke - to make light of the situation - and we truly mean no serious disrespect.

We believe there will be some positive outcome from FalterCon. At this point, we'll take the opportunity to reach out to some Linux users and show them an alternative (HA! an alternative to an alternative OS...)

Ditto. I've been in contact with DarkWyrm, and he's been a great help to us in providing us with info for FalterCon. Thanks Wyrm!

The number of balls in the air with WC 2007 were more than could be caught by the amount of people (one) working on WC 2007, and those people have my sincere condolences. I know this kind of thing isn't easy to plan, or pull off, which is why it needs to be started sooner (like DarkWyrm is doing for next year already).

Hopefully this never happens again, but sadly, until then -- people are going to be skeptical.

And it's not like people didn't try to warn Haiku, Inc. months ago that this kind of thing would likely happen if they didn't get their ducks in a row.

The problem is that people got shafted on nonrefundable plane tickets as mikesum32 pointed out.

That's an error on my end. In Dutch, the word 'ticket' is solely used in the context of an 'airplane ticket' - for other uses, such as tickets to the cinema or theater, we have a dedicated word ('kaartje', which means 'little card' in English). So when I read 'ticket', I immediately thought of airplane tickets, not realising the word is used in English for all sorts of different tickets.

I added 'airplane' to the teaser to clarify.

Gotta love the EASL (english as a second language) effect.

Thom, thanks for the clarification, and now you know for the future!

Pardon me if I sound irritated, but I find it aggravating that the same general group of people (OSNews readers, that is) are very vocal to praise Haiku's achievements, but also very quickly backstab (at +4 to Hit, for double damage) the project when something goes wrong.

No matter how annoying that might be, it's human nature to do so. At OSNews, it's the same thing; we rarely get an email or a comment stating we're doing a fine job, but as soon as something goes wrong, no matter how minor, our inboxes and comments sections are flooded with complaints. If you're in the game of providing people with a service or product, free or not, you'll have to learn to deal with complaints.

Haiku has seen mostly good times, but now that this went wrong, people complain - and rightly so. Just remember that people complain - because they care.

Haiku has a lot to prove of itself before being allowed to make mistakes and get away with them.

So far Haiku is in the same boat as Minix; interesting developments but minuscule community in comparison to even GNU/Linux, let alone Windows.

As far as non-transferable tickets to a canceled conference are concerned, no project can avoid the complaints of angry attendants.

Edited 2007-07-31 08:00

"So far Haiku is in the same boat as Minix; interesting developments but minuscule community in comparison to even GNU/Linux, let alone Windows."

Don't EVEN compare Haiku to Minix. They're NOTHING alike, developmentally. Go to Haiku CIA and look at the numerous commits that Haiku gets on a daily basis. You're lucky if you see even one or two "news" blurbs about Minix on their own home page.

I respect Minix 3 for what it is and may be trying to be, but it sure as blazes ain't no Haiku.

I may complain about one particular problem with Haiku, but that's because want it so badly. It will come eventually. But with Minix... I'd probably never see it.

Unless there's more Minix 3 development going on than they let on, I'm pretty sure they only have a couple people coding a few bits and bytes here and there, whenever the mood hits them.

Remember... Minix was and will likely always be considered... an EDUCATIONAL OS. Mainly to *learn* from, not to ever be truly *used*.

Well what I meant was Minix and Haiku are similar in that they are minuscule in usage and perhaps even irrelevant to the rest of the world at this point.

They are both "toy" OSes until they prove themselves otherwise over a long period of time.

[q](otherwise, if it had been planned for Europe, I was on the list of money loosing guys)[/b]

Maybe not. Most of the Haiku developers/users are in Europe, and August is the typical European holiday month, so I guess it could get enough people to attend.
The only problem could be the late announce.

Size is no excuse. Some of the most successful, professional, best run companies I've worked with have had fewer than 25 employees, and started in their mother-in-laws basement.

In fact, BECAUSE you're small, you have to be that much -better- than the people who are bigger than you. Claiming that because you're small you're allowed to fall flat on your face only highlights how out of touch with business reality Haiku, Inc. is.

I'm hoping you mean don't let them design the UI

I'll try my best to make sure the next Waltercon will go well, and I'll make lemonade out the lemon that is waltercon 07. Faltercon is going to rock. I'll be surrounded by Linux nerds.

I was getting Deej confused with Daat and was going to make a correction here, but noticed I was right the first time. Time for bed. :-D

Edited 2007-07-30 14:37

You might have missed this. http://www.freelists.org/archives/openbeos/05-2007/msg00224.html

and this

http://www.freelists.org/archives/openbeos/04-2007/msg00517.html

and this one too

http://www.freelists.org/archives/openbeos/05-2007/msg00185.html

Please elucidate.



*Edit*

6) Haiku's board of directors was never a question that was ever brought up. If *ANYONE* would have asked, they would have been told. In fact, New York law says that they have to be told.

You are the board of directors ?

http://www.freelists.org/archives/openbeos/04-2007/msg00514.html

- Koki mentioned Haiku Inc has a board of directors, three including yourself.
Would you mind saying who these other people are?

Me. Everyone else has become inactive. We had some internal discussions about adding more people, but it really didn't go anywhere. The biggest issue was/is that I would like a BOD that is fairly balanced. Right now, we have very few contributors who are not devs. I love devs. I am a dev, at least at my paying job. But I think that we need other (business/marcom, legal, etc) representation. OTOH, there is a lot of concern around inviting people to Haiku who are new, or at least, don't have a lot of knowledge and vested interest.


Busted. Here is your chance to make it right.

Edited 2007-07-30 16:40

8) There is a perception that we don't communicate with the community. We are more open than ANY OTHER OSS project of any size. The mailing lists are open. The admin meetings are summarized and posted. SVN logs are open and are now even on our website. There is *NOTHING* that we discuss that the community doesn't know about. WE CAN'T BE ANY MORE OPEN. There is nothing we hide.

It's not about hiding, it's about engaging. Do you see the difference?

The example I provide above is the lack of community involvement in the decision to cancel WalterCon... If the community had been alerted that it was going to fail, then the *community* at that point would have the onus of making sure it didn't.

Instead, the decision to cancel was made and announced publicly after the fact. What good does that really do other than to notify people to stop registering?

If someone is going to divorce their spouse, "openness" would be talking about it with them BEFORE you file legally. At least that way there's a possibility of resolution without legal proceedings, and if not - you proceed as planned.

Turning a bad situation into good PR is also possible... (look around, you see this all the time) This would have been the right opportunity to alert the community about the problem, show them that the US does not necessarily have a very strong Haiku community as it does in Europe, and CHALLENGE them to make it better.

Just like you, we're all busy working people too (well, most of us) - but we'll step up if necessary and find a way as a community to make positive things happen.

Anyhow, I'm out of time and must go to work now.

Well, Michael, only 4 had signed up officially before it was cancelled, but there's a major problem with that:

The signup deadline was after it was cancelled.

I was intending on going, but had to judge my current situation as close to the cutoff time as possible. I'd wager there were an unknown number of others that were doing the same thing, for the same reasons: it isn't always feasible to take off the time, get the money, etc. with that short of notice, even if they had intended on going since last year.

I hope that these lessons are learned and applied in the future:

1. Put absolute deadlines into everything, as to when people must be signed up on the participants going, so Haiku, Inc. has a known quantity.

2. These deadlines must also be communicated concretely to all venues, etc. involved in the whole thing, and must be part of the deal: they, too, need these deadlines so they can plan: it's only good business.

3. Make it very clear that a renegging venue or one that even hints at screwing Haiku, Inc. and participants over will have their names dragged out in public for their bad business dealings, and if it comes to that, do it without reservations (pun may/may not be intended!). It sounds very much like that's what has happened here: they figured that with the short timeframe left, they could put the screws on Haiku, Inc. to commit or they would take their chances with making what they feel are more profitable arrangements by screwing over Haiku, Inc.

4. Those deadlines really need to be > 2 weeks in advance of the event, not < 2 weeks like it was, because if nothing else, making flight reservations and room reservations with less warning than that gets much more expensive, and besides, wouldn't it be nice to have more lead time to ensure the correct number of t-shirts were printed so there aren't a huge number of unsellable leftovers?

I would suggest that you contact the businesses that decided to screw over Haiku, and inform them that you will put in a very public place online how they've done business with all the gory details, do as you stated, and leave that as proof in the future for all others that you will publish how they do business: if they're doing their jobs legally and morally and correctly, they should be overjoyed with the publicity: if they're doing things in a shady manner and not honoring their promises, they should be afraid of that. As long as all details are correct, they can't possibly sue.

Urias - we didn't get a lot of warning from the hotel - they gave us a couple of days to make a decision. We couldn't have done much better.

Ok, yes - I did get a whiff of emergency, reactionary measures here. I'm still not convinced the strategy chosen was the best - but what's done is done. I am still trying to offer some constructive criticism to help avert similar situations in the future.

And I will (again) point out that not one person has come forward and said that they would have come if we had announced earlier. Nor did anyone complain about the location or the price. In fact, the survey showed that most people don't care about the price, within reason.

I will come forward and say that if the date and location had firmly been announced publicly at least 3 weeks sooner, I would probably have signed up firmly. As it was, I had to plan my August vacation time off, and had to plan it around some local events in my county (our county fair occurs the week of August 8-12, and I'm sure you know how important county fairs are to children when you live in a rural area . ~3 weeks sooner and I would have had a "clear schedule" as far as I was concerned (only to have my wife complain to me later).

If I had more advanced notice, I would have been able to juggle things a little better and make sure my family and employment plans were taken into account. As it was, I was still trying to make compromises in order to go, and if I had known it was in danger of cancellation, I would have immediately registered. As JT says, there was still time left before the registration due date.

At this point, I'll be going to FalterCon only on Saturday the 11th, so I can spend time with my family again on Sunday. This actually works out better for me, and made the decision to attend FalterCon much easier. It also helps that it won't cost me much more than the gas it takes to get there and home, as well as time and energy spent in preparations.

You can blame all sorts of unfortunate issues that caused the end result, but more advanced notice would have done nothing but help in this case.

I'm glad to hear this problem will be resolved next year, and I will try and help make sure it doesn't if there's anything I can do (even though I realize it's probably not going to be in my local area again soon).

Michael, take a deep breath, and read what your own people are saying.

DarkWyrm:
(http://www.freelists.org/archives/openbeos/07-2007/msg00159.html)
The perceived reason for this would be late announcement combined with the community being spread across the globe.

(http://www.freelists.org/archives/openbeos/07-2007/msg00175.html)
Michael and I decided to drag our heels on the contracts until after
the registration period officially ended. The guy from the Conference
Center e-mailed me Friday and told me that the contract / payment were
due 7/13 but we had until 7/25 before they'd consider it canceled

Timeline of the WalterCon 2007 march to failure:

7/3/2007 - Announced
http://www.freelists.org/archives/openbeos/07-2007/msg00008.html
Contracts are due 10 days later. Presenters and attendees have about 39 days to get ready.
7/11/2007 - Registration now Open
http://www.freelists.org/archives/openbeos/07-2007/msg00036.html
Contracts are due in two days. According to the official WalterCon site, registration closes in 19 days.
7/25/2007 - WalterCon is canceled.
http://www.freelists.org/archives/openbeos/07-2007/msg00159.html
Five days before registration closes.

It is later disclosed that contracts for the convention center are overdue by 12 days. Contracts for the hotel have never been received to be signed and returned.
http://www.freelists.org/archives/openbeos/07-2007/msg00175.html


Your indignant claims that time was not (and has not ever been) an issue and WalterCon can be safely and happily thrown together in 49 days have no basis in reality. If these claims reflected reality, I'd be spending August 11th and 12th in a convention center and sleeping in a Four Points Sheraton the night of the 11th.

Stop ignoring reality. Just closing your eyes doesn't mean it's not there.

Edited 2007-07-31 19:03

"Stop ignoring reality. Just closing your eyes doesn't mean it's not there."

Same goes for fundamental and structural flaws.

Why are you acting like I've attacked you?

My SMP box works with Haiku. I cannot stress enough that this has not always been the case. The exact incompatibilities were ironed out on my hardware. I got lucky, Axel has a similar machine.

Predictor, I agree that disabling SMP early on was asking for problems. I raised these concerns on #haiku once upon a time, and geist very vocally agreed. I think the general consensus was that it was a dangerous move, but was made for the sake of functional progress in a few key subsystems. SMP has been re-enabled for over a year now, and works well on some systems. On others, it chokes.

I agree that continuing to develop on emulators rather than real hardware will also hinder how well it runs on real hardware, especially in compatibility.

BUT I can also respect those that use virtulization and emulation as a means to speed development along. I understand and respect that using a controlled environment to eliminate hardware discrepancies leads to a more complete system sooner than developing on real hardware. Once the core system is in a known-good, working state, we can worry about hardware inconsistencies and drivers. The primary goal is to have an OS that is stable and can host itself. Once that is accomplished, major systems don't spend as much time in flux, which makes it easier to focus on drivers, HW compatibility, and minor revisions. It will also give us a good, working codebase to make as you put it, '64 bit safe'.

Of course, all of this takes time, patience, and developers willing to donate time and energy to the project.

If mphipps would agree to koki's suggestions and koki would consider taking up his marketing position with Haiku again and everyone learning from what happened, letting bygones be bygones, I promise to swiftly donate $100 to Haiku or may the gods strike me down.

From the WC07 fiasco and Mr. Phipps response to the community here on OSNews, it's pretty easy to tell that nothing has really changed at the heart of the project when it comes to non-development activities. I *have* learned my lesson, and would not want to go back to the same status quo that lead to my parting from Haiku.

So, thanks, but no thanks. I still have fun doing stuff with the community from time to time though. FalterCon is one of those things that I find fun to do.

Having said that, I would still encourage you to donate those $100 to Haiku anyway. IMHO, a good place to put your money would be one of the ongoing bounties at http://www.haikuware.com. Personally, I like the Webkit Port bounty: it has been assigned to a dev (Ryan Leavengood), and the port has already started. You can even find a "roadmap" of the project at an article here:

http://joomla.iscomputeron.com/index.php?option=com_content&tas...

Edited 2007-07-31 02:12

Hm, Haiku is getting a lot of bad vibes. WalterCon would've had FOUR people. Haiku doesn't boot on most of my REAL machines (Haiku developers: please stop using those f--king emulators all day).

You repeatedly appear to hold a grudge against Haiku because you can't make it run on your hardware - this is probably the 3rd such time I've seen you use that as a platform to abuse the project...

Emulators are a known good way to test a system in a known environment. The world of PC hardware is a maze of disaster that nobody has time to deal with yet while they're trying to solidify the core OS kernel and other such items. Why should Haiku care about some specific piece of hardware now when they don't even have an OS that is finished?

Your attitude is pretty much exactly why Haiku hasn't released yet to the public even as an alpha.

You are making dangerous assumptions: I intended on being there (I was at the past two), but Michael Phipps also made the dangerous assumption that you are, that those that signed up before it was cancelled were going to be the only people there. Facts are that there's no way to be certain how many would have signed up before the deadline, because it was cancelled before the official deadline, which reasonable people would believe to mean that they had until that time to commit and get the required entry fees paid to Haiku, Inc. which was running on way too short of a notice for people: after all, last year's happened in November, and even though it was suggest