OSNews:

I think you are right

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 24 Aug 2004 21:28:00 GMT

Very good statement Eugenia, it represents my opinion exactly.

Time is not everything.

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 24 Aug 2004 21:32:00 GMT

And just because something has more features, does not make it better.

There are other factors to consider such as speed, code quality, security, consistancy, etc.

Underdog

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 24 Aug 2004 21:35:00 GMT

It really is a shame that such a great idea doesn't have any serious backing. Yeah, there is yellowtab, but even they are slow to show any progress. I've tried zeta, and yes most everything works. But unfortunately most third party development is aimed at Windows, MacOSX, and linux. Not really much room left to support another platform.

Which is quite unfortunate. On one hand we have Mac OSX and linux, which were designed initially to be server systems that we have frankensteined to be desktop systems. And we have Windows that was designed to be a jack of all trades (master of none). BeOS was one of the first OSi that I heard of that was marketed for desktop use, besides Mac OS9(and previous) - And it showed. Too bad it died. And yes BeOS in all of its forms is dead.

RE: Time is not everything.

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 24 Aug 2004 21:36:00 GMT

>And just because something has more features, does not make it better.

Maybe yes, and maybe not. But by 2007, you better have these extra new features that Longhorn/OSX will have by then, or your OS will be treated as a TOY.

>speed

When my room has nothing in it, it is very tidy indeed.

> code quality

I don't have any reasons to believe that the Haiku developers are better or worse than the MS/Apple/Linux engineers.

>security

BeOS was always the _worst_ OS in security.

> consistancy

Unfortunately, consistency is mostly achieved through very well defined teams of working closely together. OSS projects do not normally show consistency, so I am still not convinced on this one.

PhOS

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 24 Aug 2004 21:39:00 GMT

I agree with ALMOST everything. but i will not write another article here.

But i have to say that PhosphurOS should have been mentioned. The fact that the article is so REALISTIC and ignores PhOS, just make me think that it was a PAID article from yellowTab.

It's sad, and I may be commiting some injustice here. But as i said, it's what seems to *me*.

You got good points, but...

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 24 Aug 2004 21:39:00 GMT

4 years ago I would have agreed. But after my experience with the demise of Be I learned the lesson that with closed source software you risc spending hundreds of hours only to be left in the dark due to some business decisions.

I don't argue that because of that Haiku is the best choice. (you have good points and there are other things I don't like about Haiku), but I'll think twice before going to Zeta. Not that I don't want to pay, but because I don't want to be left in the same situation if YellowTab folds in a year or so. The doubtful legal status of Zeta doesn't make it better.
Had Zeta been Open Source and legally clean, then I would not think twice about paying YT for a copy.

Eugenia,

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 24 Aug 2004 21:39:00 GMT

My computer still only runs BeOS, and I must say I agree with what you stated in this mini-editorial. Even though I spend more time on my iMac lately (hey it's all new to me). I will never ever delete my BeOS. You said once in an interview that BeOS felt as if it had a "soul", and you couldn't have said it better.

And yes, Haiku needs to get their act together or else they will go down in history as "that failed attempt at recreating one of the best OS's ever."

A shame, really.

Re: Underdog

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 24 Aug 2004 21:43:00 GMT

yes BeOS in all of its forms is dead.

BeOS is dead (rip) and Zeta is digging its ditch

RE: PhOS

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 24 Aug 2004 21:46:00 GMT

>The fact that the article is so REALISTIC and ignores >PhOS, just make me think that it was a PAID article from >yellowTab.

PhOS is a joke, a HOBBY of a single developer. At least YellowTAB is a real company (to the best of my knowledge, however there will be people who won't agree with this either). No, YellowTAB hasn't paid anyone to write the article (I don't need money, I have enough), and I don't care less about yTAB anyway. However, at least they *seem* more of a real company trying to make a difference by developing some things of their own rather than creating a distro of a leaked BeOS version. Zeta is probably also based on a leaked version, but at least yellowTAB has done SOME engineering on top. It didn't just package things. They recreated a full USB-2 stack for starters, and that's huge.

Be

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 24 Aug 2004 21:50:00 GMT

BeOS died the way the Amiga did. Who knows, I also wrote off Next then I bought a OSX box.

Haiku

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 24 Aug 2004 21:52:00 GMT

I dont agree with Eugenia on all her points.
The goal is to recreate BeOS R5, I dont ever think they mentioned a timeframe, or did they? BeOS is so very well designed ( modularity comes to my mind ) where you can replace parts with ease, without harm other parts of the system. Even if it takes 10 years ( ~6y from now ). I will enjoy replacing my modular OS that Iam using with new ( first buggy and then stable new parts ) from the Haiku tree. Crucial parts like Kernel ( I guess I need to upgrade my hardware during thoose 6 years ) will be the hardest task, if its possible. When a Kit is complete, do you think they will say, -"oh, lets go back for 4 years and wait for a complete app_server/kerne!"l, or do you think they will continue to improve, add features new feature to the part they were working on?

To make one thing clear, BeOS isnt perfect, I miss some apps, ( no drivers yet, knock on wood )

Iam so dissapointed on SkyOS ( from a innovation perspective ) where I think they accomplish nothing. The speed they are developing is amazing though, so credits to them.

Congrat Haiku team!
A BeOS users and in 6 years a 100% Haiku user =)

Zeta

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 24 Aug 2004 21:53:00 GMT

I bought Zeta. Personally I have had issues that so far have prevented me from being able to really use it. Mostly driver issues. I am hopeful that most of these will be worked out. That said, I like Zeta. I only hope that they put to rest all the issues regarding source code and kernel things that everyone knows about. I loved BeOS and for me Zeta is the replacement. Now if only I could use it for my daily work.

is BeOS still relevent?

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 24 Aug 2004 21:54:00 GMT

i was a BeOS lover, and used it all throughout school, but haven't really touched it in the last year (been trying to get it going in VirtualPC with little luck).

but now that several Be engineers are going to get their ideas released to the public in 9 months or so (this time under the apple name), is BeOS still relevent?

Here are the things i loved about BeOS: the interface (snappy, unobtrusive, and good looking), the file system, the open standards support, and the community.

if Tiger is everything it says it will be, it should have a snappier interface (and not bad looking, but that's debatable), HFS+ w/ spotlight looks like it may be an acceptable replacement for BeFS, Apple's doing great on standard's support, but the community is only so-so (to many people looking to make a quick buck if you ask me).

so maybe its that i haven't booted into BeOS in the last year, but what does it still offer that OS X doesn't already (or Tiger won't in a few months)?

BeOS was the best operating system I've ever used, unfortunately, atm, i don't find it practicle anymore.

RE: Haiku

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 24 Aug 2004 21:59:00 GMT

>The goal is to recreate BeOS R5, I dont ever think they mentioned a timeframe, or did they?

They have mentioned timeframes many times in the past (check their mailing lists of 1-2 years ago), mentioning the release of the first alpha version that was never materialized.

And besides, it doesn't matter if they didn't mentioned a release time. You see, the goal was to ACCOMODATE the FLEED BeOS 5 users right after the demise of Be. EVEN if you never set a release date, you only have 1-2 years to materialize a fully stable release before you fall back to the OS technology race and lose pace. That's the market reality. After that time has passed, you are screwed for many reasons that I am too bored to mention them again.

Re: Zeta

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 24 Aug 2004 21:59:00 GMT

Zeta is unstable beyond belief on my machine. Somehow, the updated zlib from one of the SP's (SP2 I think had it) managed to prevent my system booting. To this day I've no idea what in the boot process relies on zlib (other than the very start of the bootloader, which has it built it and was well past, I was at sysinit22 or so).

Their USB2 stack KDL's me. It KDL's a lot of people, it seems. Their USB mass storage drivers don't support my digital camera. They did something to the media kit that burns my ears out with noise on each bootup (EMU10K card).

I can actually use a horrible messy hybrid of R5 Pro, BONE, bits of Haiku, small bits of Dano and drivers from Haiku and others. My system boots reliably, my digital camera works, my ears don't get eaten by the media kit. I can't use Zeta. I'm more than willing to wait for Haiku R1 (and hopefully help it somewhat along the way) for as long as it takes. Zeta isn't even up to the level of being a stopgap for me.

Oh, and PhOS is even worse than Zeta. app_server lockups abound.

Re: Zeta

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 24 Aug 2004 22:00:00 GMT

>Zeta is unstable beyond belief on my machine.

I agree. Still, it's much more usable than Haiku, which doesn't even have a usable UI yet!

tragic

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 24 Aug 2004 22:03:00 GMT

Eugenia, you are tragic..

Stability, and Usability

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 24 Aug 2004 22:04:00 GMT

I'm stably using the translation kit, print kit, a number of pref apps, most of the CLI apps, bits of the media kit (considering going over to all soon), and not-quite-so-stably using the screensaver kit. However, anything stable in Zeta is from Dano. And what they'd added, particularly at the low level, is so unstable it makes the system unusable.

Haiku has a future. YellowTAB are selling to an ever dwindling market and paying developers. If Be couldn't make it, YellowTAB can't. Haiku doesn't have to make money, it doesn't have to pay developers. It can make it.

RE: Stability, and Usability

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 24 Aug 2004 22:09:00 GMT

>If Be couldn't make it, YellowTAB can't.

FULLY AGREED.

> Haiku doesn't have to make money, it doesn't have to pay developers. It can make it.

This is NOT a reason to succeed either! Based on the current situation with Haiku, it moves on WAY TOO SLOW to be taken seriously. And WHEN it is ready, it will just be a BeOS 5, pretty much.

Can you imagine trying to "sell" a BeOS 5 to the users of 2010 that are used to crazy Longhorn/OSX stuff? This is just laughable!

Haiku had its chance, it failed. Now, it's too late to do ANYTHING. At least, not with these 5 developers it has overall who know what they are doing! You can't make a difference with the current situation! Be realistic please!

Re: Stability, and Usability

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 24 Aug 2004 22:10:00 GMT

Haiku has a future.

Not if it's too out of date for anyone other than the small handful of remaining BeOS users to be interested in it. It won't have a future without real apps, etc., which is and always has been BeOS's main problem. It has no future if you cannot practically get your work done with it, regardless of whether it's dependent on financial backing or not. Haiku will not have a component architecture, it will not have 3d accelerated graphics, vector UI, or any one of a number of other features every other OS will long since have by the time it's complete. Not unless they scrap their goal of making an R5 clone and start designing something new, and attract a hell of a lot more devs than they have now.

RE: Haiku

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 24 Aug 2004 22:12:00 GMT

Ok, you've got me riled up, Eugenia (which was likely your goal...:) I've sat by long enough - I'm getting involved!

Haikus Future

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 24 Aug 2004 22:14:00 GMT

Theres people still selling GEOS. Its what, fourteen years out of date?

Its also unlikely to be as far as 2010 before its usable. I'd say 2006 is much more realistic for R1.

To this date, I get comments on BeOS's usability, speed, etc. If Haiku can even *partially* recreate this, it will find a market. Maybe not a big one, but big enough to keep development going, and ensure that theres enough of a driver and software base to ensure people will continue to come to it.

Will Longhorn even be out before Haiku R1. Thats actually a good point to ruminate on.

RE: Zeta

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 24 Aug 2004 22:16:00 GMT

>> So, they prefer to financially crucify a company that
>> offers them today a solution (not a perfect solution by
>> any means, but a usable BeOS solution nontheless),
>> instead of showing their support for *BeOS*.

I am one of those who decided not to use Zeta. My decision isn't to "financially crucify" a company. A large part of it is that BeOS R5 is still working quite well for me (with a few minor problems due to lack of drivers). Another part of my decision is that they still aren't at 1.0 yet. They have more in place than Haiku, but they also started with the existing system. I have no problem paying for something that meets my needs, but Zeta doesn't offer enough beyond R5 for me, at least not yet.

RE: Haikus Future

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 24 Aug 2004 22:18:00 GMT

>I'd say 2006 is much more realistic for R1.

Kian, you are really naive. In 2002, people were saying that 2004 would be the R1 release. In two years, you will be telling us about 2008. Just read the archives here at osnews of what people were saying about haiku's release date! Trust me, Haiku is A LONG WAY OFF.

>Theres people still selling GEOS. Its what, fourteen years out of date?

Yeah, they sell 3 copies per month. Big deal.

>Will Longhorn even be out before Haiku R1. Thats actually a good point to ruminate on.

Windows XP is already WAY MORE USEFUL than BeOS 5, and it is available since 2002. So, even if Longhorn comes out in 2020, MS can beat BeOS5 straight, with XP.

is BeOS still relevent?

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 24 Aug 2004 22:20:00 GMT

> but what does it still offer that OS X doesn't already (or Tiger won't in a few months)?

What it offers me that OS X doesn't is the ability to run off cheaper hardware. I am interested in OS X. I want the polish of a commercial OS (which isn't Windows), but I don't want to buy their hardware. It's too expensive.

Unrealistic

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 24 Aug 2004 22:23:00 GMT

In 2002 people were saying it would be there in 2004, based off nothing. There was what, a few half finished preferences apps skeletons and a printing kit.

Now, theres a booting-from-HDD kernel, a relatively complete app_server and interface kit, and almost total completion around the rest. DHCP and a media encoder API are missing, as are a few other random pref apps.

Windows XP is no more useful to me than BeOS R5. I use a lot of relatively old hardware; XP is painfully slow on even my fastest BeOS laptop.

Now that Haiku has the non profit status, donations can soon be solicited. Those can be used to (hopefully, if theres enough) pay Axel to work on the kernel at least as if it were a part time job. Once the kernel is somewhat more complete, the app_server will be launchable. There, basically, is an RC1. The total binary and driver compatibility is whats going to take by far the longest time. *That* might not be there until 2008, yes. But launching the OS and being able to run a majority of BeOS applications, and actually *use* them, thats should be possible by 2006, *at the latest*

no tragedy

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 24 Aug 2004 22:25:00 GMT

"Will Longhorn even be out before Haiku R1. Thats actually a good point to ruminate on."
It will. But not that one which was promised. Bussiness is bussines. Do you remember story with Windows Chicago planned for 1994? Instead we got Win 95 actually in beginning of 1996. Not so bad for the time, but not what was planned/promised.

About haiku. I think there is still desire for Open Source DESKTOP OS. Be it Syllabe/AtheOS, ReactOS or Haiku or whatever else.

HARSH!

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 24 Aug 2004 22:27:00 GMT

What can I say. That was very, very harsh.

Yes, Haiku is not usable. But a lot of work has been done, and continues to be done. The efforts of the existing developers are quite amazing at times. Their problem is the team is not growing at all though, so all they can do is continue to work on their goals.

Your talk of Aethos and SkyOS is laughable. Their goals and approach were completely different. They implemented very few features first and the evolved their OSes from there. This has lead to future problems where parts must be re-evaluated and rewritten.

Haiku was designed to be a BeOS5 implementation. Therefore it has the design of a BeOS5 implementation. That's not a few easy features, or a small tightly-coupled bit of code. It's a large, well-engineered, non-trivial piece of software engineering that will take 10s of, if not 100s of, man years to create. Just look at the resources Be Inc put into R5. Whilst much of that is fortunately inherited by Haiku in terms of R&D, it is not an easy thing to reproduce and you are certainly unfair in your assertions.

The problem with users is they expect too much, often the impossible, because their perspective is a really narrow and (in this case) unfair one. Yes, Eugenia, you are a user. And one who is letting her emotions cloud her judgement in this instance.

Haiku has a future, even if it's just as a niche OS. The efforts of the few core team members ensures that. 2 millions lines of code is not a failure. It's a giant leap towards achieving a goal that is not as far away as you say. The app server, from what I read on the frontpage, is nearly there. The kernel is working even if it's imperfect. Perhaps a bit more involvement might be more helpful for Haiku rather than smart alec cheap shots through your precious OSNews. This was not news, it was a low-down-dirty TROLL.

RE: Opensource Desktop OS

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 24 Aug 2004 22:27:00 GMT

As goes there being a market for a good opensource desktop OS. The Irish state has rejected Linux as being unusable on the Desktop. They also want to reduce hardware renewal costs, as they'd like to move to an OS that doesn't force a complete upgrade with every major revision. I'm sure hundreds of schools, businesses, etc around the world have similar opinions.

If Haiku can get even a small number of these, its got its market.

Give me a BE!

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 24 Aug 2004 22:28:00 GMT

Someone! Please come out with a usable update to (what was) BEOS 5.x!
And please... no "ports" to Linux kernels!
It was the best OS (and hope it doesn't go the way of the Amiga).
I am quite willing to pay (I purchased the BEOS 5 Pro and GOBE suites). There is just too much floundering out there (yes, I tried SKY, Syllable, BE MAX Edit. etc).
Anyone have a good, informed opinion of what/which to use?

RE: Unrealistic

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 24 Aug 2004 22:29:00 GMT

> But launching the OS and being able to run a majority of BeOS applications,
> and actually *use* them, thats should be possible by 2006, *at the latest*

You completely lost the point of the article. EVEN SO, it is already too late! No one would care running a BeOS5-capable OS by 2006.

OSX already has the BEST feature of BeOS, the BFS capabilities (and EVEN more FS features than BFS has, thanks to the ex-Be engineers who work at Apple). So, what's the point? I don't see one. Where's the 3D support in the UI and in GL? Where is multi-user and good security? Where are the apps and a *good* X server port, as part of the app_server (and not as a standalone app)? Where is the 32b per channel support for printing and images? Where is the advanced audio capabilities (for your information, Media Kit always sucked, but Be's marketing was clever to call Be a "media OS" and everyone ate the lie). Where are the PRO TESTING LABS of Haiku? (Be had a whole team with hardware/software debugging)

There is a lot that you don't seem to know or understand about the BeOS and the difficult market that it's in. You believe that an OS can be created "just like that". Sorry, but that ain't true.

Difference between linux and BeOS users

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 24 Aug 2004 22:30:00 GMT

Eugenia and many BeOS users don't care to the "freedom" (not zero price) sense of free software and, therefore, a free operating system. This is the true reason why linux is now the only viable (not a toy, server-only or specialized OS) a alternative to Windows on PCs (MacOS X is out because it runs only on a different, proprietary and closed hardware, making it an eternal niche OS/computer). Linux cannot be so innovative (it is basically a unix clone) but it is extremely flexible, stable, many applications and information and it will have a guaranted future.

Why a lucid person will believe that another proprietary and closed OS like Zeta will succeed nowadays (in M$ monopoly era) ? I think Eugenia and many BeOS users think like mere consummers who only spend your money buying a car. Operating systems are choosed by today's applications offer and future perspective.

I (as linux user and free software activist) prefer to wait for a totally free (with source code, no license fees, a liberal license, etc) BeOS clone like Haiku than pay to another Be-like company.

RE: HARSH!

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 24 Aug 2004 22:32:00 GMT

>Perhaps a bit more involvement might be more helpful
> for Haiku rather than smart alec cheap shots through
>your precious OSNews.

You are doing the same mistake as the Linux zealots do. "Journalists" don't code, they critisize and REVIEW. That's what I do, I have no plans on helping Haiku or anyone else. But I do have plans to REVIEW any and each one of these wannabe OSes.

> This was not news, it was a low-down-dirty TROLL.

This was never meant to be news. It was meant to be an EDITORIAL. As if this was a troll or not, that's your opinion. I have plenty of people who down right agree with my opinions.

I gotta agree...

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 24 Aug 2004 22:34:00 GMT

...with Eugenia.

Idealism is nice and everything, but Haiku has not usable for a Generic End User in the past, and is still not usable for a Generic End User.

I mean, hell, look at Syllable: when did that fork start, and it already seems lightyears ahead of Haiku.

Having a bunch of randomly spread out functionality does not equate to something usable; you know, viable, feasiable. You need something concrete; something that works.

All that "under the hood" junk is nice and dandy, but until its tied into everything else and made into an actual operating system, they are simply very interesting modules that provide functionality... and nothing more.

Haiku has taken way too long to come to maturity; time, of course, is not a factor in OSS projects, but the baselines for technology are ever-shifting, and if you ever want something that you can sit down and *use*, you have to keep up with that - case in point*, once I hit Longhorn's sweet, sweet vector-based UI I'm not coming back down to anything less. Period. I'd rather it be Mac OSX's sweet, sweet vector graphics, of course, but the hardware costs more than my car!

*Yeah yeah, I know, I'm not Joe Everyman, and there will always be someone wanting to use a hobby OS. But guess what: I'm writing this comment, and you're not! Nyeh.

viability

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 24 Aug 2004 22:36:00 GMT

what is the point to cloning an OS:

1) to maintain API compatability
2) to reproduce the core system's technological virtues
3) to immitate the user experience, meaning the GUI

In BeOS's case, issue #1 is nearly redundant. What applications there are for BeOS are often open source. It'd be far less effort to port the whole lot of them than to rewrite the OS from scratch.
Issue #2 holds far more merit, but this has effectively already been done in the form of the AtheOS kernel. Rewriting another new kernel from scratch is therefore nothing more than a computer science experiment or a mamoth time waster at worst.
Issue #3 Doesn't need a whole new OS, that can be tacked on to any free software system, such as Syllable.

Media Kit, and other stuff

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 24 Aug 2004 22:36:00 GMT

I know the media kit sucked, I do use BeOS everyday, almost exclusively, and I do dabble in audio production. Which I have to do on Windows.

But the *majority* of computer users out there are dopes. They don't care about an OpenGL rendered UI, as long as their UI looks somewhat "pretty". They want to be able to use the computer they bought their kids at Christmas time 00 for a few games, the net, email and opening the documents they get mailed by relatives. As long as the system doesn't get viruses, thats all the security they care about.

Most schools don't care what they're using, as long as it works on their old 1998 era Gateways and can run a typing tutor, and all that associated stuff. Linux can't run fast enough on that era of kit, Windows can but has expensive licences. Remember that schools in Ireland were on Apple ]['s and in the UK on BBC Model B's within the past 7 years or so. They don't need new features

There will always, always be a market for a fast, stable, simple to use OS. It might not be on the geeks desktops, as the ones with rootless X servers will be. It might not be on the media producers desktops, as the ones with pro audio and 32BPP support will be. It will, hopefully, be on the desktops of Joe User, after they get sick and tired of Windows problems and find Linux too hard to use; and Macintosh hardware too expensive.

RE: I gotta agree...

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 24 Aug 2004 22:39:00 GMT

>Syllable: when did that fork start, and it already seems lightyears ahead of Haiku.

And still, it is lightyears back when it comes to the development pace of AtheOS itself or SkyOS. Both these OSes were/are making huge steps in too short of a time (even if they only had a single dev each), while Syllable does much smaller steps in comparison, and Haiku seems to be in standstill most of the time, compared to all these other OSes.

BeOS was a "death march"

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 24 Aug 2004 22:44:00 GMT

As phenomenal as BeOS WAS, it was an engineering "death march." TEN YEARS to build an OS??? BeOS was the poster child for why C++ should not EVER be used for a large scale OO project. If Be had used any of the more modern OO languages, specifically Eiffel, they would have been able to put BeOS in 1/3 the time with greater stability; Eiffel has full interoperability with C, C++, and Java, so developers could have written code in their favorite language and plugged it into the BeOS API. Before anyone jumps on this, remember substantial portions of MacOS X are written in Objective C.

BeOS user for a long time.....

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 24 Aug 2004 22:45:00 GMT

The only reason i should stop using Be is that any available computer with uptodate performance can be installed under Be !

I used every day HP-UX/Tru64/Linux/Win2K/WinXP and i'm still switch every evening to BeOS 'cause it's really what desktop os should be ! simple, fast and with all basic tools i need.

MacOSX is maybe the real alternative but Apple use proprietary machine at prices for californians. Even the $2500 is sold with a "3 pounds" graphic cards ! Sorry, i don't want to give my money to jobs (i bought a ibook 12" 800/128mb/40/combo : i gave it back after one week as 128Mb is unuseable under OSX ! Ok, i could buy en extra memory but why Apple don't provide directly 256Mb !!!)

By the way, i keep my BeOS (max + bone + french localized OT/MDR + Firefox + soundplay + vlc + cdrecord/helios + some HAIKU parts) ! And i will install HAIKU when it will the time.

Re: HARSH!

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 24 Aug 2004 22:46:00 GMT

> You are doing the same mistake as the Linux zealots do.
> "Journalists" don't code, they critisize and REVIEW. That's
> what I do, I have no plans on helping Haiku or anyone else.
> But I do have plans to REVIEW any and each one of these
> wannabe OSes.

I saw no review there. And the word you want is "critique" - 'to criticize' has negative connotations so I assume you meant the first.

Anyway...

That was an "editorial" eh? It was an opinionated diatribe that really made some points that were complete rubbish - like the Aethos/SkyOS comparisons. Notably, SkyOS only just became "usable" - previous iterations were absolute trash when compared to the leading OSes like you seem fond of doing.

A good editorial is objective. That was anything but objective, making it effectively an opinionated troll. Even the comments on supporting Zeta aren't really contextually accurate. Why would people buy Zeta when they only used the free version of BeOS? People are cheap, especially when our money is not flowing freely. I only pay for stuff that warrants it's price tag - and Zeta does not come close IMHO or evidently that of many others. Zeta is not like R5, it's not competitive and it is unstable, insecure, and buggy. At least Be Inc could argue their product was the best at the time they got sucker punched over OEM contracts. Zeta has a long way to go, a long long way to go. And then it'll only get harder without access to the underlying BeOS source.

Haiku may take years, but it'll get there thanks to the dedication of it's developers. And waiting for Haiku is no excuse not to support Zeta when it's ready. But is Zeta ready? No. I'm sure it'll get full community support when it is. It's not like the hardcore BeOS community is cheap, unlike us freebie onlookers.

I guess most people just don't get the point

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 24 Aug 2004 22:46:00 GMT

Is it just me or does it feel like the flamewars about MS vs Linux has completely ruined the view of people on different operating systems?

So what if Haiku doesn't incorporate all sexy apps like Photoshop and Flash. So what if Haiku doesn't have all drivers on the market. So what if Haiku doesn't feel l33t to some *nix lovers?

MANY people consider e-mails, some browsing and using your box as a Jukebox is what covers 90% of your daily usage. Sure, Office Suite is dandy for Office use but for home use some of us simply don't care.

Assume that I as a user would just what I mentioned above and want the sexiest solution on the market for not too much money. There goes XP and MS solutions out the Window (laugh here). Linux surely not sexy, even though those who get turned on by penguins think it is (laugh here). OSX is simply far to expensive, people need high paid Jobs to eat Apples (laugh here).

To me, who certainly enjoy seeing the progress of Syllable and SkyOS, Haiku is definitely the sweetest thing in the OS market (UI opinion is subjective). May it take 1,2,3,4,5 years, I want you serving my home anyway, no matter all the fancy features everyone else think of. I don't even care if it is the MS better (Unlike many who don't use Windows, I don't hate MS).

Now you might say I'm alone here, but I'm confident I'm not. Even if I am it really doesn't matter either, the market share hunt that all the commercial operating systems is up to (Win/OSX/Linux) don't concern me a bit.

On skyOS, Mac OS X and Zeta.

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 24 Aug 2004 22:47:00 GMT

I didn't "join" the skyOS community for nothing. Seeing the future of BeOS darkening by the day, I needed something that resembled it. Not specifically in looks, but in speed, responiveness, UI behaviour. SkyOS is what comes closest to it, in my opinion.

I, however, don't agree with what many say that Mac OS X comes close to BeOS. I've been using my iMac on a daily basis now for over two weeks, but no, it didn't remind me of BeOS. The only thing that did was the double-click-titlebar-to-minimize option.

Also, I question whether Zeta is really as unstable as people tend to say. But, seeing my computer runs practically every x86 OS without any problems, it might just be me.

Ten Years

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 24 Aug 2004 22:47:00 GMT

Err, first publicly available release of BeOS was '96. Started in '91. Thats five years.

Also, take a gander at a Windows copyright notice. 1985-2000 in the case of the machine I'm on now.

OS's are in a constant state of development. The Linux kernel is fourteen years old, Windows is 19 years old. 9 years from start to "finish" (R5) isn't terribly bad in comparison

RE: Ten Years

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 24 Aug 2004 22:49:00 GMT

>Err, first publicly available release of BeOS was '96. Started in '91. Thats five years.

You obviously didn't use it. The FIRST REALLY USABLE version of BeOS was R4.5.2. That's August 1999.

. . .

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 24 Aug 2004 22:49:00 GMT

I remember when OpenBeOS said they'd be able to do it in a year.

The thing is that it's starting not to matter. Mac OS X has done away with a lot of its speed demons and their Quartz display engine is well ahead of everyone else. Longhorn is going to be a big upgrade that should fix a lot of people's complaints with Windows and will feature a 3rd generation display model as well. Not to mention that OpenBeOS was started before Windows XP came out which was a huge improvement. Linux has seen tons of development over the past three years that has brought it from being a hobby-OS for desktop users to something that can replace Windows. The other big three have come a long way to matching BeOS' strengths.

It's just too late. Linux, the furthest behind for most desktop users, is just way too far ahead. It has the networking, the wi-fi, the hardware support, the applications, and the features than an alternative OS needs to be competitive against the big boys and BeOS R5 doesn't have three years past its death.

I think that Syllable has a chance of moving forward. They keep releasing more stuff and they seem to be active in development. They aren't trying to wedge their system into the place of another so they don't have to worry about breaking past things in that way and they aren't shooting too high thinking that they will be able to take over the world with their product.

IMHO

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 24 Aug 2004 22:50:00 GMT

Maybe i could agree with Eugenia in some points if she didn't propose Zeta as solution together with bashing uncertain "BeOS users".
I think that this is underestimation of intellectual abilities or ethical sense or at least ability to decide what they need. Some do believe that YT is credible enough to bring something new into BeOS and keep it alive, some are are very unsure if this is the case. As, for example, most of drivers which in reality keep BeOS alive are coming from Open Source developers, not from YT. Same for most important apps.
And if YT is doing in reality huge work inside, probably it isn't visible enough outside. Again that story about PR and publicity.

So here is complex mix of problems and such generalization about users is too harsh.

Re: HARSH!

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 24 Aug 2004 22:52:00 GMT

>A good editorial is objective.

NO. Editorial MEANS "opinion".

> making it effectively an opinionated troll

I suggest you be careful of your own opinion regarding what's trolling and what's not, cause I don't like to be called a troll, when I am NOT one.

Was it harsh? Yes, it was. But it was also the words of truth that I never hide.

PR2

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 24 Aug 2004 22:53:00 GMT

No, I didn't use it (at the time, have used it since to rescue a PPC system). However, I did use R4 (after using R5), and it felt usable enough. PR2 wouldn't have been too bad either, in my eyes.

"Usable" and usable are different things. Usable to me means that its relatively fast, can go on the net, can get my emails and can play my MP3 collection. Anything beyond that is a bonus, really.

And R3+Soundplay did that fine. R3 came out early 1998, right?

re: Your talk of Aethos and SkyOS is laughable

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 24 Aug 2004 22:53:00 GMT

"Your talk of Aethos and SkyOS is laughable" where did he mention SkyOS? he mentioned ReactOS, atheOS/Syllable. also haiku is an interesting project but is taking too long to bare fruit imo, bare in mind i hav never used BeOS, i really shud mind lol id like to see haiku do something its just that i dont hav time to spend yrs waiting for something lol

s/he/she

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 24 Aug 2004 22:55:00 GMT

Youlle, Eugenia is a woman... you might want to not call her "he"

Kian

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 24 Aug 2004 22:59:00 GMT

Regardless, it only took 3 years for AtheOS to get built with ONE GUY, Be had a full team of developers. And BeOS STIL had major stability issues with some of its core parts (media kit, networking, etc.) What's the excuse?

Face it Haiku's dead

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 24 Aug 2004 23:17:00 GMT

But it's parts can live on in other OSes.

I suggest BeFree, Cosmoe, BlueEyedOS, etc, and Haiku work together.

Forget backwards compatibility.

But then again I thought Windows and Linux were slow until I bought an IBM T41 with 512MB RAM

@ Kian Duffy

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 24 Aug 2004 23:21:00 GMT

50 - 60 year old Greek men in Australia use to call there wives 'he' in the 1980's because there vocabulary was small.

;)

BTW what part did you play in submitting the article? I don't get it.

Eugenia, one little comment

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 24 Aug 2004 23:24:00 GMT

> This is NOT a reason to succeed either! Based on the
> current situation with Haiku, it moves on WAY TOO
> SLOW to be taken seriously.

You do know that serious development takes a lot of time, do you?
It's a very big project - we have a complete OS to build, not just the parts that you can see in a user interface.
And you already told us two years ago that we'll need 10 years to do it - why be surprised when we're not finished now?
(even if I am still sure we won't need 10 years to get R1 out)
Maybe we're not communicating our progress so well that it reaches you completely, but we're progressing nonetheless.

> And WHEN it is ready, it will just be a BeOS 5, pretty much.

Not true. I am so broad to say that it will be the best BeOS you've ever used. Even though we're "recreating R5", it won't be an exact clone, it'll be much more mature and functional.
"Still BeOS" you might think, and yes, that's our goal.

@John Blink

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 24 Aug 2004 23:27:00 GMT

I used the "Submit Story" feature to send a link to the article on the Haiku site to Eugenia. I now kind of regret doing it, but she'd have found it anyway. Particularly as two of the BeOS news sites (ICO and HNN) have it on their frontpages still.

Hrrrm

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 24 Aug 2004 23:32:00 GMT

It appears I misspelt my mail adress when submitting the story, or it got "damaged" along the way

Ah well, I've posted enough talkbacks here for people to get it if they want.

RE: Eugenia, one little comment

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 24 Aug 2004 23:35:00 GMT

>And you already told us two years ago that we'll need 10 years to do it - why be surprised when we're not finished now?

Because your project gave FALSE promises to the beos users when it started (berfore you joined). You do agree with me that this will take many years (from what I get from your comment), all I want you to do, is simply tell it so clearly for everyone to hear. I had enough of people telling me that "it will be readyh next year". I am sick of reading such naive crap from users who don't know jack of what it takes to create such an OS.

> it'll be much more mature and functional.

Honestly, I don't believe that. Your OS has no chance to compete with Longhorn's features or OSX's features of the time. It will just be a "better BeOS 5" (and if that). It's just won;'t be enough.

Haiku progress...

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 24 Aug 2004 23:51:00 GMT

To Anonymous:

You state:
I remember when OpenBeOS said they'd be able to do it in a year.

That was to say that the system could be made in a year, but it would not be made right. That was also when there were over 50 developers willing to jump into the code.

Haiku (formerly OpenBeOS) CVS now hosts in excess of 3.2 million lines of code. Having the full CVS on my system, which I sync weekly (more or less), I have been able to watch the eveolution on an up-close and personal scale.

The team figured that because they were merely focusing on copying R5 that they would save a great deal of time in planning. And because they were starting with the NewOS kernel, which fairly closely matched how the team wanted the kernel to behave, it was believe that the system would be pretty much done in a year of heavy coding.

Haiku does start, you can run it on your system. However, the next biggest peice of the puzzle which is being written from scratch by an amazing talent (DarkWyrm), is in need of completion. Some of the various teams that are integral to the Haiku development also have decided to follow better ideas over R5 implementations. In fact, in some cases Haiku is doing what Be wanted to do, but did not due to various difficulties with old code in the system that they were trying to weed out. And of course, in some cases (memory management), the problem was so wide-spread that a great deal of the systems accessing memory would have to be revised. Be was in the market to stay alive and, in order to do just that, development cycles needed to stay as short as possible.

Microsoft does not have to worry about this as much because they own the market. If Windows Longhorn is months or a year late, it doesn't matter to them except for publicity and marketing timing, which of course means that if they start the wheels rolling prematurely on their massive propoganda and marketing engines (which usually starts to work against older versions of Windows, and for the upcoming release... not against 'competition'). (Also note, I am speaking od Desktop/Client Windows versions).

So what does all this mean ? It means that Be simply could not afford the delays to release of a money-making product. Why? Two reasons: #1, they are not Microsoft with a large enough purchasing install base to sustain life. #2 (Related to #1), the installed purchasing user base Be had, already purchased the latest version of BeOS, but would VERY READILY fork over when asked for the next version. The new user growth rate was the only thing keeping the business alive (that and a few $20 million donations by Intel and others), but it was only making it possible for Be to pay the employees, and enough of the bills to keep the office and the lights on in the office. That may be good, but what about all those code licenses? Money they could not make enough of.

So, how is this all related to the topic at hand, did I run off on one of my famous tangents? Probably at least a little. But it is all pertinent to the topic of discussion. As you will soon see.

Haiku-OS.org is a non-profit organization (finally). They have no need to make money in excess of survival. Currently, I believe that EVERY LAST LINE OF CODE has cost Haiku-OS.org nothing, or very close to nothing. So what can they now focus on that Be got into a position of not being able to? Yup, the product!

Haiku teams are going off on tangents and improving the underlying system, because they have the luxury of time. And they know what copying the Be model entails. In order to be binary compatible, it is fairly easy to say... *ALL* classes, class names, member functions, and ANY public data member must be named, stated, and return identically to that of R5. Sadly, that can also include some bugs. (of course, not if the bug was so bad that no code could survive with it... then that would be safe to fix, provided no change to any of the R5-compatible API is made).

So, it would seem that all these advantages would have made it simple for Haiku-OS.org to meat the one-year mark for a (even alpha) release. But, when there is freedom, there is always leisure. For product quality, freedom can be EXTREMELY bad.. if the freedom is the wrong kind of freedom (can take as long as they want, can do it however they want). OR, it can be just as awesome (can take as long as they want, but it needs to meet these guidelines, be written in this way, compile in this way, confirm, conform, commit, etc...).

The latter freedom is what Haiku-OS.org has setup, practically unknowingly for sure, but that is what has been created. This means that Haiku OS is not just going to be an R5 clone. It will be better than R5. The network kit alone is completely unlike what R5 had. We are talking kernel-space vs user-space difference. That is, integrated and optimized vs un-optimized and sitting in the corner across the room blaring music that no one can understand. Fibre versus copper if you will :-)

The product will be better than what anyone has planned, and thus it will take longer to come to market. I, for one, am not rushing it.

So I'm finally off.. I'm going to try and patch the Haiku OS kernel into R5 or Dano, and see where problems exist.

--The loon (not a member of Haiku-OS.org)

so who cares?

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 24 Aug 2004 23:52:00 GMT

hmm, so Eugenia, you are bored one day and you decide to call a group of people who want to replace their favourite OS a failure?

*checks addressbar*

yep, this _is_ osnews.com. why does this read like a troll in a forum?

RE: RE: Eugenia, one little comment

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 00:00:00 GMT

> Your OS has no chance to compete with Longhorn's features or OSX's features of the time.

What features are you talking about?
Users will -- even under Longhorn and OS X -- still listen to their MP3s, write up their documents, look at their pictures, and be happy if it works.

To some people open source is really important.

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 00:09:00 GMT

I think Haiku will succeed, and is indeed already a success. A lot of people are interested and they are making steady, if perhaps slow, progress. Linux moved slowly for the first three years, too. I think Haiku is a very important project because it promises to be a totally graphical open source system w/ a BSD-style (I think, sorry if I'm wrong) license. Configuration on Linux can still be tough for some people. Hell, I've spent the past two weeks trying to figure out why my Radeon 9800 Pro doesn't like my nforce2 under Linux (It mostly works now, but crashes at shutdown). I think in the future Haiku will provide an alternative to Linux, that is cleaner and easier to use.

I don't want to use a closed source operating system in the future, and I think Haiku is my best bet. For now, I'm more than content with OS X, but I can still be considered as waiting for Haiku because it is morally pleasing to me. It is very likely that I would start contributing to it if I could download an ISO and start coding, I'm mainly waiting for that day, and I think if I wait long enough it will come.

Re:Uroboros - contributing

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 00:15:00 GMT

"would start contributing to it if I could download an ISO and start coding, I'm mainly waiting for that day, and I think if I wait long enough it will come."
You can start it immediately. With, for example, BeOS PE or BeOS MAX or even Zeta (Zeta native API is less compatible with Haiku's in some sense, but still may be used, being backward compatible to BeOS R5).
This is Haiku-OS project specifics, as it is (will be) both binary and API compatible with BeOS R5, so Haiku team itself uses it as development platform:).

Poste Scripte...

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 00:16:00 GMT

Oh yeah:

PS: Zeta sucks

If a BeOS users says 'OK' then they mean something more or less in line with: "Well, it would be OK if it weren't priced like Windows. And if it didn't try to just copy the Linux model instead of staying to why we use BeOS in the first place. And if it wasn't for the cool ability to just download PhosphurOS by that weird dude, for free, I would probably only be keeping an eye on BeOS instead of using it."

Of course, they could always say if it weren't for Zeta, but I would be willing to bet my left...umm... leg, that there are more anti-Zeta fanatics than pro-Zeta fanatics. And I'm sure just as many prefer PhOS over Zeta, ratio-wise. It may not be a choice of features, but more a choice of price.

There are a few out there who bought Zeta, hated it, and use PhOS and love it. And there are the opposite, too. It is all about personal taste.

Beta 6 will allow me to readily measure first-time boot of PhOS systems. I did this with Beta 1 as well. Back then (two years now), there was a total of just over 15,000 successfull PhOS installations that managed to at least get on-line, and have an uptime of more than half an hour.

Each system was only counted once. This was achieved by the essential a hardware hash: listdev | md5sum

The result of this was sent to my server, and a perl script kept a log of the results and made sure the system was not counted twice.

Albeit, ANY hardware change would create a different result for listdev | md5sum I believe that for the most part, the number more or less accurately portrays the interested and willing user base of that time.

And yes, after a successfull posting of the listdev | md5sum, the system completely deleted all traces of the program to prevent double-counting.

I will be using the exact same system this time. To prevent discrepencies due to changes in the code (just a script).

Beta 5 downloads were immense. Every server handling the downloads went down due to overload. And I mean every one setup within two weeks of release.

Beta 6 will be released at the end of September, and this time I am looking for dozens and dozens of volunteers for various needs. Many have come forward, showing me there is support. We will soon find out just how much support there really is, and also just how much interest there actually is.

--The loon

Oh, and:

PS2: Eugenia, girl, I really admire you as a person, and I do usually trust your judgement. But why are you favoring yellowTAB all of a sudden?

I'm not saying favor me instead :-)

Maybe sometime soon I will need to do something crazy, like finish that 20 page article I was writing in hopes of getting it up on OSNews.

We'll see.

Stay tuned:

http://beoseh.neo-programmers.com/forum/
http://beoseh.neo-programmers.com/forum/
http://beoseh.neo-programmers.com/forum/
http://beoseh.neo-programmers.com/forum/
http://beoseh.neo-programmers.com/forum/

GET IT!?!

Long-term prospects of Haiku versus Zeta

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 00:16:00 GMT

Well, it's an interesting thing, comparing the reasoning of BeOS users for waiting for Haiku versus committing to Zeta.

1. The best indications I see indicate YellowTab doesn't have the source to the system, or at least not the complete source.

2. As imperfect as Haiku is (after all, it's pre-alpha stage, and makes no claims otherwise) the code is 100% available and will live on somewhere as long as there's a single developer with interest in it.

3. There is enough market demand for an alternative to Windows/OS X (the two commercial powerhouses on their platforms) and Linux/Unix variants that is unified, easy to use, doesn't require huge hardware resources, and is sufficient to everyday tasks.

4. Some of those other Open Source OS's have incorporated massive amounts of source code from various sources that are incompatible with the license of Haiku, which might reduce their viability in the future (if there is one) of those other OS's becoming commercially attractive to commercial software developers, due to the taint of GPL. Haiku has taken a different route than Linux explicitly due to the tainting of GPL on the system itself: they WANT people to use and abuse Haiku without being whipped senselessly by the GPL should they wish to make their own custom versions, while still having fully opened source.

5. Who knows how long it will take YellowTab to release something more than a Release Candidate (multiple revisions of alpha/beta versions of post-R5.03 BeOS) with their manpower (or lack thereof) management and attention to detail (investigate the release candidates for evidence to point to that: I don't need to say anything here, as the evidence screams for itself) and their ability to modify the kernel itself, and the various kits?

6. Who knows how long Bernd can keep the money coming in sufficient to cover the costs, regardless of how good/bad/marketable Zeta is?

7. There are serious questions regarding the details of the legality of what YellowTab has. What will this do, and will it become a real issue for business, or is it already too late?

8. As Axel has pointed out, it takes real time to do real solid development, as that requires a lot of testing and attention to details. For the first version of Haiku, the regression tests must incorporate (to a fairly large degree) the testing for the quirks of BeOS 5.03 lest it break the existing binaries and source code of existing applications. In effect, that adds a large process of discovery in the development, as it requires actually testing TWO different operating systems. So, while the API is mostly documented/engineered for syntax, the semantics make it an interesting target to replicate. If they didn't care about semantic compatibility, the task would be much easier, as they could implement something that seems reasonable based on the general concept, and pronounce it done.

So, will Haiku or Zeta or any other BeOS compatible OS (source or binary) be viable, if they are still at all viable? Time wounds all heels, I guess. If so, I may end up being wounded to some degree, as I'm working on an IDE for them... If nothing else, it's something I can put on my resume, and enjoy developing applications with it, even if the OS it is targeted for has major flaws that make me cringe. Regardless of what BeOS zealots may say about the design beauty or implementation of BeOS, objective evidence demonstrates that Be didn't get some major issues fixed in terms of reliability/stability, even with all that manpower and time: the need to pay the bills forced their hand in sending it to customers before many gaping holes were sealed. Nonetheless, it isn't a useless OS, and it isn't beyond redemption.

And no, I'm not an Free Open Source Software zealot, and I'm not against commercial software making money. However, of the two choices I presented of Zeta versus Haiku, Zeta may be a short-term stopgap measure for those that actually have hardware it will work on, and if YellowTab lasts long enough, they may become a Haiku distribution maker as they transition over to the work done by the Haiku team. The current Zeta source code issue makes it very unlikely (if the indications are true) that they will be able to continue Zeta beyond a certain point without a heavy infusion of Haiku blood, sweat and tears.

@Looncraz

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 00:20:00 GMT

> But why are you favoring yellowTAB all of a sudden?

Loon, you are a loon indeed. I suggest you read more carefully what I write. I don't think that YellowTAB is in a much better position today than haiku, only marginally better (because their OS works). But YTAB doesn't have a clue on how to market their product, neither have enough money to do so.

RE: Eugenia, one little comment

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 00:29:00 GMT

> Because your project gave FALSE promises to the
> beos users when it started (berfore you joined).

Before I joined - oh well, that's already so long ago... ;-)

> You do agree with me that this will take many years
> (from what I get from your comment), all I want you
> to do, is simply tell it so clearly for everyone to
> hear.

Sure, such an undertaking is going to take years, even if it would be done commercially. I expect that we're booting into something that doesn't look so bad in the not so distant future - but I can't say how long it will take us to reach R1 from there, too. It could well take another year or even two - we're still an open source project with unpayed developers.
I think 5 years would be a reasonable time to expect something usable from us (not from now, from our beginning on). But if we're in fact earlier or later, we'll see.

> I had enough of people telling me that "it will be
> ready next year". I am sick of reading such naive
> crap from users who don't know jack of what it takes
> to create such an OS.

Well, some day, they'll be right ;-)
Maybe we'll surprise you, maybe we'll meet your expectations - we cannot know now.

> > it'll be much more mature and functional.
> Honestly, I don't believe that. Your OS has no chance
> to compete with Longhorn's features or OSX's features
> of the time. It will just be a "better BeOS 5" (and
> if that). It's just won;'t be enough.

We cannot know this either. What will be Longhorn's features of the time? Will it have been released already at all?
Also, what feature would you really miss when switching to Haiku?
Even if the interface will look dated to you (I don't even know if that'll be the case, as I could imagine that we'll thinking differently about the exact look as well when the time comes), will it be less functional than your favourite MacOS X or Windows Desktop?
What gloomy features do you expect from Longhorn that are not already known today?

I hated reading this editorial

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 00:37:00 GMT

but it's right on. Just like on OS/2 and Amiga platform, there just isn't enough dedicated developers to make it move forward at an acceptable pace. Plus, no big name company to give some weight behind it.

There's one thing I don't agree with Eugenia. If they could gather more devs by years end and put out the R1 at beginning of year, Haiku could attract a lot of Linux switchers easily. Haiku is better positionned for the desktop than Linux will ever be. Multiuser capabilities and security isn't a high priority feature needed for the average joe.

lets face it...

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 00:42:00 GMT

BEOS was the last major new propietary operating system to have a chance becoming ubiquitous. Even though Mac OS X is a completely new OS apple built off of the previous Mac reputation, supllying a degree of backwards compatability with older Mac apps, and of course its hardware platform-which has always been a key point to Macintosh success. Aside from this there has been a thriving software and hardware industry around the Macintosh platform.

I am not saying there is no future for new propietary operating systems-there certainly is-albeit only for niche markets < 2%. It has taken Linux almost 20 years to break through the chicken-egg problem with regard to applications and hardware support and start to really catch on-and it will still need another 2-3 years to really begin to replace Microsoft in trully large numbers. Linux has succeed in what no other OS of the last 10 years has-manufactureres are writing drivers for their hardware for Linux and manufacturing equipment designed for Linux.

The fact is none of the new propietary OS`s struggling to make it today even have a chance of breaking out of this chicken-egg dilemna-there are no commercial projects which can fund their way through such a long period of time necessary to get such market support-unless of course some super rich millionare decides to pay companies for hardware support. Simple things like 3D accelrated graphic support-or high quality sound card drivers for Creative Labs Audigy series-the lack of support for modern hardware, which people now expect, is crippling for all new OS projects.

In the late 90´s, when BEOS was beginning to catch on it offered concrete features which were of value to users accustomed to Microsoft and Apple and it did so on commodity hardware. And of course some of this technology, developed back then, is still impressive today-but times have changed along with expectations and what was impressive then is less than inspiring now.

Open source projects which can utilize drivers and apps written for Linux can use the relative success of Linux to help launch newer platforms-but even this is really difficult-particularly if one cannot use the hardware drivers due to different kernels and the inability to reuse propietary drivers(ie. Nvidia etc.) I do see a good oppurtunity for alternative open source projects -much better than for new propietary ones-but the outlook is disheartening to put it mildly.

For example if one chooses to use the X11R6 (or Alsa, or Cups) windowing system one gets drivers for hundreds of graphic cards for free- if one chooses to go their own and write their own windowing system they can spend years and years playing catch up with X which still offers limited support in contrast to Windows. Linux finally has enough leverage that manufacturers must weigh the disavantages of not supporting it-this is the pivotal point-the point at which the questions the manufacturers are asking themselves change.

And it is incredibly hard to attract commercial software writers for platforms which provide substandard hardware driver platforms. It is awful hard to justify a buisness plan to a group of potential investors for writing software apps for a platform which has no driver support for those features which are in actual demand today. I love seeing the progress of SkyOS-it is breath taking how quickly it is developing-but one will probably never see 3D acceleration or good opengl support for it -which is a crying shame. Is Hewlett Packard going to write printer drivers for SkyOS ? Will ATI write drivers for it ?

I am not writing here to pat Linux on the back for its success-it is trully sad how the manufactures and computer distributors have been effectively able to supress any real competition for so many years-Linux is now being noticed because of the names associated with it (IBM, HP, Dell, Epson, Sun etc.). In all likelihood Linux will be overtaken someday by one of the projects which it has enabled-using apps and drivers originally written for Linux.

Unless a new company is formed where someone is willing and able to invest 50+ million dollars to make it happen we will likely never see a trully new propietary OS again which 'makes it in the big time'-except from the names we already know.

Subject (Required) - (IF replying, type "RE:" and paste the subject of the co...

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 00:47:00 GMT

Eugenia, what is the problem?

Is it that the former openbeos team didn't deliver a freely available, perfectly working clone of your former favourite OS in just one year's time?

Maybe it will not be released until 2010. Maybe it will never be released at all. So what!? Is that a reason to start bashing people who work hard and do make progress, even if the pace of their progress doesn't fit with your personal agenda?

I have read OSNews for years, always seeing it as a fine source of news for people not only interested in mainstream OSes and technologies. This single rant/flamebait/opinion/editorial or whatever you would like to call it has lowered my opinion of the site and your person a lot.

You should (hopefully) realize that you as the person behind a much read news source have a little more responsibility than the average news forum Troll.

I am in no way connected to or working with the Haiku team, but I really do respect the work they put in and what they have achieved so far.

4. OSNews is not just an open source news web site, and it's not just an "alternative" OS site. Do not post comments that merely disparage a particular OS or company. Some examples of sentiments that are in violation of this rule: M$ Sucks!, Apple is dead, people who use KDE should be shot, etc. If you hate Microsoft, or Apple, or Linux, you may still talk about your hatred at OSNews, but please do so with a reasoned, on-topic argument.

6. This is the most subjective of the rules, but its enforcement is important to everyone's enjoyment of the forums: no stupid zealot OS wars. Regardless of your intention, comments that we deem to be likely to ignite a flame war will be modded down. Commentors who repeatedly post single dimensioned, inflammatory posts, despite having those posts modded down will end up being banned.

Isn't the whole editorial a breach of those two simple rules? (Haiku is dead, YellowTab is superior to Haiku) Do these rules only apply to us mortals writing in the Comments section?

RE: Subject (Required) - (IF replying, type "RE:" and paste the sub

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 00:55:00 GMT

>Eugenia, what is the problem?

Read the article again, more objectively, and then you will understand what's the problem. Also, read my reply at Axeld's comment. That's the problem.

Re:karl

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 00:57:00 GMT

About chicken and eggs problem.
Yeagh, hardware world is getting tough. Even interface specs for hardware pieces are going to be Big Secret. From one side.
But from other side i noticed weak for moment but promising tendency from hardware manufacturers - to put actual driver functionality in (almost) OS-independent lib (sure, hardware-platform dependent) which needs just kind of wrapper to actual binding with certain platfrom.
Sometimes those core parts are open-sourced, like for Broadcom NICs, sometimes are in form of ELF x86 closed source lib, like solution for one of modems.
I do believe same may happen (if not yet) also for those 3d-functionality parts of videocars.
This way is also good for hardware manufacturers itself, as thinking in well-defined abstraction layers improves quality as for h/w designers so for driver wirters inside company.

@Lee7guy

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 01:00:00 GMT

>Isn't the whole editorial a breach of those two simple rules? (Haiku is dead, YellowTab is superior to Haiku)

No one said that. You obviously didn't read the comments where a lot of things are explained, plus, Zeta *is* more superior at this time than Haiku, because Zeta is a near-complete OS and Haiku is still an experiment.

Next time you reply in such a stupid, UNREAL fashion without having understood what I said and what I did not say, you will be banned. I have little tolerance for people who don't understand the situation, but they still feel like commenting.

Future of Haiku

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 01:08:00 GMT

Time for me to chime in on a subject instead of just lurking around here. And Eugenia, I mostly agree with you.

While I have always felt that the goal of OpenBeOS/Haiku to create a binary compatible release of BeOS R5 was a laudable goal, I have also felt that it was completely unrealistic.

BeOS had a lot of great things going for it. In 1999. It's 2004 now, with 2005 rapidly approaching, and I doubt that we would see an Alpha of Haiku this year, or even next year. By the time the OS is released it will be as ancient and virtually useless as GEOS or Window 3.1 is today.

Does that mean I think they should stop development? Hell no. I think they should continue developing Haiku - but not as an R5 clone. I understand their goals, and why they want to maintain binary compatibility, but the end result is still useless.

The time of the Haiku developers, in my opinion, would be better spent working on the "next version" of BeOS, perhaps keeping in mind at least some source compatibility, but bring the OS up to modern times with modern features such as multi-user support, better security, et cetera. The Haiku team could improve upon the now-aging APIs, and build a better OS.

You may argue that AtheOS/Syllable or other projects are doing something similar to this, and to some extent it is true. The reality is however, that the Syllable project is a very amatureish attempt at best to create an OS. There seems to be no real direction with that project, and it most likely will languish in a perpetual development hell, with occasionally improved drivers. I'll reserve comment on the others for now.

What about the apps? Hell, a good portion of the apps on BeBits are open source anyway, and would be little more than ac couple hours of debugging and a compile away from being useful again on an updatesd Haiku. An improved API might also make the porting of apps like OpenOffice just a little bit easier. Something to think about.

And, while I think Eugenia might have gone a tad over the top, the bottom line is that she is right. I hope that the Haiku devs take it for what it's worth - a wake up call that the longer you delay, the more likely it is that your work becomes irrelevant. Work towards the future. the past is gone, and it's not coming back - so don't try and recreate it. Remember the past fondly, learn from the successes and mistakes of the past, develop for the present, and keep your eyes on the future.

RE: Subject (Required) - (IF replying, type "RE:" and paste the sub

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 01:13:00 GMT

I read the editorial again, and I still think it is an insult to all the people, not that they are very many, working on the project. If competing with Longhorn and OSX of 2010 is the only goal of alternative OSes, then you should probably declare every single, small, alternative OS ever mentioned here as a failure in the making.

interesting stuff

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 01:18:00 GMT

i always find it amusing when i read that "BeOS doesn't support enough hardware..".
If you've ever used Solaris x86, especially 7 or 8, then *that's* an OS that suffers from a lack of drivers.

Don't get me wrong, i use Solaris every
day at work...on Sparc, and love its stability and scalability.

I think Haiku has an enormous task: BeOS R5 compatibility.
That is where the time has gone. Sure they could have spent the time doing something else like contribuing to Sequel, Syllable or Cosmoe...all BeOS-ish OSes but they chose the harder task.

I do agree with some of Eugenias comments and she is entitled to her opinion. And to criticise the progress is fine, but it is measured against some flippant comments (R1 of OpenBeOS in two years!!) and a lack of updates on the OpenBeOS site (projects page) occasionally as well.

I've used PhosphorOS (aka PhOS) and i liked it. Sure its legality is questionable, but so is BeOS Max and Dano.
I'm looking forward to Beta 6 of it.

If you're waiting for something to happen then you will get impatient and become frsutrated. Instead, do something about it - join up and start coding.

Try the other OSes and be prepared for lost data and systems locking up, but try them anyway. It's good experience.

Make a difference!!
cheers
peter

RE: Subject (Required) - (IF replying, type "RE:" and paste the sub

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 01:24:00 GMT

Most of them, are, failures in the making, yes. That's the reality of it.

As for Haiku, I wrote in the editorial EXACTLY what its goal was. And it was very important, from the first moment of Haiku's existance, to be released fast, in order to achieve to be THE BeOS replacement.

Three years later, it is not even on 30-40% of its completion yet. And YES, TIMING is very important for such a specific goal. Haiku IS NOT "just another alternative OS", it had SPECIFIC market targets. And it has MISSED these targets, it is now TOO LATE to capture an audience that would care for something like BeOS 5-like. This is the part that YOU don't understand and this is the exact part that makes Haiku a failure!

And if that is an insult to all people worked on the project, then BE IT. I won't hide the truth so just I won't "hurt feelings". I don't care about the feelings of these people when I write editorials-- it is not my job to do so--, but I care about the REALITY of the matter at hand.

You need to sit down and re-evaluate some of your thoughts about the reasons behind this editorial, and what this editorial really tries to say.

If Haiku project today, was coming out and said: "we will re-set our goals, we will not try to be a BeOS 5 clone, but we will keep most of the BeOS values and code, and we will instead will try to create a semi-new OS that is _truly_ modern and would chase Longhorn/OSX in features and will try to INNOVATE", then YES, I will support Haiku. But I CAN NOT and I WILL NOT suppor their CURRENT goal, because it is already FAILED.

Haiku's ambition got the better of them.

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 01:32:00 GMT

They've made some seriously stupid errors. The first one is trying to retain compatibility with BeOS 5. That would make sense if there were that many great applications for BeOS 5 in the first place, but it never had the 3rd party depth of MacOS or Windows. So why bother?!? Too bigger investment for too little return.

The second one is using a whole new kernel! That means they've had to do pretty much everything from scratch. With the kind of resources they have, they should have always realised that this was too much work. If they had thought it through, they would have realised using Linux or FreeBSD as a base would have been the way to go. Heck, they could have even used X too. For proof of this look at the amazing work done on Blue Eyed OS by one man. It might not have been *true* BeOS but with a bit of work, it could have been pretty damn close in far less time than Haiku is going to take.

Won't ever use it

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 01:33:00 GMT

Dont like the name, it sounds so unprofessional. If it was a codename that would be cool but unfortunately this is what they decided to go with.

RE: Won't ever use it

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 01:40:00 GMT

If it were renamed to PhippsOS, would that make it professional sounding to you?

@Eugenia

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 01:45:00 GMT

Next time you reply in such a stupid, UNREAL fashion without having understood what I said and what I did not say, you will be banned. I have little tolerance for people who don't understand the situation, but they still feel like commenting.

As a matter of fact, I did read the article several times, then I read all the comments. I have been using BeOS and the likes for years and is well aware of any "situation" regarding Haiku and Zeta. If my comment was that stupid and UNREAL(?) then why keeping replying to it in, should we call it, the down moderated forum?

Ban me if you like. It is your site after all, and after this exchange I don't likely see me posting or reading anything here anytime soon no matter what the outcome.

My $0.02

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 01:47:00 GMT

Well, its nice to see the average attitude of posters on this topic compared to other topics on this website. I've noticed longer and more mature posts here than what you'd find on other topics involving Mac, Linux or Windows - it just shows the maturity level and wisdom of BeOS fans/critics. Having said that, my thoughts follow:

Haiku is still relevant. It may not have the latest whiz bang feature (not in R1), it may not run every single piece of hardware out there (not in R1), it may not get large commercial support (not in R1), etc, it may and will not be all things to all people.

What it will be is a small, clean, elegant open source OS which makes an excellent base for R2, R3, R4 and beyond. And the unity of the Haiku core will make it more viable than the dozens of Linux versions. This is what scares the Linux fans - that all the time and effort they spent on becoming 1334 Linux h4X0r5 will have been in vane since a saner (easier to use) solution will be available for the masses.

The Haiku team have shown engineering maturity. Wait until this knowledge gets applied to R2. And there will be commercial backing for R2.

re: Won't ever use it

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 02:00:00 GMT

"Dont like the name, it sounds so unprofessional. If it was a codename that would be cool but unfortunately this is what they decided to go with"

Are "Windows" and "Mac OSX" such professional names? ALL names are dumb. Only when you use it for a while do people become used to it, then it becomes acceptable.

re: RE: Subject (Required) - (IF replying, type "RE:" and paste the sub

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 02:08:00 GMT

"And if that is an insult to all people worked on the project, then BE IT. I won't hide the truth so just I won't "hurt feelings". I don't care about the feelings of these people when I write editorials-- it is not my job to do so--, but I care about the REALITY of the matter at hand."

Maybe you SHOULD care about the feelings of other people when you write editorials. Remember, editorials are OPINIONS, not REALITY. And no, they are not the same. It's not WHAT you believe that's offensive, but rather, HOW you state it. Many people respect your opinions, but I think you should respect others' feelings as well. Otherwise, editorials and posts seem like flamebait, even though they have something important to say.

Eugenia...

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 02:11:00 GMT

Actually, that is what Haiku is actually doing.

They are maintaining as much binary compatibility as absolutely possible. But at the same time, the system is not being built the same.

The file system is compatible, but already faster and cleaner (and with some fixes) than Be's file system.. and it has not yet been optimized.

The media kit is going more modern as well. The network kit is shaping up to be worlds better than net_server of R5.

Binary compatibility can be acheived while still keeping up with the times, look at Microsoft. Sure they jumped through a lot of hoops, but I can still run 16-bit software from Windows 3.1 if I were to run Windows XP.

Dano cannot run something like 85% of R5 media applications. However, with about an hour of work I managed to get back about 99% of those apps. I have only encountered one or two that did not work. All I had to do was put a bug that the binaries expected when linked to libmedia.so back into place. One bug. A trivial one in fact.

It took me, MAYBE, 15 minutes to discover the secret to net_server compatibility on BONE... a completely new and unique system. A simple network call translation layer is all that was needed, and a library of the same name that handled the task.

I would personally just tell the Haiku team to make the OS first, then make it binary compatible. Of course, driver binary compatibility is paramount at all costs at this point in time.

If I can, with my, relative-to-Axel, insufficient coding and reversing skills can manage what yT has yet to do, then three or four active, EXCELLENT, developers can make Haiku rock and roll.

Though I am still perplexed by all of the people who gave up on multi user that came before me. It may have taken me two and half months to get it working, coding for at least an hour a day (every day), but I did manage to make it work without losing any binary compatibility (except for my own apps from Beta 4 to Beta 5 - even source compat was lost).

The goal is readily acheivable, but it must be done right. And it is being done right, albeit perhaps a little more meticulously than I had envisioned. But this is not bad.

Also, remember that R1 is just to get a system together to make R2.

yellowTAB and I have one very thing in common: we are betting the house on Haiku. yellowTAB has no source code from Palm legally. Neither do I. However yellowTAB and I both know that Dano half-way falls under the BeOS PE license. Half-way is not good enough to get investors. However a few discussions with those in the know at PalmSource obviously gave us enough comfort to freely modify and distribute Dano... minus a couple things... very important things.

Not going to say what that is of course, that would be good for potetnial competitors. Though just do a comparison of the contents of PhOS and Dano (I say PhOS because it is cleaner than Zeta).

Finally, Eugenia, I would suggest you think of the people you are talking to. Many of us use BeOS because we do not like the bloat of Windows and Linux, and find BeOS the best alternative for our machines. For the most of us, Zeta borderlines this area.

Try a new PhosphurOS, it is clean and feels just like BeOS should feel.. fast, simple, organized, and predictable. I put a lot of work into making sure that even my bugs are predictable.

I have 65,000 lines of code for PhosphurOS. In releases, the product of maybe half of that is included. The remainder of the code belongs to PhOS future migration to Haiku. And a few here and there so I can compile backwards to R5 via the PhosphurOS switching development kit (geek stuff of course). I imagine that yellowTAB's code is being geared directly for Dano, then later will be migrated to a Haiku base.

Haiku is the future of this niche market. yellowTAB, the BeOSMAX team, others, and myself are all working to create enough products to keep a secretly unified effort alive. We only need to keep the people we have interested. We are doing that and, as a side-effect, garnering more interest.

Don't believe it? You wrote an editorial about it did you not? Thet shows that there is obviously interest. I wonder fairly often how much interest there is, which is why I am re-including the only peice of SpyWare known in the BeOS world, so that we can count successfull unique hardware-base installs of PhosphurOS.

When I was working at Dell I was surprised that almost a third of the people in my original training class had at least heard of BeOS. Of course these are all geeks, but 1/3 out of a random grouping of people is pretty amazing. I even updated an ex-fellow employee to PhosphurOS from R5 PE at his request. Pretty amazing the interest in *ANYTHING* not Microsoft, and not Linux.

Linux is great for what it is, and its success will only further our success and make our niche larger. BeOS is no longer alive? Heh... wrong. BeOS will live on forever in one form or another. Even if just in the hearts of the many fanatics and normal fans, but it lives on. It certainly still lives on many machines in this world.

Oh well, I will let you go now.

--The loon

re: RE: Subject (Required) - (IF replying, type "RE:" and paste the sub

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 02:11:00 GMT

>It's not WHAT you believe that's offensive, but rather, HOW you state it

That has always being a problem of mine, in the way I write english that is perceived as offensive and rude. I write english by thinking in Greek. And Greek is not the most kind language in the world.

So, I really can not fix this. It is my style. I know people will misunderstand things, even if I try hard to not offend others. So, I don't try anymore. I have tried in the past, but I can't change my style. Trust me, I tried.

And one little thing..

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 02:20:00 GMT

Eugenia you said if we don't have the features of Longhorn when it comes out our OS will be treated as a toy...

Well, people like toys :-)

In fact, the absolute biggest industry is toys in one form or another.

Most people buy computers just to use it as a toy 90% or more of the time. Companies buy them to make money.

Geeks build them to be better toys than the toys the other guys have.

The entire entertainment industry plays on our infatuation with toys. Gadgets are all toys with some purpose.. but still they boil down to toys.

When someone gets their first car, it is a toy to them.

When Windows came out, it was nothing more than a toy.

Man, you know.. makes me want to play my new guitar... I love that toy.. almost as fun as toying with you.

--The loon

the only thing I miss...

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 02:46:00 GMT

The only thing I miss from the obos/Haiku group are the frequent updates on their websites that they used to do in the first months of the project, a long time ago..

Could you guys please, at least, link the updtates from the CVS on the website? The site looks great, and I know you guys are trying to do it look very professional.. But while the first version is not released, the only group of people that will be looking the website are us, geeks..

After the first release, it'll be a very different story..

Toys? Tools?

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 02:53:00 GMT

Eugenia you said if we don't have the features of Longhorn when it comes out our OS will be treated as a toy... Well, people like toys :-)

Sure. Everyone likes toys. But you also need good tools. A segway might be cool, but try taking home a new tv with it. OpenBeOS's goal was to keep BeOS users on the same path, to provied a continuation of BeOS - which was a tool, not a toy.

Compareable projects

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 03:19:00 GMT

http://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/hurd.html
GNU Hurd (micro-kernel advantages not big enough to compete against the much more mature and full-featured Linux. Yes COMPETE. While an OSS project doesn't need money it still needs developers and users to truely take off and Hurd doesn't manage to attract them)

http://freevms.free.fr/indexGB.html
FreeVMS (a lot to-do but no developers. most don't even care about the technology. The project starter seems to truely love VMS and still hasn't given up. The "need more people" (!) lines have been there since the start of the project. Obviously he also can't compete. And alone he will probably never get anywhere. And of course VMS is to Very Much Strange anyway. Barely anyone would want to run that on his desktop.)

FreeDOS (has almost reached 1.0 but the tech they clonned is so outdated today that almost nobody uses it. BTW their kernel developer has just given up on the project...)

Open-source doesn't guarantee success! IMO there isn't room for another OSS OS to truely take off. Surely some freaks will run "really alternative" OSes just for fun but that's it. Some BSD remains on the server but it gets harder every year to justify using it instead of the more feature-full and speedy Linux. IMO in 5 years Linux will be light-years ahead of BSD purely because Linux has 100x the dev power behind it.

@Looncraz

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 03:35:00 GMT

I like what you have said here.
http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=8114&offset=75&ro...

Although I realise your not a Haiku developer, this is exactly what Haiku needs.

It needs articles written that can be posted here on OSNEWS. That states that they will be backwards compatible yet more advanced. The important part is the HOW? How will they be more advanced, what is planned.

Get that out into the online community.

I've never used BeOS...

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 03:47:00 GMT

Or Haiku, or Zeta, but after all the recent GNOME/KDE flamewars, it's very nice to see a heated, yet mature and well argued discussion.

Thanks to all the posters.

John Blink..

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 03:48:00 GMT

Yeah, that would be a very interesting article :-)

I think I'll just have to do that, try to shed some light on the project, and maybe help it grow as a result :-)

--The loon

Why re-invent the wheel?

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 04:16:00 GMT

What I don't understand is why people are trying to re-do BeOS from the ground-up "open source" instead of building on other work.

I think the BlueEyedOS approach, using the Linux kernel, is MUCH smarter. The Linux kernel and XF86/XORG already supports the majority of the hardware and it has a much better chance of supporting anything new.

If the idea is to re-create the BeOS experience, I seriously think that could be accomplished without starting from scratch, kernel included.

Pervasive negativity

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 04:22:00 GMT

I've been reading Eugenias stuff from back in the Benews days, followed her over here to OSnews and have always had a soft spot for this overcharged Duracell of greek fire. I always liked that she called a spade a spade, even when being enthusiastic, but lately I get the feeling it's more a case of calling a spade a tool to break heads with.

It seems, to me at least, that through the disappointment of seeing Be inc. falling head over heels, and not in the romantic way, or becomming part of an environment of for-hire software engineers, who understandably might have a less than rosy view of the whole open source phenomena, or perhaps just the natural conservatism of age, or a million other reasons, she now has a hard time seeing the worth in any OS project that isn't backed by a NASDAQ listed company.

I'm not saying that Haiku will 'make it' (unless it can attract a couple of new Axels it perhaps won't), but I do see the worth of trying to preserve the essence of BeOS, things that can be done in other OSes, but never in the same charming way and the value of the open source approach (count me among those that will never again put my heart into software in a locked vault). Aside from that one never can tell what suddenly catches on; who, for example, would have guessed in the first years of Linux that it one day would steamroll through the computer world in an IBM branded main battle tank?

Alexander G. Rubio

There are still people using Windows95

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 04:25:00 GMT

Millions, actually.

Whoever is using BeOS now will transition to Haiku progressively, and more people will join as developers improve the code, and new users will be charmed by the simple, clean, easy to understand interface.

I don't see any problem with the Haiku team taking teir time, as long as there is steady progress being made.

my take

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 04:28:00 GMT

I used to subscribe to the OpenBeOS devel mailing list. I haven't in half a year or more.

Ever had a nutcase girlfriend (or mother)? The kind that calls you on the phone every 10 minutes until you answer then proceeds to talk about who knows what for hours on end? The kind where you smack yourself in the head with the phone in hopes you'll go unconscious? The kind where you can go off and read the paper or take a dump and come back 15 minutes later and you still hear noises coming out of the ear piece?

Or maybe you've been in a meeting where someone starts talking, and you wonder if telling him to "shut the fuck up" would result in a standing ovation or being branded an insensitive clod. And after half an hour of wasted time you're left wondering if they were the basis of Office Space's "Milton".

Open BeOS devel felt a lot like that. There were the handful of developers actually writing code. There were a lot of lurkers who were interested but didn't have the time (me included). There was a lot of offtopic stuff. But what killed it for me were the people that bitched for 2 weeks straight because the "Show Image" replacement had 2 new features that weren't present in the original BEOS version.

RE:Why re-invent the wheel?

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 04:35:00 GMT

"~ why people are trying to re-do BeOS from the ground-up open source"

BeOS was from what I understand designed 'from the ground up'...albeit like most modern OS reminiscent of NeXT and OS/2

If Haiku intends to achieve the same as R5 and be opensource maybe they have to follow Be tradition.

There is to me no imperative to be anything like any other OS in design or use.

My take

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 05:04:00 GMT

I went through a week of BeOS fascination (playing around with BeOSMax, PhOS, personal, Professional). I guess its greatest strength was that it was a pretty quick system and the interface was decent. But at the end of the week I came to the conclusion that its pretty much a deadend.

The Haiku embarass themselves by calling the linux kernel a "server os". The linux kernel, today, has better realtime capabilites than BeOS ever did - hands down.

I've argued the following point on osnews.com before and the best answer I received was "They are kernel newbies". The point is why don't they just use the linux kernel and X, they get all the drivers and nice ATI, Nvidia opengl for free.

Just recreate the API and forget about binary compatibility. Write a nice gui toolkit on top of X. It will be fast. Worry about the spirit of BeOS, not some ridiculous nostalgia for apps that are completely outdated right now and will look like atari 2600 games when Haiku actually has a version 1.

I might be a little bit more supportive if the B.E.OS model had been adopted instead of what they're doing now.

The last nail in the coffin ...

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 05:08:00 GMT

Well, Eugenia, though, I may agree with you on some points, you article and your comments here have fully proven to me that you are an undeniable b****! Yes, you can have an opinion, and you are welcome to it, but, over the years, you have gotten worse and worse. Maybe it is due to the fact that you are not allowed to work in this country, and all you have to do all day is sit around and read other people complaining. Maybe all of their complaining has finally gotten to you, to the point that you are now one of them. If that is the case, please, get out of the journalism business, for, you have lost your professionalism. I know you don't care for me, as, a couple years ago, you pretty much stated so, but, I have been respectfully quiet since then. Heck, I do not even know what our disagreement was about anymore. But, in that time, I have seen your opinion go from even handed to haphazard, almost becoming one of the people you complain about most, the zealots! So, say what you want about me, or anyone else for that matter, as your opinion takes on less and less merit every day, and, at least for me, has now no merit what so ever.
I wish all of the Haiku developers the best of luck, and, if one day, I have as much time as I did when I started helping with BeZilla, I will look them up to help (granted, BeZilla deserved a lot more time than I ever had to offer, and when I started, I had never coded for BeOS, ever).
I have enjoyed, and purchased all legal versions of BeOS since 4.5, and, bought MANY applications for BeOS, to help support 3rd party developers. However, I do not agree with how yellowTab has taken Zeta, and do not wish to support them.
So again, Best Of Luck Haiku, and, maybe/hopefully, we will all work together again in the not too distant future!

ummm..

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 05:24:00 GMT

This story isn't news, it's an editorial.

Be Community has plenty of news, about Zeta, a commercial desktop/workstation effort. And of course, Haiku, which is open sourced though some day very soon, wholly capable of serving as the community distrobution backbone.

I don't feel this piece should be here. Mphipps lays down the status in his report for this year.

there is tons of news and lots going on in our community, and a lot of great things happening. you can read upon it at iscomputeron, and haikunews, zetanews, begroovy

We don't have an underabundance of news, so why are the only things put here as "news" are op ed pieces, to oft opinionated to be considered interesting. It doesn't really show the interesting things going on.

It took 10 years to create BeOS R5, it did not take 10 years to create the BeOS. Also, it's already been created, so haiku 1 won't take very long at all. Some things were holding up development, Non profit status was one. yes, it's true, axeld can use some clones.

But, I'm an optimist. I don't dwell on bad things.
If I did, and you did, The BeOS most certianly would have died with Be Inc.

And we have proof otherwise...

I am an audience

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 05:39:00 GMT

Your point seems to hinge on that haiku has lost because they will have or currently do not have an audience .... but I know I will be there and I assume from the legnth of this comments thread many more will be also .... There IS an audience ... maybe you got tired of watching the opining credits, but I will stay to the end of the movie.

ok now for my points on WHY I lie in wait

1- I do NOT want FEATURES .... I use nlite to take out the majority of FEATURES from XP ... will I use Longhorn? ... probably. But not because of the FEATURES but more because of the inevitable security updates and continuing compatibility
2- I liked the way beos worked ... it seems to me the most logicall and overlooked thing they way beos dealt with drivers .... drag, drop, restart service, USE .... that is how it should be!
3- I want a SLIM, modular, and graphically based OS
4- no installers or package hell (OSX is really good for this also)

thank you and have a pleasent tommorow

I will commit blasphemy, so what...

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 05:53:00 GMT

BeOS in ways, is better than linux.
you obviously didn't watch the old demo video.

It's called intelligent prioritization.

I go one step further.

"Realtime intelligent prioritization in a full GUI OS, and look ma, we have an X server running on top of that too!"

And ours doesn't bog your system down, like the stuff on other platforms.

The space violation system seems to be the smartest one I've ever worked with. That says huge amounts. There are efforts underway to make the BeOS "far more than just a server os, or a media os".

I am currently running an R5 system with bone, relavant patches to that, svg subsystem, new haiku kits and tools, and it is solid as they come. The only stuff that ever gives me trouble is OLD software, though good stuff, like Keymaster, which needs to be recompiled anyhow. Security is something that's getting some attention, as well as a smart, and easy way to install mulituser. Most implementations of multi user sucks, we have taken and observed other's weaknesses on that.

I said there is a lot going on, I am not kidding.

BeOS = Anachronism

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 05:56:00 GMT

You know, I really loved BeOS, but it doesn't cut it anymore. Precious few new apps, not too many drivers. Trying to recreate R5 is like someone releasing a new version of the Sega Genesis... six months after the Playstation 3 came out. If you want to run BeOS apps, run them on BeOS 5. It's a free download from bebits.com. The Haiku team needs to forget about recreating BeOS 5 immediately, and start working on something more advanced that adheres to the design principals of the BeOS. Trying to recreate an OS that has no office package (don't even mention Gobe), no Java, no C#, database support sucks (although Postgres SQL is my favorite DB), no accelerated 3D hardware is pointless. It's time for a focus shift from what now constitutes Haiku to what they call Glass Elevator or Haiku 2. Embrace the future, don't stay stuck in the past.

addendum,

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 06:02:00 GMT

The only other problem I have is getting native implementations from other platorms, but that's hit and miss anyhow. We do get some. I worked on getting gema over to the beos. I stopped on smallbasic though.

See- I never learned how to program a computer. But despite that, with a little help from a couple of buddies, we got gema done. it was pretty easy on beos, in comparison to trying on other Os's to port over a piece of similar technological stuff.

So, kudos. (btw, qnx was the second easiest)

Jack...

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 06:07:00 GMT

They're doing it so from the grond floor, they have the source code in their possession. Sure, it's reimplementing R5, but it's a fixed R5, to form a steady base that they have control over the future of.

That "we" control. If you have the skills, get involved, you'll understand soon enough.

A new BeOS

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 06:22:00 GMT

I like the general plan of the Haiku project. To first achieve BeOS R5 binary compatibility and look and feel, then build on top of that for next releases. Sounds very sensible and a good compromise.

BTW I am writing this on a BeOS R5 - works great for me and I rarelly boot to other two OS's (Windows 2000 or Mandrake 9.2) on my home machine nowadays. Of course, I use my computer at home for hobby and recreation, it would be hard to do much of the stuff I do at work on my R5 system, anyways despite not being supported officially, BeOS is still a great OS for personal use - perhaps one of the few *true*, pure-breed desktop OS. I like it much better than linux distros which are often just some refitted server-room creatures. But that's just me.

Show me some relevance, indeed

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 06:51:00 GMT

First of all, i'd love to see more competition and diversity in the home-end-user market.

I would suggest creating an OS that tries to innovate and competes with future/modern OSes, while keeping its BeOS roots and code, but not by copying Be's mistakes and the irrelevant, right now, overall BeOS experience one could get out of a BeOS 5+.

This is your end conclusion. Even though you might be right (or not) on your time analysis you leave out several important references and/or arguments on which this conclusion is based. Where are they?

I would suggest creating an OS that tries to innovate and competes with future/modem OSes

I understand why it doesn't compete with future/modern OSes. What i miss here is why it doesn't innovate.

while keeping its BeOS roots and code

The former is afaik what they do. You appear to disagree by saying this, so i'm wondering, how aren't they keeping the BeOS roots if they aim for things as cloning and compatibility? Isn't this contradicting to what you said earlier about innovating? Isn't what you want a different balance? Or just more developers? Why aren't there enough developers? I suggest to define the BeOS roots according to your beliefs (most certainly, not everyone agrees on this).

As for the code, excuse me, but that statement is absolutely laughable. I am not a BeOS user, not particulary interested in it, but i did read the OpenBeOS website throughly a while back and they explicitly stated they don't have access to the code. In short, what you want simply ain't legal nor possible.

but not by copying Be's mistakes and the irrelevant

What is the irrelevant? What were Be's mistakes? Defining them helps adding weight to the discussion, article and will inform the less enlightened reader since not everyone who reads this has the knowledge regarding this subject. I count myself as one of these people, btw.

right now, overall BeOS experience one could get out of a BeOS 5+

That's all fine, but you also argumented there is a lack of developers. To innovate, get on par with OSes such as MacOSX and Longhorn, developers are needed. Pure logic. You said there aren't enough developers which i'm willing to accept. Well, the next question is, logically, then: Why aren't there enough developers?

Basically, with a conclusion like this, you say you have an alternative roadmap. If you had, that is an extremely interesting addendum for the interested BeOS-reader including the development team. I miss details. Relevance. Even though the time analysis, as i already stated, might have raised valuable points.

Purpose ?

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 06:51:00 GMT

How many times are people going to have to repeat what is plainly and clearly explained as the intentions of Haiku ?

If you can write you can read...try to understand it as well.

Haiku is not a competitor to MacOSX or Windows.Nor was BeOS,or NeXT for that matter.

Comparing BeOS to Longhorn or MacOSX is like comparing an Aston Martin to a Humvee hauling a Mack trailer.

I don't care if the latter are more secure or modern or have more of something.

If you have driven an Aston Martin it is a pure pleasure I intend to be doing for at least 30 years on from now even if other people have spaceships by then.

And I am no BeOS/Haiku zealot.BeOS is one many OS I use.

As I said above...There is to me no imperative to be anything like any other OS in design or use.

There is also no point in Haiku being a BeOS-ish recreation of linux either.

If anyone here cannot understand that,they have not understood BeOS,Haiku or the OS they are using now,and probably are only using some 30% of the features their OS gives them,and will waste money upgrading hardware to use only a part of a new OS to less than it's potential.

We are perhaps a little alike Eugenia...

..I expect nothing less than the best that human potential can achieve,and get irate at the continual experience of failiure of any OS to achieve it.

And after 24 years of using different OS,I am not looking forward to Longhorn,and am expecting far too much to follow what BeOS gave glimpses of,from Haiku.

64 bit address spaces

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 06:53:00 GMT

fundimentally change the way an OS should be designed. Every OS that is currently available for machines with 64 bit address spaces are just warmed over unix clones. Except, of course, for the Single Address Space Operating Systems (see http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~dfk/sasos/project.html) currently under development. If you want to work on something that will be relevant in the next 10 years, go work on those projects. If you want to hark back to the old days of BeOS, go work on Haiku. It really is your choice because in the end, we're all doing this for fun.

Why it will make it

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 06:56:00 GMT

If this is such a dead OS, why have there been so many posts? When was the last time you saw so many responses so quickly about cosmoe, skyos, atheos or any of the others. Something to think about.

Implementing R5

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 07:08:00 GMT

I understand what they're doing, but I don't understand why. Maintaining binary compatibility is a huge mistake and it's slowing things down. If Haiku had massive resources, I could see them doing something like Apple where you could launch Classic from within OS X to run older applications. That would be cool, but Haiku is still years away from being able to run applications that are built on technology (R5) that hasn't aged well, let alone advancing on R5. How long will it be before Haiku implements new features that make it a realistic alternative to Windows? Never, with the dead albatross of R5 binary compatibility hanging around it's neck. If people like Eugenia, Jean-Baptiste Queru, and Scott Hacker (author of the BeOS Bible, people who were so heavily invested in BeOS, have given up on BeOS and have moved on to OS X, Windows XP, and Linux, I really can't think of a reason to keep using BeOS. It doesn't meet my computing needs anymore. At this point, BeOS is great for nostolgia, but not so great at providing a superior computing environment.

Its such a shame...

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 07:12:00 GMT

Linux is becoming what the BeOS had the chance to be for desktop users. The BeOS was by far the most enjoyable alternative OS to use on the x86 platform. Its got the best filesystem (BFS), the quickest boot times, and it was pretty damn stable too. Its sad though that the mindshare just wasn't there. There was no clever marketing strategy. Nobody wanted to write drivers for it, save for a few dedicated hackers. Jean Louis Gasse couldn't even give it away for free (Thank you, Microsoft!). Sure there was BeOS PE, but it wasn't the right inroad for the massive attention that was required to make a dent in the market. On the other hand, theres nothing innovative or awe-inspiring about Linux, in fact its 5-10 years behind in many aspects compared to Windows or Mac OS. But what makes it so attractive? Two things: price and customizability. Companies can have a fully customized Linux solution and have it deployed across the entire corporate infrastructure for mere pennies. How does a closed-source upstart such as BeOS compete with free?

RE: Implementing R5

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 07:13:00 GMT

Very well said Jack, thanks. Many people in this forum are simply romantics (or clueless), and certainly not realists like you.

i don't need 64bits proc and candy features slowing down my computer for nothing

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 07:38:00 GMT

I think what Tenzin says is definitly true. If you want the top of the latest things, like a big Pentium 5 64bits running at 23 Gbits with 4 Go RDRAM on a 64bits OS with every candy things that you can ever imagine, just to use LongWord (lol) and surfing on the web, you have totally miss the thing.

Sorry Eugenia, but i have never heard the Haiku team saying that Haiku would be better than OS X or longhorn, so why do you compare those ? My mouse do not have 5 buttons and my laptop cannot burn DVDs, do not have wi-fi, USB 2 ... but it's enough for my everyday work use !

Longhorn new features ? You mean the crapy clock on the right ? the TCPA or palladium norms ? WinFS ? the new UI of Explorer (that takes 1/3 of the screen for nothing) ? What do you see or find in longhorn that are ssoooo awesome ? I think if windows would be the os that rules, you would not have an apple computer Little features that personnals loves ? Like filesharing and webcams with MSN Messenger ? eh eh .. i don't think OS X can do it, even with the latest messenger for mac.

I have try the latest Syllable and well ... i just think i have lost a cd-r. Linux itself was not that good and famous 5 years ago ... so just let haiku the time to grow, and if you think it's a lost of time and a dead adventure, just leave it and don't care about it but please, stop making such articles ! It's just bad for all the community (R5, haiku and Zeta also!)

Scott Hacker on BeOS

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 07:42:00 GMT

I found a couple of pretty good quotes from a Scott Hacker interview in Beyond Magazine. The topic of being a latter day BeOS user came up.

"Be had more than 100 employees and $25 million in the bank at one point. Full-time engineers and a bunch of committed commercial developers (Adamation, BeatWare, Gobe...). With all of that, BeOS barely stood a snowball's chance in hell. Without any of that, without any hope of developing momentum --- EVER -- it's all so much less than zero. It's very hard for me to understand why there are still people hanging out in the ghost town."

"Look, sometimes we do things in this life for irrational reasons, for love. If you love BeOS and don't care about the apps or the practicality, then by all means use it, be happy, it's "all part of life's rich pageant." Just don't start to think BeOS is going to have some kind of renaissance, or take over the world, or provide a means for developers or users to make money. Love is the only remaining reason to use the system. And maybe that's reason enough."

RE:i don't need 64bits proc and candy features slowing down my computer for noth

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 07:43:00 GMT

> Sorry Eugenia, but i have never heard the Haiku team saying that Haiku would be better than OS X or longhorn, so why do you compare those

Because Haiku's goal is to be the new BeOS, to fill up the gap. But BeOS goal WAS to compete straight with the other big OSes, so if Haiku doesn't do that, Haiku is NOT a new BeOS, cause it doesn't fill up the same needs that Be would fill up if Be was still in business. Is this really so different to figure out? You are surprising me with this sentence of yours!

haiku team is not Be Inc ...

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 07:57:00 GMT

Haiku could be the new BeOS, the Haiku Team is not the new Be Inc Don't forget that please.

- Haiku has the same goal of BeOS: bring back the spirit of BeOS and been able to assume its future (we are not talking here about marketing future !!!)
- Haiku team don't want haiku to be the biggest OS and to pick up the market of m$ or Apple.

Here is the difference you seems to miss .... again, it's a personnal view

We were talking about 10 years from now

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 08:09:00 GMT

You really think that using Word and surfing the web whilst listening to mp3s is all we're gunna use our computers for in 10 years time? Think about 10 years ago, we didn't even have a web to surf let alone mp3s.

Haiku's goal

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 08:10:00 GMT

Haiku's goal is not to be the new BeOS, it is to first re-implement r5 and go from there.
The goal is most certainly not to compete with Windows and Apple head-on. It is possible that Haiku-based distributions will chose to do so but it's not a goal of the Haiku project itself.
"Is this really so different to figure out?"

Guess I'm just another clueless romantic who uses r5 because it gets my job (System/Network Admin) done better than any other OS.

RE: i don't need 64bits proc and candy features slowing down my computer for not

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 08:17:00 GMT

It is Eugenia's right to be able to say whatever she wants in her editorial. She cannot be concerned with the effect her editorials will have on the morale of the various BeOS devotees. It's her job to get up on a soap box and offer her honest opinion when she writes an editorial, not to offer some pleasant, saccharine falsehood. And by the way, a 64 bit processor is pretty neat if the software you're using is compiled for 64 bit, rather than 32 bit. Linux compiled for AMD64 is very snappy on my friends new box.

Is the grass greener on the other (microsoft "dark") side?

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 08:26:00 GMT

The only thing that really desturbs me Eugenia is that, hopefully only for the sake of the argument, you swallow all the commercial bla bla from the microsoft camp.

You have a lifelong interest in OS's and have followed the evolution very closely. Surely you will agree that Longhorn will not be the next nirvana and will not contain all the features that are now promised. It will be the next itteration: bigger, slower, harder to maintain. The SP's will become a bigger issue than ever. Performance has been a problem for some time and looking at the direction Longhorn is taking it will be much worse.

I have the same doubts as you about the future of BeOS but not for one second do I believe the next Windows itteration is going to make me happier with my system (or the next since a new computer is a necessity with every upgrade of Windows).

Accept donations

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 08:34:00 GMT

Creator of Haiku are working just at their spent time, but if they are not able to accept donations, they hinder their fans to support their work by sending some money to Haiku project. Developers can replace obtained money to free time. This is one way to accelerate a development.

RE: Scott Hacker on BeOS

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 08:46:00 GMT

Why should I, or anyone else, base their OS choice on what Hacker thinks? I prefer to base it on rational reasons like if it gets the job done and not on the opinions of random person X whom I dont even know.
Btw, I make money every day using BeOS and so does many other people.

Learn from Be's mistakes, don't recreate them

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 08:50:00 GMT

Interestingly enough, in addition to painstakingly cloning BeOS, the Haiku project is also recreating most of Be's mistakes by hand:

They seem to have acquired the "overpromise and under-deliver" syndrome that afflicted Be Inc. for so many years. Unrealistic hints of alpha releases by Christmas or Easter when little to no code has been checked in is a setting for failure. This wasn't good for business at Be and it isn't good for morale (which Haiku desperately needs).

Writing everything from scratch is a time and labor intensive process. And unnecessary. Travis is still dicking around with the lowest levels of the NewOS kernel (which still doesn't do much of anything) while the most important module projects like the app_server have floundered.

If they really wanted to get this project off the ground they'd fork AtheOS or Syllable and modify it to use the BeOS API while utilizing some of the code they have already written. This would have the following advantages:

* A relatively mature codebase that shares many of the same characteristics and design philosophies of BeOS. This is also as close as anybody is going to get to a working BeOS-like system in the next 5-10 years.

* Applications By recompiling and a little sweat equity, Haiku would inerit most of BeOS' application library. Open-source projects are readily available and with enough momentum folks like Gobe (Gobe Productive) could be encouraged to port or release their code.

* Time AtheOS and Syllable work RIGHT NOW. It is easier to polish existing code than to build it from scratch. And it is open and free! The grunt work has already been done and is is PROVEN to work.

* This is NOT starting over By using the Be API some of the Haiku code can be reused as well as the knowledge and insight the Haiku developers have gained over then past 3 years. Many parts of BeOS were re-written several times before anything usable was built, because it is hard work and even full-time paid professionals like Be's engineers had to learn through experience and failure. Also, the foundation has been set up, copyright issues have been examined, the project finally has a name ;-), etc.

* MOMENTUM and MORALE This is possibly the most important point. If Haiku could develop a beta-quality BeOS clone within the next year to 18 months the project could reach a point of "critical mass" where users and especially developers would be attracted to the project and development would take off at an exponential rate.

* Narrow focus Right now the manpower at Haiku is spread too thin. There is simply too much work to be done. By focusing their efforts on a smaller realistic set of goals (such as implementing the Be API, recreating the Be apps, etc.) those goals can be achieved much sooner and we can all lookforward to Haiku 2.0 that much sooner.

Thoughts

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 08:58:00 GMT

I don't think that they've failed as such but they almost certainly haven't done as well as they hoped at the start, and I do think they will be passed by.

It's a shame...

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 09:00:00 GMT

...that there is such good discussion in the comments section of this site, yet such crap content.

Whether I disagree with the article or not, I have point out that the journalist who wrote it/runs this site is no better than a ten-year-old running a blog. In fact I imagine that _most_ ten-year-old writers have a better grasp of grammar.

Citing opinion as fact is very childish, amateur and laughable. Apparently 'you just speak the truth'? No, you speak _your_ truth (AKA:opinion).

You've written totally negative article and bashed everyone who posted a comment you didn't agree with. I've never visited this site before and now I have, I realise why every other OS-related forum regards osnews.com as a joke.

i agree

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 09:04:00 GMT

And i'd also go as far to say that the haiku team is wasting their talent.. if their so concerned about making a super fast and stable OS they should read the linux from scratch manual and plan a huge modification to the linux kernel which would address their need for speed

but really.. blueeyedOS was the only BeOS project that made any sense

More on Syllable fork/Haiku

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 09:13:00 GMT

Take a look at this screenshot and just try and tell me your heart didn't just skip a beat:

http://msa.section.me.uk/syllable/beish-testing.gif

Of course, I realize there is more to an OS than how it looks, but I honestly believe the approach I detailed earlier could be made to work.

OK, ok, I'll shut up now... ;-)

Syllable

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 09:16:00 GMT

The reality is however, that the Syllable project is a very amatureish attempt at best to create an OS. There seems to be no real direction with that project, and it most likely will languish in a perpetual development hell, with occasionally improved drivers.

I wasn't going to reply to this thread but now you've got me; care to back that up? As far as I can see Syllable is one of the few OS's with at least a basic roadmap and a list of features to be completed before we release version 1.0. How is that directionless?

If you think the only enhancements we're making are occasional driver updates then you've not been paying very much attention. The next release of Syllable will have an entire new desktop and registrar. Hardly a minor addition to the codebase or a tweak in functionality.

They should, they should, they should....

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 09:52:00 GMT

But what they shouldn't do is listen to most of you lot. Porting Syllable or some other OS, or basing Haiku on Linux ala Blue Eyed OS is not their goal.

I myself am willing to wait and see and make my own judgement. It's crazy to be shooting down a product that won't be ready for quite some time, and then proceeding to say "...they should perform this action to get ahead."

Simply, if you decide not to use Haiku R1 whenever it's released, fine, no skin off of mine or anyone elses nose. But please don't say that slow development will be the downfall of the project , because in the end, there will be interested users and there will be people who will switch. Not everyone has plans to buy a Longhorn monster machine, anyhow.

Chris

On X and quarrels

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 10:03:00 GMT

First off, to anyone who says: "Use the Linux kernel and X": Please, rethink that statement. The Linux kernel and especially X could NEVER EVER perform as well as BeOS does. The responsiveness and speed of the Be is something no other OS will achieve in at least ten to fifteen years, simply because they are too big, too bloated and too over-featured. And let's be real guys, X is simply too unresponsive and too slow compared to BeOS.

Secondly, it's a shame to see the quarrels here. The BeOS community is already getting smaller and smaller, with less people using it as their everyday OS every day, and yet we allow ourselves to fight over nitpicky stuff. We should get our act together, forget old grudges and just learn from and improve eachother, instead of whining about every damn pixel.

It would be shame if our community got as fragmented as the Linux community.

Re: Syllable

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 10:18:00 GMT

Sadly, Vanders, there's a lot of uninformed crap amongst these comments. Ignore it. People who look at more than the OSNews headlines (ie actually read up on Syllable or Haiku etc) are aware of the reality of the development state on these projects.

Keep up el gudo werko.

RE: On X and Quarrels

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 10:22:00 GMT

Wrong, wrong, wrong. There is nothing by design that makes X slow, including the client server model. The current X.Org/Xfree86 implementation just isn't that great, although there are improvements in store, with bottlenecks being removed all the time, on the X and the widget sides. Have you ever tried IRIX? I'm guessing not, because if you had you wouldn't be telling us that "X is slow".

In regard to the kernel, think again, again. The kernel is getting faster all the time. 2.6 is BLAZING for desktop use. Agreed it doesn't currently have the multimedia performance of BeOS, but that doesn't mean it never will, because unlike BeOS, the Linux has been actively developed in the last three years.

I'm sick of this obsession with BeOS. It had it's strengths, but it had some serious weaknesses as well. ANYONE still using it in 2004 is a dinosaur, and well, you know what happened to the dinosaurs.

RE: Biff

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 10:31:00 GMT

Have you ever tried IRIX? I'm guessing not, because if you had you wouldn't be telling us that "X is slow".

I didn't say X is slow, I said X is slow compared to BeOS.

Read before commenting, please.

@Thom Holwerda

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 10:34:00 GMT

"I didn't say X is slow, I said X is slow compared to BeOS."

Which is wrong. X is a protocol. Implementations may be slow, but that doesn't mean X is, because it's design doesn't neccesarily mean it is.

eugenia, what's wrong with you?

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 10:35:00 GMT

nothing wrong in writing that haiku has no future, but the way you do it is very bad style. the haiku programmers don't get paid for haiku coding, it's still the most successful beos cloning project.

did you have a bad day, are you frustrated that beos dies slowly?

you killing the reputation of osnews. this was the worst article from you i've ever read.

RE: anonymous

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 10:39:00 GMT

it's still the most successful beos cloning project.

It's the only BeOS cloning project, actually. Others (Zeta, PhOS, etc) just reimplement "old" stuff.

Linux this and Linux that

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 10:42:00 GMT

Personally i'm tired of this obsession with Linux. Every goddamn time there's a article about a non-Linux OS there's five billion posts saying "This OS is dead, you should use linux", "they should have based it on Linux", "Linux is faster with kernel what-the-fuck-ever" etc etc. Linux isnt the answer to every problem and not everyone has the desire to use it all the time. I dont care if X is fast or slow, I dont care if it's a design or implementation problem, none of this matters to me. The computing world doesnt revolve around Linux.
Why this need to tell others what they should use and how much better the OS you are using is?
Why the need to tell other people what they should develop and how they should do it?
I'm sure Freud would have something interesting to say on the matter...

Haiku will never Be.

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 10:47:00 GMT

Because Haiku's goal is to be the new BeOS, to fill up the gap. But BeOS goal WAS to compete straight with the other big OSes, so if Haiku doesn't do that, Haiku is NOT a new BeOS, cause it doesn't fill up the same needs that Be would fill up if Be was still in business.

This is stupid reasoning, and actually a fallacy.

If X wants to be exactly like Y, then in the end X == Y. By DEFINITION. Obviously this ain't and won't be true.

For one, Haiku doesn't got anything near the financial power Be had. For two, Haiku is open-source MIT (aka X11) licensed whereas BeOS was proprietary freeware software. Haiku, as it currently stands, won't get that same financial backup and won't become a proprietary BeOS since those aren't part of the goals. Third, the code won't be exactly the same as BeOS R5 or whatever either since the BeOS R5 code is copyrighted and owned by Palm. Hence, it might look the same but internally it ain't. At best, it is (partly) similar and that's indeed (partly) the goal of Haiku given they aim for compatibility, they'll have to provide similar APIs.

What we can conclude from the simple logic here above is that Haiku simply won't be BeOS. Now, i have never read on their website that they have the same market share or commercial goal as BeOS had, or aimed for. If you have, please provide me the relevant quoted with a link to them. Thanks.

The problem lies also in the missing definition of "what BeOS was" and assuming your non-stated definition of that is similar as to what the Haiku authors intend to do. My definition, as i already pointed out, is as simple as X = Y where X is BeOS and Y is Haiku.

If you want people to innovative, then you shouldn't talk about things such as market share and adoption. That's not the point of innovation, research, and inventions. Look at Enlightenment for example. They do their thing, and they've always done that whereas they don't give a rat about Linux adoption or their own market share on the Linux desktop. They just did and continue to do what they think is right. Something pop-artists lack.

I, for one, rather see projects like Haiku doing something they feel is right and seeing what the market decides (eventually a business grabbing the source and using it as a basis for commercial offerings -- don't forgot, that's a reasonable possibility!) than to aim for market share. A lack of respect to the developers is the opposite; demanding they should drive some path you prefer while you don't provide valuable feedback, or another way of a contribution. If i recall correctly, the developers do value feedback but only carefully crafted constructive feedback and not things such as "Haiku should support IPv6 Why? Because i say so.". You'll have to actually argument and provide references instead.

Having said that, from a psychological point of view, it just seems some (ex-)BeOS users, fans simply can't accept BeOS flopped. That it didn't worked out. And all they want is some magic event happening where Haiku somehow picks up the line where BeOS stopped improving the software from that line. As if Haiku developers have the source to BeOS. Obviously, they don't. So wake up, that ain't gonna happen. Haiku is not, and will never be Be or BeOS. So please, stop dreaming, and accept this project is walking a different path with some goals similar as BeOS, allowing compatibility and accept this is gonna take time. Wanna contribute? I'm quite sure you're welcome. Because they don't have this dogmatic view of becoming exactly like BeOS, it opens the freedom for radical innovations and who knows what the end result will be, but it won't be a production-ready OS anytime soon. So don't expect it'll Be.

The other OSes that don't have a future

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 10:48:00 GMT

Like Linux for instance. What future is there? IT'll constantly be a couple of years behind windows until they innovate rather than clone. Sure a tiny group of people use Linux for desktop but it's a pathetically small amount.

Besides, if I wanna something consistent, then there is about BeOS --> Haiku which is available. Linux can NEVER be consistent due to it's anarchaic development model. Not to mention because plenty of the devs are complete dweebs...

RE: dpi

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 10:56:00 GMT

You obviously don't get all this.

First of all, BeOS wasn't "proprietary freeware". Only their last release had a freeware package, but calling all of BeOS proprietary freeware already shows a lack of understanding.

Secondly, Haiku states they want to recreate BeOS R5. Fine. This simply means they have the exact same goals,/i> as Be had. Last year, people recreated the Wright Flyer. They did this in the same way Haiku is currently recreating BeOS: starting from scratch. Their goals were the same: to fly. Haiku's goal is the same as Be's goal: create an OS that is a viable alternative to existing Desktop OS's, and they promised us an RC several times, yet they didn't deliver. I'm not here to bash them in any way (no matter what, they're still doing a great job) but fact is they didn't live up to the expectations they created themselves. Microsoft gets bashed for this. Yet we should all forget it when someone else does the same?

And saying "but Haiku is OSS" is no argument. Whatever y'all are, a promise is a promise, I don't give a rat's ass whether they get payed ot not.

I have the solution (yes I'm joking ^_^;)

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 10:56:00 GMT

I know most of the people involved in Haiku hate GPL,
but what about a design system, with all libraries LGPL,
included drivers, but with GPLed core kits (app-server etc)?

There are plenty of developers out there that like GPL, see
Linux vs. BSD, see GNOME and KDE licenses.
Not all people like to work with a BSD/MIT license.
And for commercial applications and/or drivers maker, there is LPGL.
I can' t see why commercial companies|developers, couln't join this project.
I know GPL is difficoultous to accept by people who want to sell their software,
but *with* LPGL, even closed softwares can exist.
All libraries LPGL, ability of adding commercial drivers... imho that' all!

And Haiku will fly.

Regards,
sorry fot my english.

RE: Thom Holwerda

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 10:57:00 GMT

A shame you don´t know what you are talking about

90% of BE´s `incredible speed´ was boot time alone.

Personally I don´t see the benefit of playing 12 films simultaneously, with no frame dropping, in realtime-but Linux using opengl does this just fine on my machine Aside from the fact that BE doesn´t even support the codecs most films are encoded in nowadays unless of course they are using the ones from Linux . I guess the incredible speed of BE´s multimedia performance is why BE is that standard in high-resolution rendering farms....

And BE´s graphics was great if you happen to have a card supported by it-unlike the majority of video crads sold in the past 5 years....

And as far as the kernel goes-kernels can be amazingly fast when they are not doing much of anything

As a single user desktop-only operating system Be was(is?) quite impressive-but a few minor things have occurred in the past years like the internet and networking-things which have rendered the value of single-users desktop-only OS´s rather questionable....Sure if you don´t need or want the vast majority of functionality which an ever increasing number of users expect today BE is great. I guess it was a fluke that both Microsoft and Apple recognized the value of offering more than a single-user desktop-only OS. But with the right setup I can render over the network just as fast or even faster under Linux than BE can render locally on one machine.

For the record if the BE community was anywhere near as united as the Linux community was BE would be a whole lot further along than it is

The really good points about BE were not it´s kernel and its graphics system- it was the file system stuff and intuitive easy to use UI and those are not directly dependent upon the kernel and or graphics subsystem.

RE: my previous pos

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 10:57:00 GMT

Whoops, y'all can see I didn't press shift there. Damn Mac keyboard .

@ Thom Holwerda

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 10:58:00 GMT

I didn't say X is slow, I said X is slow compared to BeOS.

Based on what scientific research?

What knowledge do you actually have regarding X? What exactly have you benchmarked? What X implementatione was used in your analysis? Which platform? OS? Version? Hardware? Which software settings related to performance were used? Where can we read your analysis?

Above are details you don't mention which shows on how relevant your research really is. If you researched the subject, or were to state an unbiased research, you'd know the above matters when comparing performance hence you'd state it.

I'm looking forward to your scientific analysis, but i'm not holding by breath. Cause, i'm sorry, but some home user like you just doesn't have the same credibility as a software engineer who does know how to craft a scientific research. For the very same reason, i would trust an IP lawyer more in regards to license X than a software engineer because he or she studied the subject of matter in depth whereas the software engineer studied a different subject in depth, software engineering.

RE: Karl

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 10:59:00 GMT

And BE´s graphics was great if you happen to have a card supported by it-unlike the majority of video crads sold in the past 5 years....

All nVidia and Ati cards are supported and working under any BeOS incarnation. Thanks to Haiku, mostly, yes

RE: dpi

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 11:04:00 GMT

Scientific research means nothing. "It could do this" means shite. It's what it does NOW that matters.

Fact is, BeOS is ten times as responsive as ANY X incarnation I've ever tried, and saying: "Yes, but X could do a whole lot better" doesn't change a single thing.

If that were true, than where are all the speed improvements? I've been using Linux w/ X for years now, still I see no noticable improvements when it comes to UI responsiveness and speed. X developer sure had a whole lot of time to improve on this, seeing it's a rather old system.

@Thom Holwerda

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 11:13:00 GMT

"X developer sure had a whole lot of time to improve on this, seeing it's a rather old system."

For the last time X IS A PROTOCOL! A SPECIFICATION! Not a piece of software. And I'm willing to bet the only X implementation you've used is XFree86/X.Org.

You say "Fact is, BeOS is ten times as responsive as ANY X incarnation I've ever tried, and saying: "Yes, but X could do a whole lot better" doesn't change a single thing." If that is fact, show us some benchmarks, something anything. Because that sounds an awful lot like BS to me.

Research before posting.
And while you're at it, download the B.E.O.S. test ISO, and keep in mind this was far from complete work.

@ Thom Holwerda

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 11:15:00 GMT

First of all, BeOS wasn't "proprietary freeware". Only their last release had a freeware package, but calling all of BeOS proprietary freeware already shows a lack of understanding.

Point taken.

Secondly, Haiku states they want to recreate BeOS R5. Fine. This simply means they have the exact same goals,

Holy kenobi, ignorance strikes. I explained they cannot have the very same goals because several conditions are different.

You cannot become the same as your father, but you can be like your father.

they have the exact same goals,/i> as Be had. Last year, people recreated the Wright Flyer. They did this in the same way Haiku is currently recreating BeOS: starting from scratch. Their goals were the same: to fly. Haiku's goal is the same as Be's goal: create an OS that is a viable alternative to existing Desktop OS's, and they promised us an RC several times

Alike, not the same. 1.149274 is near 1, but one cannot declare X as 1.149274 while declaring X as 1 at the same time (except when its an integer, yeah).

When people begin to release their dogmatic view of what it will become or what the developers want it to be we will finally see less strong-worded opinions such as the one posted in this article. It is a lot more friendlier to the developers, and it leaves up a lot space for pragmaticism and innovation. Better yet, if you want X to be Y, then there is no room for pragmaticism and innovation.

and they promised us an RC several times, yet they didn't deliver.

Why didn't they? Did you felt they somehow were obligated to deliver?

Microsoft gets bashed for this. Yet we should all forget it when someone else does the same?

As you say yourself, Microsoft gets paid* for it. From my point of view, that matters. If i pay someone or see others paying, i expect quality. If i don't pay, i don't expect quality i just see what happens or when i do expect something based on a promise, i don't demand or frown upon them when they don't.

* Not only payment is the point. Any kind of constructive feedback matters.

And saying "but Haiku is OSS" is no argument.

The OSS-ness (MIT) of Haiku is actually an important aspect of the project as pointed out earlier because it allows proprietary "exploitation" and because it shows a clear difference versus BeOS' path.

It is also one of the very reasons Haiku has a different development model hence it just isn't doing exactly like BeOS did.

I don't give a rat's ass whether they get payed ot not.

Which is the root of the conflict. Take, take, take. Whine, rant, principles of a promise is a promise but don't give back. They have a lack of developers, isn't that obvious to you already?

RE: Thom Holwerda

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 11:24:00 GMT

Ahh you mean thanks to the open source drivers(mostly from X11R6 and mostly developed for Linux) which the Haiku developers used to figure out how to create new drivers for Haiku-ok. Great I am glad to here Haiku supports it-BE didn´t and I assume you mean the Haiku drivers work also under older BEOS versions ?. And while you are at it tell me when you will have opengl 3D acceleration working....

Just to let you know: I am not happy about the situation regarding driver support of hardware. I think it is criminal that OS´s developers either have to pay the manufacturers to write the drivers, be dependent upon the binary-only drivers provided by the manufacturers for those OS´s which they deem to be significant, or reverse engineer and hack together workarounds based on lacking and fragmentary documentation. I point to Linux because it is the only alternative OS which has actually succeeded in getting support from the manufacturers. Not because I believe BE or Haiku are inferior in design or quality of coding.

I am all for people writing their own kernels and their own graphics subsystems-but the point is unless you are going to produce an entire platform, in which you control the hardware upon which the software is to be run(ie. Apple) you are in the nearly impossible situation of having to provide drivers without help from the manufacturers for the tens of thousands of commodity hardware devices.

I am not saying one should not try, or that one should give up and resign. And I really do wish those trying to succeed the best in luck. But to choose not to use things from the Linux world which are supported by the manufacturers and represent the largest selection of free drivers in the world is simply foolish. Linux is only second to Microsoft windows when it comes to hardware support. Linux does effectively support the commodity pc hardware. Not because it is intrinsically so great but because it has overcome the chicken-egg problematic which all new OS´s face.

If the manufacturers would provide open documentation for their hardware there would be no OS monopoly and and each and every alternative OS would benefit immeasurablly providing for a far better, richer and more powerful palette of OS´s than is avaialble today. My realism is mostly anger directed at the manufacturers who refuse to provide open documentation of their interfaces to third party developers. Not because I think Linux is the ub3rl33t OS of all time(although it probably is ) and BE or Haiku or Zeta or s/.*OS// is inferior.

I'm sick

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 11:28:00 GMT

This is by far the worst article I ever read on OSNews.
Yep, you may have an argument and I don't even fully disagree with everything you said. But this is the most biased, self-pleased and harsh article you've written so far and you've written many biased articles before - especially in the area of (open)BeOS and Zeta.

And since this article represents the opinion of OSNews.com - unlike others which do explictly not - I don't see a very bright future for this site.

Also modding down the comments that critisize you won't give you and respect back either.

@ Thom Holwerda

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 11:33:00 GMT

Scientific research means nothing.

HAHAHAHA. OMFG. The qoute of the year. This should become OSnews its headline. OSNews.com - Where scientific research means nothing.

Scientific research, using the scientific method (see http://teacher.nsrl.rochester.edu/phy_labs/AppendixE/AppendixE.html) means everything when you want to reside to unbiased conditions where hard, reproducable numbers matter instead of vague meassures such as "feelings".

Fact is, BeOS is ten times as responsive as ANY X incarnation I've ever tried, and saying:

Where is your analysis backing up this "ten times as responsive"? I tell you where it is: it doesn't exist. Your "benchmarks" mean nothing to any person who wishes to see hard facts. Hard facts you haven't provided, testing conditions you haven't provided.

"Yes, but X could do a whole lot better" doesn't change a single thing.

Not what i've argued.

If that were true, than where are all the speed improvements? I've been using Linux w/ X for years now, still I see no noticable improvements when it comes to UI responsiveness and speed. X developer sure had a whole lot of time to improve on this, seeing it's a rather old system.

Finally, here are some details. The kernel is Linux. Version of distribution is unspecified, kernel version is unspecified, architecture is unspecified, X implementation is unspecified, version of X implementation is unspecified. Dependancies, hardware details, software running on the system, hardware usage, settings affecting performance -- all lacking. Any benchmarks are still lacking.

Have you actually tried another X implementation than whatever you've tried? On another platform than whatever you're using? Ever tried IRIX? AIX? Solaris? Done benchmarks on either of these?

You make this claim X is a bottleneck, but you provide no technical arguments except something which is based on what appears to be "feelings" which are as wild as the claim "ten times". There are no numbers to back it up either. You don't ever refer to other people arguing the same as you do, but who do try to get some credit in their process of doing so.

Just what the hell are you thinking. Do you think anyone takes your X rant serious? Do you think any sane reader would say "Thom is right" based on what you said; without you proving anything? Do you think "Scientific research means nothing" raises your credibility?

RE: dpi

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 11:41:00 GMT

Just what the hell are you thinking. Do you think anyone takes your X rant serious? Do you think any sane reader would say "Thom is right" based on what you said; without you proving anything? Do you think "Scientific research means nothing" raises your credibility?

Scientific research means nothing when it comes to speed and UI responsiveness. Picking that sentence out of context is a rather low way of attacking me.

And no, I don't give a damn whether people think I'm right or not (other than you seem to do). I don't want to force my opinion down someone else's throat. I base my experiences and statements on something that has a whole lot more value to me than any benchmark ever made. It's what I feel that matters to me, I don't care what a benchamrk says. Theory is nice, it's practice that matters.

Have you actually tried another X implementation than whatever you've tried? On another platform than whatever you're using? Ever tried IRIX? AIX? Solaris? Done benchmarks on either of these?

Linux, FreeBSD and Solaris 9. And again, benchmarks only provides numbers, they don't provide feelings. You cannot capture a UI in numbers.

But back to the point (being I said X (in any incarnation) is too slow for recreating the BeOS experience): Still no one gave me a sane argument as to why use X to recreate the Be, other than hardware support.

@ Thom Holwerda

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 12:16:00 GMT

Scientific research means nothing when it comes to speed and UI responsiveness.

In order to make a general claim about X performance, based on what seems to be the X protocol, you'll have to back it up with reproducable circumstances, provide the researched numbers if you wish to receive any credit on which conclusions like "the X protocol is 10 times as slow as BeOS". You don't provide this; hence no cookie. Simple as kissing.

Picking that sentence out of context is a rather low way of attacking me.

I'm not attacking you, i'm stating why your opinion on X performance doesn't hold water. My comments on that still stand because speed and UI responsiveness is one aspect of -you guessed it- performance. Which is ofcourse the type of performance i was referring to.

And no, I don't give a damn whether people think I'm right or not (other than you seem to do).

If you don't care what other people think about your opinion, why bother stating your opinion?

I base my experiences and statements on something that has a whole lot more value to me than any benchmark ever made. It's what I feel that matters to me, I don't care what a benchamrk says.

How arrogant. What you say here is the scientific method is worth less compared to what you feel, experience. You are aware that experiences and feelings are heavily biased as opposed to the scientific method? Which is precisely the reason the method exists in the first place. You are aware computer science is finds its roots in the scientific method and thanks to smart masses applying that, you are able to fetch your mail and use the WWW among other practical usages of a computer?

Theory is nice, it's practice that matters.

Practice is based on theory. Anything you do on your computer is based on theory. If you'd wish to add something, for example criticism to developers who are developing an implementation of X, then how do you think your feelings or experiences are somehow valuable to them? You have to back up your findings with undisputable facts to create a rational environment, to nullify any (intentional or not) bias.

Linux, FreeBSD and Solaris 9. And again, benchmarks only provides numbers, they don't provide feelings.

Those feelings are a benchmark; its just not an unbiased one.

But back to the point (being I said X (in any incarnation) is too slow for recreating the BeOS experience):

...which you're not able to back-up.

Still no one gave me a sane argument as to why use X to recreate the Be, other than hardware support.

* Compatibility with other OSes; standard.
* Network transparancy.
* Reusage of existing and future code.
* Proven stability, proven concept.
* Performance, perhaps.

It's not that hard. Basically, any document which argues for X usage can be used as arguments as to why X is used in favor of other competitors (which are likely to be less widely deployed). But you gotta know something about X, you know...

If they want to become a bigger player, backward compatibility and network compatibility is important. Take a look at DirectFB; it does have X support. Take a look at MacOSX; it does have X support. Windows lacks it, among other compatibility aspects related to *NIX, which frequently means admins have to install additional software such as an X server or SFU which provides NFS, among others.

Hmm

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 12:18:00 GMT

Not to be rude, but I see a lot of
Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt.
Fear of how long it will take, fear that it will be to little, to late. Uncertainty if it will work or have a future and
doubt in the path taken really is correct.

Well that's okay but don't call me a romantic or anything else just because I believe in Haiku. See you on the flipside.

X on Be

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 12:19:00 GMT

Why use X for the BeOS gui ?

The BeOS GUI is based on it's own client/server structure,and could be configured to be used as a network graphics server and window manager,*if* needed.

If the network GUI server functions are not needed,X is an unnecessarily large component for a single system GUI.

If you want X run unix.

please...people...grow up!

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 12:30:00 GMT

It is a free world if the Haiku people want to develop Haiku the way they have been developing, well let them.
If you do not wish to use Haiku, well don't!
If you do no wish to buy Zeta, don't
If you do not wish to use a Mac, or Windows or Linux, well don't

but please don't assume that since YOU like YOUR system slim that everyone else should have their system slim. please do not assume that because YOU love BeOS (or any other OS) that YOUR way is the BEST way to save a "dead" OS. Difference in opinion makes for good conversation and makes for good creativity to be produced.

Just because you will it, it does not make it true, This is for all you Mac, Windows, Linux, Be, NeXT, Syllable, AtheOS, Haiku, Zeta (etc) fans/zealots/over-excited people out there.

Peace!

RE:please...people...grow up!

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 12:34:00 GMT

Yes

If your OS does your job,ok.

As mini-me says,

Peace

whats with the caps

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 12:38:00 GMT

Eugenia you SUCK

RE: RE:please...people...grow up!

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 12:40:00 GMT

"Yes

If your OS does your job,ok.

As mini-me says,

Peace"
then all those switching to Linux from Windows articles don't make any sence now!

"Like Linux for instance. What future is there? IT'll constantly be a couple of years behind windows until they innovate rather than clone. Sure a tiny group of people use Linux for desktop but it's a pathetically small amount.

they have a roadmap! just shamelessly copy every nice feature from XP & OSX rename it & develope it under GPL!

self-implementing forecast

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 12:44:00 GMT

OK, OsNews had very negative attitude to OpenBeOS project from start. If i recall all that correctly.
And I doubt it helped to attract developers to project and speed-up its progress.
So, in such light it is little bit of incorrect at least to bash the project for lack of developers and slow evolution at this site.

RE: By Anonymous (IP: ---.netspace.net.au) - Posted on 2004-08-25 12:38:41

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 12:45:00 GMT

he cut it out man everyone has his own opinion & they have every right to say it!
the lady is doing a nice job by running such a nice website here you should give her credit rather than saying bad things.

@ Tenzin

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 12:51:00 GMT

Why use X for the BeOS gui ?

I've tried to find an answer to this question on haiku-os.org but haven't been able to find it. One of which i find a purely logic one, is compatibility. Basically, compatibility is able to go multiple ways.

2 examples
* Providing backward compatibility for BeOS applications.
* Providing future compatibility for X.

* Providing backward compatibility for X.
* Providing future compatibility for BeOS applications.

Other combinations, new implementations, more implementations, and other compatibility with current standards is ofcourse also possible.

Backward compatibility for X is a true benefit in heterogenous environments as well as being able to run an arsenal of X applications (think about all the FOSS X apps available on OSX, IRIX, Solaris and other Unices). Given Haiku will be POSIX compliant hence those FOSS apps are easily ported. Backward compatibility with BeOS allows one to run old BeOS applications on Haiku hence no BeOS (the OS itself) is necessary.

IMO, both compatibility is prefered for above stated reasons, and whatever it prefers as standard and/or to write their own applications with is less important. Perhaps they'll use something new in addition to X and BeOS compatibility? I don't know.

PS: X runs on non-Unix systems as well.

@ aditya

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 12:53:00 GMT

"develope it under GPL!"

No, MIT license (aka X11 license).

ding dong

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 12:55:00 GMT

I dunno about others but I was under the impression that Zeta didn't have the BeOS source and as such, YT would have a limited lifespan. People don't throw money at a company without at least a small amount of hope that it'll be around for a while.

@ dpi

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 12:58:00 GMT

BeOS has X already as an option,as does windows,Qnx,etc.But you know this.

That is no reason why it should be the default GUI and built into the OS.

Everything you discussed can be done with BeOS as is.Or not.

RE: dpi

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 13:00:00 GMT

Given Haiku will be POSIX compliant hence those FOSS apps are easily ported.
X isnt part of POSIX and many POSIX apps works on beos already since it's somewhat (enough) POSIX compliant.
There already is a native X server for BeOS and it is better to improve that than to use X as a basis for Haiku.

RE:

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 13:05:00 GMT

Talk about negative energy :S

RE: Thom Holwerda

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 13:09:00 GMT

I've run X on a 486 / 25 MHz and it was fine. Pretty similar to Windows 3.1. Similarly, I know of people who've run it on 386s and the like. And this is XFree86 -- not the fastest X server -- but it's still good on very old hardware.

You're confusing X with toolkits, wigets and libraries. Yeah, X with GNOME/KDE is slow, but that's not because of X!

Bah, I really wish I could meet up with all the X-bashers and bring along my old 486 notebook. Watching it run X at a decent pace would pretty much silence them all.

To Eugenia... again...

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 13:21:00 GMT

yT

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 13:23:00 GMT

yellowTAB was created so Bernd could use the business to get investors to hide cash and make his small fortune grow.

Someone look into his past. Seriously.

so.. much..

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 13:29:00 GMT

stupidity..

gaagh, this is horrible. this article is just a mess.

euginia, weren't you the one that posted, not to terribly long ago, a nice sentimental article on beos's birthday? And here you are now more or less bashing it. jeez.

Free Market will Decide

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 14:11:00 GMT

The commentary puts forth some views. I don't agree with most of them.

the bottom line is this. Will haiku serve some need in the market which is not otherwise served and will it be able to reach its audience?

That may be the case. it may not. There are several scenarios under which haiku could succeed so i would not discount it so readily. Linux, Apple, and Windows don't cover everything you know.

my 2 cents on haiku as a former BeOS-only user

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 14:24:00 GMT

I bought R4 on a whim as I was becoming disilluoned with Windows at the time, I liked the idea though it didn;t support my graphics card and only gave me a B&W display.

I bought R5 as well, which was leaps and bounds better. Not only was this the OS for me, if I was an Android or something I'd have been programmed in R5 BeOS code. Very clean, very fast, visually appealing, easy to use. I ended up running R5 as my only OS until lack of programs I needed both for work and home use became painfully evident. This was around the late 90s.

On the work-front and BeOS lacked a browser that could handle https sites (Opera you had to pay for and bezilla would crash and burn). I also remember the spreadsheet app (not sure of the name) having compatibility issues with not handling Excel files right.

On the home front BeOS was lacking things as well. most notably instant messengers, at the time there was only BeAIM a version of Aim that you had to import buddy list files for (it didn't support the Aim servers automatically keeping that config) and Gim-Icq the most basic of ICQ messenger imaginable. Friends of mine would want to chat on yahoo messenger with webcam neither of which were available from bebits. And with the builds of bezilla at the time constantly freezing just simple web browsing was a chore (let alone thinking about things now like browsing to sites with flash and/or java content).

I ended up splitting my partition into 3 slices, one for Windows XP, one for Linux, and one for BeOs (which still to this day has the best boot loader of all time). mostly I'd ignore the XP partition and fiddle with linux distro after linux distro until i found one i could live with (name withheld to prevent flamewars). occasionally I'd boot back into BeOS try using it and find it still sadly behind the times. In the mean time I've become a rather experienced linux user.

I too remember when the OS formerly known as OpenBeos came about and their first prediction was to have a release ready by Christmas, then the timetable was moved to a year, then to a more or less (Duke nukem Forever-ish) ready when it's ready. I think if the initial time frame had been met things would have been better. like many had said ther's be something actually useable, and beOs developers who've long since abandoned bebit projects may not have had a viable alternative come out in a suitable timeframe.

What I'm getting at is that I agree with the idels of haiku to NOT use the Linux kernel, to NOT use X, to keep what was good about beoS being clean, fast, and elegant. The quandry that comes about it once you have a working replicant of R5 you have a community supported open source version of one of the best OSes ever IMHo that will run almost nothing useful. I must admit there were some be Apps i really liked such as the cd burning GUI (been so long I forget the name, and bebit's is in such disarray with screenshots bringing up linked pages 404 errors and whatnot). Anyway i remember this Cd burning program would actually burn Cds for me without fail in beOs when each time without fail the burns would fail in windows.

mainating compatability for R5 apps doesn't seem of much use, most of them are outdated. What would seem to make more sense is to avoid the linux kernel and X like the plague, keep the modular design of BeOS intact, but work on porting linux applications to some sort of apt-like repository 9there I went and let the cat out of the bag). That seems to be the most logical and sane approach to making BeOs useable porting linux apps that already have a strong following and that are kep up to date frequently. The alternative is to "reinvent the wheel so to speak" that once the OS coders for haiku finish with their first release, to turn their attention to then programming apps to make haiku something users can work (and play) with on a day to day basis. Cloning R5 is a baby step, the real goal should be making something useful

Editorial? More like typical /. troll rant

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 14:31:00 GMT

I cannot belive this post is being past as news on OSnews. I have been a long time OSnews reader and also a past BeOS user and I stay very true to it.

This editorial was very poorly woreded and writen. It makes claims and accusations like one would here walking down a hall of a typical american junior high. Comments like And if Haiku is "ready" by 2010 are just disposable rubbish and is very unprofessional.

Although it is an editorial, Kian's claims are not backed up any hard facts. No historical reference to projects that have failed (besides Be itself).

I am not a expert at writting or journalism, but I can see what is nothing more than a poorly rant that should belong in the comments on /. After reading this editorial I must say I am left with a bad taste in my mouth and disapointment in OSnews in my heart.

RE: my 2 cents on haiku as a former BeOS-only user

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 14:51:00 GMT

Hayabusa
"What would seem to make more sense is to avoid the linux kernel and X like the plague, keep the modular design of BeOS intact, but work on porting linux applications to some sort of apt-like repository"

That is exactly one of the things OpenBeOS/Haiku is doing.But there is more to software than porting from linux

The professional dedicated audio and video systems running on BeOS are running applications written for BeOS that are not available for other platforms.

An example is the audio at Sydney Opera House,Australia,and some systems at Disneyland USA.

Have you ever worked with YT Eugenia?

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 14:56:00 GMT

They are deceitfull, mallicious, and horrible stewards of the community they claim to admonish.

They have stolen code from BeOS-centric development organizations (code which they had no right to steal, as it wasn't opensource, and is under strict 3rd party license), they have stiff-armed individual developers, they have lied again and again about the status of their 'product'.

Further, their "OS" refuses to boot on a laptop I have that runs R5 just fine.

What a load of crap.

Face it Eugenia, their product sucks. But worse than that:

Their business practices are even more shady than the history of their alleged product.

Anyone remember BeOS NG?

How long did it take YT to get something out the door? I'd say Haiku is doing a pretty damn good job. YT didn't even have to code the OS, and it took -them- ~3 years.

RE:Editorial? More like typical /. troll rant

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 14:57:00 GMT

Brandon

Please note the editorial is written by Eugenia Loli Queru.

It is submitted by Kian Duffy.

Eugenia's and Kian's views are very different.

RE:Editorial? More like typical /. troll rant

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 14:57:00 GMT

Troll? I don't know. Rant? Surely. I think that Eugenia, just like so many of us, despaires from time to time about the state of affairs.

Personally I experience every day that Win XP just isn't good enough ("Please wait while Windows multitasks your applications"). But what is the alternative. Linux? To me it means more problems (new system, programs that need to be replaced by some other solution, less support from direct enviroment) and few advantages (it does not feel significant faster, nor is it particularly easier or more intuitive).

Don't shoot me for this. This is how I experience it.

The difference with Win is just too small to make the switch worthwhile.

Sometime ago I had good hopes, though, because I knew of a small elegant simple OS that worked so smooth and fast I fell in love with it from the start.

Now I am just like Eugenia frustrated and sad with seeing this alternative becomming less viable by the day.

One thing that really bothers me Eugenia (I said it before): LONGHORN IS NOT GOING TO BE THE ANSWER.
In you editorial you describe longhorn as the next big thing that will have everything a person could whichfor.
You know (or should know by now) how the Microsoft roll out machine works: the next version will be FANTASTIC. It 'll do everything and will be faster and bla bla bla.

I would have thought that you would be immune to this marketing technique where the current version is marred by all kind of problems but the next version is supposed to be Perfect. Paradise postphoned.

Completely different take.

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 15:11:00 GMT

My current needs, which no doubt are less "trendy" than your current needs, are met with BeOS Pro 5.0.3 plus bebits updates.

Haiku represents my future migration path and I am very pleased with the quality of their progress and people . . . and the fact that they are following the sort of Open Source most in line with my needs is a crucial point for me.

I cannot afford to risk my business reputation by dealing with companies of shady legal standing, or who promise big and deliver lousy quality. Personally I wouldn't touch YellowTab with a 10 foot pole and this will never change for me.

I do not need to generate "news" . . . if I had to generate "news" on a regular basis probably I would hate Haiku just like you. So, my take is completely different than yours.

Another thing I really like about Haiku is they pretty much stay out of this sort of classless mud-slinging.

Best Regards,

JP

@Brandon

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 15:19:00 GMT

I didn't write, or have anything to do with that article, other than submitting the link to the Haiku homepage with the "Submit News" function. I'd like to point out, that as an almost fulltime BeOS user, I would never harbour views like those in the editorial.

SkyOS

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 15:32:00 GMT

Man guys, you are really coming down hard on what you call "hobby OSes".

To me, a "hobby OS" is an OS that cannot do all the functions that you need to do. Internet, Word-processing, mail, jukebox. Even MenuetOS can do those things.

BeOS isn't old and dead....M$ is telling you that and you've all bought into it. The last "outdated, ancient, old, archaic" version of BeOS to be released, was only 1 year before your beloved WinXP.

Do you guys realize how old XP relly is? SkyOs is being developped, Linux can successfully run on 64-bit computers, OSX is constantly being updated...

Xp isn't the best OS out there, is one of the worst, and what about all the viruses, and the fragmenting filesystem? No other OS has those extra little features.

Stop sitting around debating which OS is better, or putting "hobby OSes" down, if they're going to slow for you, join the devel team.

Missing Some Points

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 15:33:00 GMT

I think this editorial ignores a few key issues.

The be, inc. experience should have showed us that the hurdle to enter the OS market is not one of technology. it is one of established community and most importantly the application and driver hurdle. Haiku can overcome these because it is open source.

It is extremely difficult for a commercial company to overcome that hurdle in this day and age. Apple and MS obviously have overcome this.

Haiku and Linux are not commercial or for profit firms and that is why they can overcome this via time and efforts of dedicated if small community of afficionados. There is no banker or shareholder asking for return on investment within 3 years breathing down the next of haiku. That the haiku developer base is small today says nothing about its size tomorrow. Don't forget that the linux developer community was once just mr torvaldis.

Haiku need only satisfy what the average user or a niche of users need when it is available. i respectfully disagree with the column in the implicit assessment that users really care about the features that are being thrown in operating systems these days. I don't think they care.

As someone who mixes and records multi-track audio on his computer i can say that i am still interested in an alternative to MS on a PC that will let me use every last hz of power on my machine. Audio and probably video sample sizes will continue to increase. Pro audio already supports 24 bit/192khz. In other words there are plenty of niches to address.

You also have to consider the competitive field. Apple will likely continue to offer an attractive product at a price most people won't pay. Windows will continue to be the target of every hack in the world. MS's politics will turn more people off and the inevitable pricing and bloat of their software will make users look for alternatives.
Linux will continue to be attacked by MS, legally and every other wise, creating fud fud fud which will scare people off. Linux may or may not improve in its perception of usability, which is more important than its actual usability.

Lastly, this piece vastly underestimates the rising popularity of open source. Interest in open source is indeed increasing. Linux will benefit most from this trend but open source mania will spill over to the benefit of bsd and potentially haiku as well.

Missing Some Points part II

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 15:41:00 GMT

one other point.

There is an assumption in the piece that Haiku will only have the features of R5 ten years after the project was started.

Why exactly should be believe that development on haiku will freeze in time? Linux evolves so why won't Haiku? Haiku will in fact be evolving from a more modern starting than linux had so why can't it remain current? I think it can.

RE: RE: Thom Holwerda

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 15:53:00 GMT

>>You're confusing X with toolkits, wigets and libraries. ?>>Yeah, X with GNOME/KDE is slow, but that's not because >>of X!
Do most users used x without GNOME/KDE? no. X is likes Ford Model T with all kinds of upgrade bot-on. It is time to drop X alltogether. If you want network access, use VNC.

>>Bah, I really wish I could meet up with all the X->>bashers and bring along my old 486 notebook. Watching it >>run X at a decent pace would pretty much silence them >>all.

My 8MHZ Atari ST(68000) can run circle around X on your 486 and it only have 1MB memory for the whole system. NeoDesk on AtariST is way better than genome/kde UI wise.

the main point

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 16:20:00 GMT

After reading all these posts (whew!)... I go back to the main reason why I *loved* BEOS, is was fun and a pleasure to use! (ala Amiga was). I cannot say the same of any current "mainstream" OS.
Can Haiku deliver? If I will just rely on whatever means... even if it means running a patched up BEOS5.03.
PS: yes I dumped my Amiga2000 after only 12 years! Can you say the same of any other platform?

@Kian Duffy

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 16:28:00 GMT

Sorry for mistaking you for the writer of the article.

Let's face it, she's right

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 16:39:00 GMT

OpenBeos/Haiku hasn't made any serious progress for years. It was a nice idea that was never close to being realized. It's hard to believe that with essential parts of the OS barely past the planning stage after 3 years that's it's going to go anywhere.

At the rate its going, it won't be done in 10 years. It won't be done at all.

RE: RE: RE: Thom Holwerda

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 16:40:00 GMT

> My 8MHZ Atari ST(68000) can run circle around X on your 486
> and it only have 1MB memory for the whole system. NeoDesk on
>AtariST is way better than genome/kde UI wise.

I've been an Amiga user for a long time, so I know what it means working with an OS that has some personality, and that in its time was way ahead of what could be done on PCs. But I have had enough of this kind of silly comparison between different things such as nowadays X-based desktops and 15 years old ones. Yes, the menu in Amiga's Workbench looked way faster, and the windows could be dragged and resized with no apparent latency at all. I'm sure that the atari ST could perform more or less the same.
But are we comparing _those_ desktop environments with the like of Gnome or KDE or OS X? Nowadays we have network trasparency, fully antialiased text, perfectly typeset (ligatures and all, very important for some eastern languages) and lately we're getting compositing (shadows, transparencies, alpha blending and any kind of eye-candy and manipulation) and vector-based graphic with hardware acceleration for a number of different hardware setups.
Repeat with me: it's not a fair, nor a significative comparison.
Sure, X is currently implemented in a very not optimized way, but still I wouldnt go back for the very life of me.
Sometimes comparisons just don't make much sense. I was a user of BeOS for just a few weeks, and it totally made sense four years ago, when it compared favourably with the horrible win 9x serie. Nowadays, the thing that I'm more worried about in a reimplementation of the R5 is that any modern OS should be solidly multi-user, at least to guarantee a good security splitting the admin and the user processes.

RE: Anonymous

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 16:40:00 GMT

"Do most users used x without GNOME/KDE? no. X is likes Ford Model T with all kinds of upgrade bot-on. It is time to drop X alltogether. If you want network access, use VNC."

Huh? That doesn't even make sense. It's like saying "a bug in Mozilla is the kernel's fault because most people run Mozilla on the kernel". Additionally, VNC is no substitute for X in many situations; I'd go into more detail but you really should look this up for yourself.

"My 8MHZ Atari ST(68000) can run circle around X on your 486 and it only have 1MB memory for the whole system. NeoDesk on AtariST is way better than genome/kde UI wise."

Er, and? The Atari ST GUI (GEM) can't do half the things X can. What's your point? Besides, I never said X was faster than everything ever -- just that it's nowhere near as slow as some uninformed people make out.

Enough...

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 16:44:00 GMT

I've had it with Eugenia...

She can't:
* stand critics
* apologize to anyone, even if she knows she is wrong
* keeps publishing her own sick thoughts despite the fact that most of the readers gets offended. This one is by far the worst piece of shit I've ever read.
* keeps moderating/banning ppl who doesn't agree with here, or those she think is stupid.
I quote: "Next time you reply in such a stupid, UNREAL fashion without having understood what I said and what I did not say, you will be banned. I have little tolerance for people who don't understand the situation, but they still feel like commenting."

I've followed Eugenia since benews too, and she was _never_ like this back then... Dunno whats wrong with her... I'm so damn dissapointed, because she _could_ do a good job, but prefers to annoy ppl, and deteriorate osnews. It's a shame really

-- A very dissapointed Vecc....

@pjm

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 16:44:00 GMT

Most of the OS is well past the "planning stage". The kernel and shell are booting sucessfully on x86 and somewhat sucessfully on PowerPC. The app_server isn't terribly far off working. The rest is finished, basically. Media endoder API is missing from the media kit, and a lot of drivers need to be reimplemented. Thats it.

Source code licensing

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 16:47:00 GMT

I'm wondering if one of the problems for Haiku's lack of developers is the choice of license: MIT. Now, I don't want to start a flame war (and I'm not saying one is better than the other), but wouldn't it have been more productive to go with the GPL?

The fact is, the majority of open source developers prefer the GPL. Just look at some of the major projects and the amount of GPLed apps on Freshmeat; there's no doubt that the GPL is the most popular license. So by using MIT, the Haiku project isn't going to attract as many coders -- most OSS hackers want to contribute to something that's always going to be free, and not have their worked bundled up in closed forks.

Furthermore, this choice of license could pose problems later on. Fragmentation diseased the UNIX industry in the late 80s and early 90s (and still does to some extent), so imagine if Haiku takes off. There'll be loads of different flavours and varieties, with closed-source additions, tweaks and incompatibilities. Yeah, there's a lot of Linux distros, but they retain compatibility and ATEOTD they're all very similar under the hood.

Anyway, just my thoughts. Good luck to the Haiku developers and don't let the negative comments distract you -- it's a long road ahead but you could come up with something very special indeed.

Bad journalism

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 17:06:00 GMT

While I don't know which personal issues made Kian Duffy submit such a harsh article, I'm badly surprised that osnews.com is posting it.

I was reading osnews mostly because I want to know whats
going on in the operating system business. However, this
article, "Posted by Eugenia Loli-Queru on 2004-08-24 21:07:14 UTC, submitted by Kian Duffy" is very biased and mean, and shouldn't have been published like this unedited form.

RE: Stefan Mayer

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 17:08:00 GMT

Stefan Mayer, for the millionth time: Kian Duffy is not the writer of this opinional piece!!

Read the WHOLE article and you'll notice a line at the end of it.

@Stefan Mayer

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 17:09:00 GMT

I DIDN'T WRITE IT!!

Eugenia wrote that entire speil. I submitted a link to the story on the Haiku page. That is all I did.

is eugenia ready for the desktop ;P

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 17:25:00 GMT

Ok, here is some point i want to speak about:

The kernel:
The choice of NewOS made sense and still do. Why use linux, not only it's updating too fast to be a reference kernel of choice to fork an OS, it's not even architecturally compatable with the philosopy of BeOS itself (the main reason i think NewOS was choose in the first place).

The binary compatability:
I would personally don't care for it, that said it is also a neat thing like interoperability for testing. The number of thesting tool needed that are not so needed now make getting bin comp almost for free, so why not.

Speed of development:
As weird as it may sound to many, maximum speed in a software project is not the best that can happen. Lot of error can happen if stuff move to fast that are then build upon. The current speed is just right (i guess only the app server took too much time, but reason are behind that, i hope darkwirm feel better now).

Size of the team:
Only need to look at skyOS AtheOS and some others and compare this to M$ or apple to see that workforce on a software project don't scale linearly the output production. the Size of the team is just ok as it is now (even if MPhipps think it could be bigger ). What is really needed is more knowlegable memember of BeOS itself. Also 3d folk will need to enter the boat at some time. The only flaw in haiku plan so far is that they failed to produce a VonNewman effect (a machine that create a critical amount of machine before starting on the real meat of the task).

So, Haiku need to include a Haiku University. Sure you can join by looking at the source and all, but this is good when coding a little poker game or a snake clone. For big project, graphical modelisation, public developer log and all need to be there, all with associated text on "why the sky is blue" kind of related thing.

Windows, linux and apple will have catched up by then:
That is a common misconception among programmer that never do any hardware. in case you did not notice we (X86) still have the same architecture since the end of the 70's. What so great will happen that it will need serious guru to implement back in Haiku. USB is nothing more than a sequel to serial port. Sometime it go even backward cd burner are a "functionally" inferior to floppy disk.

And Mphipps said it many time with great wisdom, it's even more easy to support hardware now than before as they are more chipset based. never before so much laptop did run BeOS.

Then on the software catchup to do, i don't even fear for it. Many haiku R2 mailing list tentance bend toward a componentarised system instead of monolitic app, something that can only come from a small user base OS.

Most of software thing can be done in user land or kernel add-on. And like many said, those are not always wanted advancement. 3D accelerated display? that is nice but i would prefer a general purpose way of doing it, as 3d is never that complicated in term of polygon number, a second processor can do it easily, and actually have a use when the PC is in screen saver mode and encode video, instead of staying there eating watts.

Relevance of BeOS:
this is not just for beos, but all small OS in gereral that evade the bloat. Using them you can literally use FREE PC and use them just fine. As most that don't get Mac is because they say they are 400$ more A BeOS station PIII 450Mhz like mine (OC at 600) work just fine for all real time use i need (outside of games) and it's quite easy to find those for FREE by now. That mean that next time i upgrade it will probably be a 1G cpu, again got for free etc... (sometime i love M$ bloat to allow me to upgrade that way!).

A tale of shifting baselines...

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 17:27:00 GMT

Shifting baselines.

This is entirely an opinion piece.

When the new OSX upgrade is released (or Longhorn hits the shelves, whatever comes first), people will become accustomed to the rich metadata scheme. They will enjoy giving useful names to their photos - "(Category, "My summer trip to hawaii," Comments, "This was when me and Sheila...") - and they will begin to invest themselves in this feature. In the grand scheme of things, it seems like a small shift - but so did Post It notes, of which I've already got three of them stuck to the wall near my doorway, though I wish that the tail-ends didn't fly up in the air so much.

"Wow, the stuff on the screen redraws really fast!" Hardware accelerated window rendering.

"Its cool, how I change my resolution and things get sharper, now, instead of smaller." Vector-based desktops.

"Its like, I'm typing in my word processor, and everytime I finish a word, this little thing in my docklet blinks and shows me the definition for the word I just typed!" DCOP/DBUS and the magic of bubbling events and interprocess communication in a nonghetto way.

"I just put the batteries in my wireless mouse and it just started working without warning!!!" The wonderful whimsical world of Bluetooth technology.

"See, I just sit down at a table in Star Bucks and I and turn on my laptop and I'm online without any cables!" WiFi (mentioned only because I love you, baby!)

Baselines shift. Me? I've got a wireless network now, even though I had no intention of doing so in the past. I setup a wireless network for my mother (she likes to redecorate alot, and the computer was tied to the router, which was in the closet for some reason...), and decided a few hours later that the freedom was too good to let go. So, the next Monday I bought myself a wireless router. I have a laptop, and its fun to move around.

So, now I'm not going to go back to anything that does not support Wifi, 802.11x, whatever. Period.

Someone with a large screen monitor or plasma display may experiment with an operating system that still uses raster graphics, but when he first boots up and everything is so freaking tiny, well, you know he's going back to what works. He may be willing to explore for that feeling of excitement and adventure, but when he really wants to go back into "normal" mode, he's going to boot-up his previous operating system and the comforts of home that come with it.

The issue with a slow-moving project is, although, yes, they can take their time and do pretty much "whatever" they want, technology is going to keep moving. Constantly. People's expectations for any given piece of software going to change with this; thus, it is a shifting baseline, and it only goes up from here. Sure, in a few years you'll replicate something that's already 7, 8 years old. And that's great - for software that was created for 7 or 8 years ago. But, unless you have a machine from that era, its not really *useful* to you, is it? Yeah, you've made something you can be proud of. Lots of people do. It was a learning experience, and that's great, but when you aim higher than just pleasing yourself...

Don't kid yourself, programmers build software for two reasons: themselves, or someone else. If you're doing it for yourself, you can take as long as you like, come hell or high water. If you're building an operating system for someone else, you have to take these sorts of shifting baselines into account if you really, *honestly* want people to use your software. Using the "Open Source carrot" as a cheap ploy is just not going to cut it anymore, because we've already been innduated to it by Linux and FreeBSD and IBM and your momma's mother's great grand mother. Remember back when saying "FAWK YOU!" had impact? You need more than that now. You need The Goods. Same with software. Windows 3.1 isn't good enough for most of us anymore, you know?

Ask yourself this: how many Haiku developers are using Haiku as their primary operating system? If they aren't, why not? If they aren't, is it because it isn't good enough for them? If they aren't, and it is because the operating system is not in a usable condition, should they really be advocating it until it is in a usable condition? If a developer cannot be expected to use it, why should an end-user?

----
And for those of you dissin' Eugenia: frankly, you can cry and whine and scream all you want... but its her site, and in the end, anyone posting comments here is just another one of her bitches.

BeOS = TOY

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 17:28:00 GMT

Eugenia wrote:
Maybe yes, and maybe not. But by 2007, you better have these extra new features that Longhorn/OSX will have by then, or your OS will be treated as a TOY.

That's exactly how it feels to me: a TOY, because everyday a want to play with my BeOS PC, fast and not overloaded with features I don't need.
If I want to browse the net, write an email, write a letter, listen to some music, I fire up BeOS and begin to play.

I spend more time in BeOS than in Windows, and you know why? Because, as for a lot of us, a PC/MAC is a hobby. I don't need a PC/MAC for my work/life. I need it just because it a hobby.

and in 10 years I probably have my AMD 128 bit with Windows Longhorn 2014, but I sure keep my 2 BeOS machines alive, just for FUN

What's simple is true ...

'BE the difference that makes a difference' - JEWEL

OS Crisis

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 18:01:00 GMT

Hey! Eugenia is having a normal woman crisis... Freud would say something about OSes replacing a man in her mind or something. Oh just forget it. The whole 'editorial' was so outrageously stupid, it is just zany crazy!

Biggest....whiners....ever

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 18:05:00 GMT

So we get these people that say "Eugenia makes some good points, but the editorial shouldn't have been written". So I guess people are pissed that Eugenia is explaining the reality of the situation instead of keeping quiet and pretending that haiku (with its current plans) will have the relative parity of BeOS in 1999 in comparison to the other OSs of that time.

It's just not going to happen. Binary compatiblity is a stupid idea and Haiku will always have a driver problem.

In a way, Haiku reminds me of the Apple situation before they went with the Mach/BSD solution. Apple floundered around for years with failed after failed sucessor to the OS9 architecture. Then they wised up and decided to use something that was already out there, but make a new gui and userland stuff. BeOS users don't care whats under the hood, they just want something that works, has lots of drivers, and will have the spirit of Haiku.

the fix for the whole wretched affair

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 18:18:00 GMT

Ok. This topic has come up enough times that someone needs to spell out the solution right now. I loved BeOS R5, so I'm putting down my crack pipe and laying it out for you:

To make this project succeed, do the following three things:

1. For goodness' sake, change the license to GPL/LGPL. The smartest most prolific devs out there who might possibly be interested in working on OBOS want a promise that their code -- and any code derived from their code -- will always remain free. That promise is spelled either GPL or LGPL. Stop listening to people who say freedom is not important -- it is, and it's *especially* important to the folks who might contribute most to your project.

2. Drop this binary compatibility business. Yes, yes; I've heard over and over how it's not as difficult as it looks. The smart hackers who might contribute to your project don't want to clone BeOS R5 down to the bugs and all. If they wanted monotonous work like that, they'd stay late at work and put in extra hours for free.

3. Please choose a name with some personality. A name that you can easily google for. A name that sounds cool to the smart devs you want working on your project. Someone in an earlier post suggested PhippsOS. Well, a cool twist to that might be Flipsauce. That's a cool and googlable name with personality. Choose one like that, and those smart hackers who think "Haiku" is overdone and corny may give you a 2nd look.

Ok. I'm done. That's the last I want to hassle the OBOS guys. Maybe they don't really *want* the project to succeed. Dunno. But there's the solution, in the above message. That's your recipe if you want to get all the BlueEyedOS and Cosmoe and whoever else to realize that Flipsauce is the one unifying project they've all been looking for.

--- end of transmission ---

Re:Biggest....whiners....ever

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 18:21:00 GMT

BeOS users don't care whats under the hood, they just
want something that works, has lots of drivers, and will have the spirit of Haiku.

um.. you can't speak for BeOS users. BeOS users aren't windows/mac users and generally DO care whats under the hood. I know I do.

Haiku Development

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 18:23:00 GMT

One of the interesting things about the way Haiku is being developed is that it's being designed from the top down. Yes, on a pure Haiku system, you can't yet boot to a GUI. However, almost everything past that point is done. I run a BeOS system right now. More than half of it is Haiku components. Every driver my system uses comes from Haiku. Most of the core system components as well: media, printing, etc.

This means that once Haiku can boot to a working GUI (and this is much closer than you think), it will be a GUI with full hardware support in which I can watch DVDs with 5.1 sound, use things like instant messaging and Java, and browse the web with well-known browsers. I will be able to word-process and print. Essentially, at that moment, Haiku will spring from the ground as a full-featured, useful OS.

The end of real news

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 18:26:00 GMT

I, like many other posters, have been reading Eugenia's news and commentary since the days of BeNews. Hanging out in various BeOS circles like BeShare gave us all even more exposure to her. At some point people might have even considered her a kind of authority on the subject. But those days are gone, there's a new Eugenia on the block and she's not the same.

I'm not sure what the motivation is, but this selective and overly harsh criticism of Haiku is the end of the road for me. I have lost what little remaining respect I had for the author of this "editorial". And while I can't expect this comment to last very long without getting removed or moderated into oblivion, at least I will have said my peace.

I saw Eugenia come on the scene, having used BeOS for quite a while before she got her voice. She came in with great enthusiasm and was very easy to read and relate to. But eventually she married into 'the family' and that's where it seemed to start going downhill. 'My husband this' and 'my husband that' got old really quickly being passed off as news, and giving her some supposed extra level of credibility. Over time, everything positive she ever did was gradually revisited doubly with some kind of negativity. Yet I'd still consistenly read the OSNews headlines and kept up constantly with the RSS feed. But now there's no real news here anymore. I find the childish and ridiculous bickering at slashdot to be an order of magnitude more tolerable than the opinionated garbage this site posts.

And while I'm on the subject.. editorials are not headline news. You might find them in a newspaper, but never would you see anything of this nature on the front page. It'd probably be a good idea to bury the inflammatory material such as this piece just like the printed daily rag does. The flavor of the week 'linux is ready for the desktop' bunk or especially this article's refuse-laden content is not news and doesn't deserve to be posted as a headline. The NEWS of this article (thanks to you Kian) was that people who love the idea of BeOS and are trying to recapture something of it still have their act together, and even moreso than ever upon the project's third birthday. Comparing that to anything else is pointless and a waste of time. Becoming a legitimate non-profit organization is a major achievement and deserves congratulations. Kudos to you team Haiku.

It's a complete non-issue that this Haiku team missed a supposed deadline (Or "FAILED" as Eugenia would have you believe). Did Be, Inc. ever deliver anything on a schedule? No. This article feels almost as if someone personally promised a delivery date for a BeOS replacement, and didn't come through. Like someone expecting something with no clue whether it's coming or not, then being disappointed because they feel personally let down. I'm sorry, but success cannot be quantified by one person, or even a group of people sharing the same opinion.. especially if you're not part of the cause. So while an opinion may be important to some outsider, it's largely irrelevant fluff. An external force trying to justify the workings of a project they don't belong to is simply a moot effort.

Perhaps it's more logical to never EXPECT anything when a group takes on a monumental task. But the Haiku team seems to still be making progess, (even squeezing in a first-ever convention!) and that's all that truly matters. A group working towards a goal... THEIR goal. One can only hope that as the time draws near, we'll see the same old BeOS spirit before a real Haiku release and have a webcam with some cryptic message to lure us all in. As for me, while I'll keep checking out of the corner of my eye for that little suprise, (but not EXPECTING it) I certainly won't be doing it here at OSNews.com. Not as long as it remains someone's personal soapbox who can't stand to receive the same kind of criticism they dish out.

Signing off...

Haiku

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 18:35:00 GMT

It's simply astounding what emotions you will get from people about a simple bit of software. These are ones and zeros, folks, not even a finished set of ones and zeros, and for some reason there's nearly 20 pages of name calling and bickering about this product that hasn't even been released.

What you need to realize is that 99.9999% of the entire world has never even heard about BeOS, much less Haiku. The Haiku devs are a small group interested in creating an OS that pleases them not the world. If Haiku manages to fit somebody's niche ... GREAT ... otherwise there will be around 10 happy devs doing what they like to do best and not bothering anybody.

That said, I am anxiously awaiting the day that I can burn R1 to a disc and boot into what R5 should have been. In the meantime I will use what I feel to be the best OS for my needs (OSX) and will watch as Linux developers create the best OS for their needs. Choice is great, folks, and one of few ways to encourage development and innovation; don't knock it.

lighten up

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 19:08:00 GMT

Beware of Geeks baring Diffs

What?

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 19:55:00 GMT

Haiku needs to move on, it needs to re-set its goals, simply because its current goal, has already failed through market irrelevance.

What does market relevance have to do with a project that developers are working on because they want to?

I never realized that a spokesperson for the project said their goal was to take over the Operating System market, or even make a linux-sized dent in it.

Adam

BSD

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 20:03:00 GMT

Should have used a BSD core, with all its built in drivers, rather than newos.

The problem is: too high expectations.

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 21:01:00 GMT

What does market relevance have to do with a project that developers are working on because they want to?

Or from another point of view, they work on it because they can. Comparing such with MacOSX or Windows is off, for one because the 2 companies behind those 2 OSes make software for the general public for profit. They don't develop it for themselves. In contrast, Haiku developers develop software (mostly) for themselves. You know, the itch. Add to that, a good looking website, public relations via news, open mailing list, and carefully crafted documents and i'd say they're trying to inform people who are (potentially) interested, too.

By comparing Haiku with an OS such as MacOSX, Windows, the author makes a mistake (see above). It also shows expectations are simply too high. Here's a piece of advice: lower your expectations, free your mind of the BeOS dogma, and just see what happens. If you expect nothing at all, then you can only be impressed by what's happening. If the purpose of this article is precisely this, then i actually agree with that purpose, but not with the way it is done.

Also, i'm not blaming anyone who has such expectations neither am i blaming the Haiku developers. They could have been wrong too, but its just a hobby. You know, fun. Not some kind of revolution. Read for example Linus his book "Just for fun" or Enlightenment authors who explain why they are developing E. For fun Because they can. Because they want to. Open source in general is not for your fun (as end user), at least, that's not the main purpose of most FOSS developers and even companies do it also (a lot of 'em "mostly", i'd argue) for profit.

If you lower your expectations, open your mind, release the BeOS dogma, drop the "i want my end product yesterday" mantra, and perhaps start joining in (you don't have to be a programmer!) then the chances are much higher you'll start seeing the fun of it and perhaps even start participating in the fun process. But, you'll have to adopt to reality instead of the 1999 BeOS dream world as it was or tried to become. We're living in 2004 now.

That's my piece of advise to the people who are expecting too much. I've already read some people get this which is already a beneficial to related discussions and hopefully increasing the quality of these already. Thank you, and thank you for your time.

Why cloning BeOS R5 is necessary

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 21:20:00 GMT

I am one of the people who is helping to create Haiku. This is how I see things:

The goal of Haiku is to provide an alternative to Windows. No one really likes Windows and it would be great if people could choose something else. But what are the choices? MacOS requires expensive Apple hardware. Linux and the BSD's are way out of league for most normal end users (as opposed to computer-savvy folks like yourself). Hobby operating systems like SkyOS don't have the necessary clout -- neither does BeOS, but the people who are creating Haiku believe that a successor to BeOS might just be able to pull this off.

So why recreate an operating system that was last updated in the year 2000? Why not write the OS of our dreams right now? Why not simply take all the good ideas of BeOS and drop all the bad ones and build something new instead? Why bother making a binary-compatible clone of BeOS R5?

Two reasons:

1) You need a solid foundation to build on. We think that BeOS provides a pretty cool foundation (better than, say, Linux) but unfortunately the source code to BeOS isn't available. If it were, we wouldn't have to clone BeOS R5 to make Haiku R1.

2) Project management. To me, this is the most important and least-understood reason for cloning BeOS.

Open source projects that fail are often started by enthousiastic developers with nothing more than a vague idea. They gather other interested developers, do a lot of talking but not a lot of developing, and a few months later the project is dead. Too many opinions, too few decisions.

Successful open source projects have people that can set goals and make decisions, and then act on them. Having a clear, well-defined goal is crucial for a project with multiple developers, especially when they are all volunteers spread over the globe.

Cloning BeOS R5 is our clear, well-defined goal. We know what we have to build, and that is why we have a pretty good chance of succeeding. (This approach worked well for Linux, which set out to clone of UNIX, after all.)

Had we chosen to work on our dream operating system immediately (what we now call Haiku R2), we'd still be arguing about how to do things: everybody has a different opinion on what makes a good operating system. Instead, we decided to clone BeOS R5 as a starting point and now -- instead of endless bitching and flamewars -- we have 3 million lines of source code to show for it.

Of course, you can argue that we've merely postponed the problem. Once Haiku R1 is complete, we'll have to start thinking about R2. And we'll still have to make those decisions. But at least we'll have our foundation -- you can't build anything on top of nothing.

Switch to GPL?

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 21:21:00 GMT

Huh, why is it so important that Haiku switch to GPL.
Why should they use a MORE restrictive license?

It always pops up in these discussions and I always see:
1. Do something
2. Switch to GPL
3. Profit

Is GPL the new Snake oil? No. It ain't no miracle cure for everything!

NOTE: I do not have a problem with GPL itself. Just how some suggests it should be used.

@ mahlzeit

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 21:36:00 GMT

2) Project management. To me, this is the most important and least-understood reason for cloning BeOS.

Can you elaborate on this? Some details would help me (and most likely other readers) understand this better. Currently, it is too vague for me.

A well crafted reply if i might say so and thanks for your hard work btw. I also believe in (more) choice in the desktop segment.

Re: Haiku

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 21:52:00 GMT

First, allow me to say, "I will always have a place in mind and heart for BeOS and all the software engineers that worked on its code". Allow me to go further, "My hat is off in respect to those few remaining coders that will not give up" since they keep a beautiful dream alive.

But until Haiku matures into a full-fledged operating system on its own right, I must live in the world of 'redmond boobs' and 'cool penguins'. This is where I make my money. It would have been great if BeOS had been a server platform.

Troy

Haiku !!! Show us the money...

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 22:51:00 GMT

Great, you guys say you have this done, that done, this thing almost done.

So when do you plan to show it off? Honestly, if the kernel were even capabable at this point of running the appserver you would be showcasing it.

Bottom line, you guys ain't got shiat, except for some R5 replacement parts. If you want the community to put their faith behind this project, then show it off! But you can't, can you? Until you do, it's all just mirrors and smoke blown up the arse of the dwindling BeOS community.

To Haiku team and to future Haiku users like me

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 22:56:00 GMT

Hi folks!

Well, keep in mind these things:

1) License: Haiku DON'T need of a new license. MIT license is ok for me and for whole BeOS comunity.

2) app_server vs X: I stay with app_server. I never like of X. To cooler heads: Show me one Linux distro that Linux+X surpass BeOS Kernel+app_server speed to convince me.

3) The kernel choice: NewOS is the most wise thing that Haiku team had taken. And I loved the Axeld's kernel implementation for Haiku. Go ahead. I trust in you, brother!

4) "Developers, developers, developers": Axeld, of course, is a demon. But looncaz and others BeOS experienced developers could take a hand (sorry guys, but I'm very bad with C/C++. Maybe Java...).

5) Eugenia, maybe in 50 years I take your level in computer knowledge, but you already was in this community. You know all our hopes in BeOS. Take easy. I know that the market will not, but Haiku is our hope to someday get a thing usable to you review.

6) Finally, OSX and Longhorn: I don't know in the whole world, but in Brazil Haiku CAN TAKE ALL MARKET in five years! Windows XP is used in less of 20% of the computers here. The mass still uses win98 or win95 or DOS still to run your Clipper/Cobol based apps!!!!. These peoples are afraid with Linux. My boss are afraid to get Linux in our server against Win2000. Do you understand?

Ok folks?

This is my two cents.

Michael Vinícius de Oliveira
~ BlueEyedOS.com Webmaster ~

Troy...

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 22:58:00 GMT

Heh, want a server BeOS?

Just wait a little bit. One may just kinda appear from "thin air" even before Haiku gets to R1.

There is no sarcasm in my comment :-)

--The loon

--------------

Currently just researching ever more wider aspects of system security, and global electronic security.

mahlzeit

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 22:59:00 GMT

You need a solid foundation to build on.

No... not really. BeOS, Windows/DOS, and MacOS (classic) did not have a solid foundation to build on. They started basicly from scratch. Other hobby OSes didn't have a foundation to build on (AtheOS/Syllalbe, SKyOS). They just took the ideas they liked and worked from there. I mean no disresepct, but they have done a lot more in three years than OpenBeOS/Haiku has.

[...] They gather other interested developers, do a lot of talking but not a lot of developing, and a few months later the project is dead. Too many opinions, too few decisions.

Sure, cloning BeOS provideds a concrete goal to work towards. But what happens once you reach that goal? Then you will have to start making decisions about where to take the OS. Then you may have "Too many opinions, too few decisions.".

you can't build anything on top of nothing.

You can. It's called inventing. Try it sometime.

re: Troy...

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 23:06:00 GMT

Heh, want a server BeOS? Just wait a little bit. One may just kinda appear from "thin air" even before Haiku gets to R1.

Umm... that doesn't make a whole lot of sense. BeOS is not multi user os, not seucre, not all that great at SMP (in 2004 terms, not 1996) and not really that fast...

Still going...

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 23:07:00 GMT

Wow, I can't believe that this ugliness is still going on. Let me add to it. First, I have nothing against niche or hobby OSes. They're fun to mess around with. I think that Syllable and SkyOS are fantastic, and show a lot of promise. Allthough I doubt they'll ever garner enough regular users to make it worthwhile for people to code/port many applications and drivers to them, I think they still have promise. (Of course Robert Szeleney might be able to code or port all of the apps and driver they need. That man is an absolute coding machine! A freak of nature in the very best sense of the term.) Anyway, getting back on topic, the problem that I have with Haiku is their underlying philosophy. Coding binary compatibility into the OS is time consuming, and as many others have posted on this topic, recreates many of Be's mistakes. IMNSHO the Haiku team would be spending their time in a more productive manner if they nixed R5 compatibility, and worked on re-implementing the Be APIs and design philosophy into a more feature complete OS. And yes, I know, they've stated that Haiku will be "more than just R5", but binary compatibility is a huge millstone around their necks. It's the Haiku's time to spend as they see fit, but I wish that they re-examine their goals and methods for extending the BeOS spirit. As for Eugenia, she has every right to say what she wants. First, although this website is called OSNews, if you look over on the left side of the page, you can clearly see that there are separate sections for News, Interviews, Features, and EDITORIALS. The piece that she wrote on Haiku was clearly marked as an editorial. All of you people whining about "this site is called OSNews, I can't believe that she wrote such a biased piece!" should really sod off. Or learn to read. Editorial is good, because it invites debate. People who have differing opinions about a subject can have a nice exchange over the merits of their arguments. Editorial brings things into focus so you can evaluate the pros and cons of an issue, whether you happen to agree with the views expressed in the editorial or not. And as for Eugenia's YT bias, I wouldn't say that she has been exactly solicitous of YT or given Zeta much of an endorsement. The bulk of her comments on YT seem to be that Zeta is pretty much a dead-end...but at least they have something. You can actually install Zeta and it actually has some improvements over R5. Haiku isn't even pre-alpha.

To Haiku team and to future Haiku users like me

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 23:13:00 GMT

Oh. And the most import topic that I forgot:

7) Binary compatibility: Stay with it. BeOS commmunity *REALLY* needs it.

Michael Vinícius de Oliveira
~ BlueEyedOS.com Webmaster ~

If be has passed, I live with ghosts.

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 23:21:00 GMT

Yeah, I bought an OS X machine (laptop) and as soon as my wife buys another x86 and hopefully someone writes a audio driver, I will be running BeR5 Pro on her old laptop.

Yeah, it's missing some apps and Yeah, it's missing quite bit of nifty things I get with OS X, but I'll tell you... What Be does, it does better. I miss writing paper with Productive (I may be the only one), I miss the "no non-sense" speed and UI.

"Keep it simple stupid"

What a ratty "article"

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 23:22:00 GMT

> So, they prefer to financially crucify a company that offers them today a solution ... *BeOS*. To me, these people are not BeOS users. They are simply "OS-curious". Once, they had some nice experience with BeOS 5 Free edition, but since then, they have moved on to other OSes. And when a company is serving them the next generation of BeOS, they simply, don't wanna pay, but they "prefer to wait" years after years for a "free" solution (that might never come). That's not what I call a "BeOS users, who care about BeOS". I call it a "user who have been impressed by BeOS once, but he doesn't care enough anymore".

Well, I for one

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 23:27:00 GMT

Think it's great to see this much zealotry for BeOS. 200+ posts. It's good that it not only NOT be forgotten, but kept alive with pretty much the same level as fanticism as Linux/BSD. Kept alive as best it can be, at least. Some people think that zealotry is a bad thing. Sometimes it gets out of hand, but for the most part it's what this whole OS/computer hobby is all about. If you're not enthuistic about your machine/OS, then why at are you even at this site? Somebody described BeOS as a ghost town. What a perfect description. For a history buff like me, it's what makes BeOS so much fun to use. It's a step back into history. My only regret is jumping on the bandwagon this late (BeOS 5 PE Max Edition V3), but better late than never.

@FH

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 23:29:00 GMT

They aren't showcasing anything because they don't intend to till its all done. The media kit *IS* functioning completely on the decode side, everything works here fine. You don't see any screenshots of it around, or a beta pack on BeBits.

The network kit is stable enough to hold cvs, Firefox, Vision, etc. Waldermar Kornewald from the net team has come onto IRC using the Haiku net kit over PPPoE, without any problems. Again, no screenshots, no beta pack

There is a hell of a lot done, working, finished. They aren't showcasing it because it would raise a sudden expectation that the kernel/app_server would be available very soon afterwards.

Re: Kevin

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 23:29:00 GMT

> Umm... that doesn't make a whole lot of sense. BeOS is not multi user os, not seucre, not all that great at SMP (in 2004 terms, not 1996) and not really that fast...

Question for you, Eugenia

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 23:40:00 GMT

While I agree with you that people shouldn't expect everything to be free, don't you think Zeta is just a tad expensive for what it is?

RE: Question for you, Eugenia

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 23:48:00 GMT

Yes, Zeta is expensive compared to the free Linux, and the much more powerful OSX (for only $30 more).
But then again, Be engineers estimated once that BeOS 5 should have been sold for $400 for each copy, in order for Be to pay the bills of developing it. So, depends how you see the situation: as a businessman, or as a consumer.

Hardware Compatibility

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 23:58:00 GMT

Will BeOSMAX or PhosphurOS or Zeta work on a IBM T41 2373-1FM

@John Blink

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 26 Aug 2004 00:10:00 GMT

Probably. Don't expect the integrated wireless/bluetooth to work. And the NIC/graphics/sound all need recent drivers (assuming its the same machine I'm thinking of).

BeOS and X Windows

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 26 Aug 2004 00:23:00 GMT

why is it that whenever BeOS and X Windows are mentioned in the same sentence people automatically think that you want to replace the BeOS GUI with x Windows?

X is a protocol and just happens to also work on BeOS.
Why use it? Well it allows you to port over a whole swag of GUI apps which you may not have had running under BeOS.

The BeOS GUI is nice and snappy. Yes it has its flaws. X Windows works fine here and has always worked fine on my hardware going all the way back to 1995 when i was using slackware on my Petium 90.

Download the native BeOS version here http://www.bebits.com/app/3606 and give it a try.
You'll be impressed.
peter

Re: @FH - Kian Duffy

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 26 Aug 2004 01:06:00 GMT

I completely agree with that statement. People saying "it's not even pre-alpha yet", maybe it's because they want you to think that it's not pre-alpha, when in fact, it could well be close to beta or final release or whatever.

There was a post about "Haiku just springing out of the ground". That's probably what's going to happen in any case.

I'll be holding my breath.

Chris

Wow.... 220 comments!

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 26 Aug 2004 01:20:00 GMT

It seem like BeOS / Zeta / Haiku is a hot topic that many want to fight to the blood....

BeOS was a real good OS, still is in many aspect. But the fact remains, it's getting old fast. Even if Haiku can come out with something a bit better than R5/Dano in a couple of years... It will have to compete against Longhorn or MAC OS X Tiger.

Who needs Longhorn or pricy OS X to do some surfing or e-mail? Nobody... BeOS / Haiku can do the job. But do you see BeOS pre-installed in modern new PC? NO... Longhorn will, likw ZP today....

SO... It was good time running BeOS but I guess it's time to move on. Linux may be a better alternative. It's Free so much better than Zeta!

RE: mahlzeit (By Kevin @ 22:59:36)

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 26 Aug 2004 01:42:00 GMT

No... not really. BeOS, Windows/DOS, and MacOS (classic) did not have a solid foundation to build on. They started basicly from scratch. Other hobby OSes didn't have a foundation to build on (AtheOS/Syllalbe, SKyOS). They just took the ideas they liked and worked from there. I mean no disresepct, but they have done a lot more in three years than OpenBeOS/Haiku has.

From looking at their old websites, I'd say that three years ago both AtheOS and SkyOS were quite far in their development. Sure they didn't support the latest of the latest, but that's not really my point. Have they really gone far in those last three years? And how did they get where they were in 2001? SkyOS began somewhere around 1996. I don't know about AtheOS, but I'm quite certain it didn't just pop into existance somewhere around 2000. In fact:
"Q: How long have AtheOS been in development?
A: It seems to be a lot of confusion about how long AtheOS have been in
development. I have worked on it for about 4 years. I set up the web server
about 6 months ago, and the first installable release was put on the server
about 2 months ago."
And that was in August of the year 2000.

Certainly those projects are great and amazing, but don't forget they had a history and a foundation on which they could build whatever great things they've done in the past three years.

Sure, cloning BeOS provideds a concrete goal to work towards. But what happens once you reach that goal? Then you will have to start making decisions about where to take the OS. Then you may have "Too many opinions, too few decisions.".

But you should agree, that by then they have completed a set of goals already and won't have dwindled away before getting on their merry way. There will also be experience with developing an OS and their various subsystems and how to go about designing them. Subsystems are available, waiting to be explored, improved or replaced. And while plodding away on R1, there is a separate project to discuss these new ideas and opinions for beyond R1, namely
http://glasselevator.sourceforge.net/
with special interest the mailinglist
http://www.bug-br.org.br/mailman/listinfo/glasselevator-talk
and hopefully reach some sort of conclusion/concenses before it's time to decide on a set of goals for a next release.

mahlzeit said: "you can't build anything on top of nothing."
On which you replied: You can. It's called inventing. Try it sometime.
I'd say, although it might be a question of symantics, that if there was nothing before and there is now, you can have done several things:
(1) discovered it accidentally or purposely by setting out to discover something, but having the foggiest about what you will discover.
(2) created it, like some kind of deity.
(3) not worked in a total void, but purposely set out to design and build or, if you prefer the term, invent this thing equipped with tools, knowledge of your enviroment (where, for example, the laws of physics can be of great help or an API or platform(x86/ppc/..)), knowledge of your raw materials (ideas, pieces of equipment you've seen before (dynamo/clock/radio/..)).

.

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 26 Aug 2004 02:04:00 GMT

"If people like Eugenia, Jean-Baptiste Queru, and Scott Hacker (author of the BeOS Bible, people who were so heavily invested in BeOS, have given up on BeOS and have moved on to OS X, Windows XP, and Linux, I really can't think of a reason to keep using BeOS."

Now there's a sheep if I ever saw one.

As for the people wanting Haiku to drop its kernel and use Linux/BSD and X server - you're on crack right ?!?

RE: Haiku Editorial Comments

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 26 Aug 2004 02:42:00 GMT

Eugenia gave an opinion in this piece. The article was articulate and to the point.

More than a few of us got help, answers we needed or at least got steered in the right direction from a post answered by Eugenia.

I don't know if I agree or not, but when I consider the source, I will be certainly thinking about it all over the next few days.

From scratch...? Editorial != Quality by definition

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 26 Aug 2004 02:49:00 GMT

No... not really. BeOS, Windows/DOS, and MacOS (classic) did not have a solid foundation to build on. They started basicly from scratch.

MSDOS was based on CP/M IIRC. GNU and Linux were from scratch, but with references. Stallman replaced apps hand by hand. It's not hard to imagine such a process is similar as Haiku's. Stallman started in 1984 and it took him some years whereas Linux started in 1991. By that time, GNU was basically complete (usable) except for the kernel. The Linux kernel took some time too, and its hard to say when it was "ready" (for what purpose is also a debate worth) so i tend to agree with the person who says pre-alpha code is merely a perception, an imagination, an opinion. Not some hard undoubtable fact.

But as a general statement, yours is still far off. How do you define "solid"? And, science is based on science (proven logic). _V_ addressed this already.

First, although this website is called OSNews, if you look over on the left side of the page, you can clearly see that there are separate sections for News, Interviews, Features, and EDITORIALS. The piece that she wrote on Haiku was clearly marked as an editorial. All of you people whining about "this site is called OSNews, I can't believe that she wrote such a biased piece!" should really sod off. Or learn to read. Editorial is good, because it invites debate. People who have differing opinions about a subject can have a nice exchange over the merits of their arguments. Editorial brings things into focus so you can evaluate the pros and cons of an issue, whether you happen to agree with the views expressed in the editorial or not.

Ok, so a good column or editorial is actually a controversial opinion to which the line between that and a troll is thin for some. The obvious side benefit is ofcourse more hits hence more revenue from ads.

Sorry, but your point of view is IMO completely bull, because it argues we ought to justify any editorial for the sake of being one. Just like we have to accept an opinion being promoted for the sake of it being an opinion. Well, think about it, and where one opinion is made another one ain't read cause it takes up space and takes time to read.

I've read a damn good number of columns and editorials, and this one ain't among them. Instead, a good editorial would provide references which support the points the author tries to make. It should try not to be. Finally, some mix of humor or procative reasoning doesn't hurt. This piece was saltless, had only 1 reference, and was filled by unproven ranting. Sorry, no go, at least not for me.

Revision.

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 26 Aug 2004 02:54:00 GMT

"It should try not to be."

Scrap that.

"procative"

Provoking.

to Kevin

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 26 Aug 2004 02:59:00 GMT

BeOS actually does.. well.. ONE distro.

I use www.grc.com to help in my quests for port-stealthing, and have even launched attacks over my NETWORK to try and crash server apps, the system, or whatever. The fruits of my labor may be available as early as Beta 6, or likely as an extra application.. called a firewall.. of course, anyone running a server will also very likely have a hardware firewall :-) Just makes sense :-)

Multi-user is already implemented, and I have been discovering more and more of the integrated user permissions et al that BeOS already has. Including the kernel, which does respect ownership.

I may not seem the type, but I have a small amount of experience with servers and server environments. I know what needs to be added to make the cut for low-end serving purposes, but I don't really believe that a BeOS derivitive will ever trully be a great huge success in the server arena. Access to Haiku's code however could make it simple, in comparison, to make a server distro.

And SMP performance sucks, eh? Hmm... care to show proof? Last I checked on my Dual-CPU server which dual boots three OSes (Linux-Mandrake, Windows 2003 Enterprise, and PhosphurOS Server Exp/2). Of those three, I really cannot actually find a way to make a good comparison that I can trust.

In terms of smoothness, there is no competition.. PhosphurOS is certainly the smoothest in terms of performance. In stability..well, only Windows has crashed on me (and it was Windows, not an application.. format reinstall fixed in only a couple hours of downtime).

I guess I will have to write a cross-platform SMP benchmarking suite to try and determine exact performance of say... 500 threads doing a loop of very different tasks.

100 threads accessing files,creating, writing, reading, then removing them.
100 Adding 64-bit integers together and then doing an error check.
100 writing blocks of data into memory (8 to 20MB blocks) and removing them.
100 threads doing floating point math
100 threads monitoring the status of the other threads

Set all threads to the same priority, except the threads the watcher threads. Set priority to the lowest priority each system offers. Eleminate other running processes. And then run the program using time $(my_crazy_benchmark_smp) to get the exact time spent for the tasks.

And of cf course the monitoring threads will log and calculate average performance for each of the four sets of threads, and display this after all processes are complete giving times and average.

I would write the application seperate for each OS, using eachs own preferred methods for all my tasks. So pthreads for Linux, Be threads for PhOS, and whatever it is for Windows, and so on.

Run the app on the EXACT computer, only restarting to the other OS between runs. Well, actually... Linux won't start after Windows unloads, so I have to cold-boot each time.

Run the program in concession three times, and then compile the results and see which can handle the tasks at hand the best. This could be fun :-)

And, the version of Linux I am not going to take into account, so don't even go there. The PhOS version was made while I was at my early days at yellowTAB. I finished before Zeta had a name and it had been agreed to make a distro based on Dano. I have not modified it in anyway, and really couldn't do much for performance anyway. SO three out of the BOX OSes, let us see how they work. (The Linux kernel is 2.4 something AFAIK).

Someone want to make some code up for the ptreads and the Windows parts of this app? I can detail exactly what number should be added, how many times, and what should be fed into memory how often. (the memory threads will run one after another, one creating the memory, the next seeing it is there, then the last freeing that memory).

I can code this in a few hours here for PhOS, but that is just me :-)

--The loon

Oh and Kevin... try PhOS :-)

Re: Kevin

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 26 Aug 2004 03:11:00 GMT

Is there something somewhere that sais it has to be multi-user to be a great server? OS/2 is still an excellent server, has excellent SMP capability, is fast, and has no multi-user in it's core. It can be added at the filesystem level, but it's not neccessary for security.

No, your right. You don't have to have multi user to be a good server. However, in most cases it doesn't help security wise, which is an area BeOS is not very strong in.

Also, OS/2 has qualitys (SMP and speed) that make it a good server. BeOS just doesn't have thoese qualities. As I understaqnd it, BeOS;s SMP is better than Win98 but no where near linux or win2k/XP/03server. Also, BeOS actually isn't that fast, it's GUI is just really responsive.

Basicly, BeOS is not a good choice to turn into a server OS. I'm not saying it's not possible, but it's not very logical. If someone is going to spend time working on BeOS, why not contribute to Haiku instead?

kevin..

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 26 Aug 2004 04:20:00 GMT

why do you think beos isnt fast? I'm not flaming, I just want ot know why you think that.

helf....

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 26 Aug 2004 04:26:00 GMT

He probably means fast as in database access times, and such. In which case, he use to be right :-) That was before we got database access working.. you know.. SQL.... Of course, we only have SQLLite, so in that type of environment, we really can't contend yet.

--The loon

BeOS-equivalent linux distribution?

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 26 Aug 2004 04:30:00 GMT

What I don't really understand, is why someone doesn't develop a linux distribution that supports the same goals as BeOS.

The 2.6 kernel can be configured as a highly desktop-specific piece of software; the scheduler can be tinkered to suit, a single on-disk file system type could be supported, ensuring very low latency results. The remainder of the system should be POSIX-compliant to allow the use of any appropriate libraries, MTAs, services etc, that might be required.

Then, a single GUI toolkit could be selected as the only valid GUI system for the new distro - for argument's sake, say Gtk+. A theme engine could be tuned to ensure that this GUI was as close to the original BeOS GUI as necessary, and all configurability compiled out. Using Gtk+, you could then determine whether to use a X11.org rendering subsystem, or direct to frame-buffer.

Choose a single blessed set of applications, and maintain a patch set for those which integrates them perfectly into the streamlined GUI system that you're supporting. Each app should be modified to have complete support for extended attributes, and these should be as essential to system operation as they were with BeOS.

Now, I must admit to never have used BeOS much - but what I've suggested seems to maintain the aspects of the system which made it desirable in the first place.

RE: Still going...

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 26 Aug 2004 04:45:00 GMT

> Coding binary compatibility into the OS is time consuming, and as many others have
> posted on this topic, recreates many of Be's mistakes. IMNSHO the Haiku team would
> be spending their time in a more productive manner if they nixed R5 compatibility,
> and worked on re-implementing the Be APIs and design philosophy into a more feature
> complete OS
And as many others who has posted on this topic you have no idea what Haiku's goal are. Release 1 isnt the end, it's the beginning. R1 is the stepping stone towards future improvements. This concept is usually referred to as "building on a solid foundation". Binary compatibilty will most likely get dropped on later releases but has been deemed necessary for r1 in order for it to be more usable.

> The bulk of her comments on YT seem to be that Zeta is pretty much a
> dead-end...but at least they have something.
Somehow investing in a "dead end" with questionable legality doesnt seem like a good idea to me.

> You can actually install Zeta and it actually has some improvements over R5.
I can install a good portion of Haiku on r5 and get improvements. Sort of like how Zeta uses portions of Haiku on Dano...

> Haiku isn't even pre-alpha.
I guess you know that from your deep involvement in said project, right?

BeOS is dead, Long live Haiku

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 26 Aug 2004 05:29:00 GMT

Still holding out even if others are loosing faith. I know I have not come across a better User orientated OS. I have serious doubts Microsoft/Apple/Linux will in the next few years be able to deliver something that is elegant, powerful and easy to use.

As always it's a let see and evaluate technology when it is released approach that's best in the computing world. That goes for Windows as much as it does any otehr piece of code. Anyone buying into hype and marketing needs thier head read as we all know from experience that most products hyped usually fail to hold up in the real world.

Sikosis

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 26 Aug 2004 05:42:00 GMT

"Now there's a sheep if I ever saw one."

There is a huge difference between having a stong opinion on a subject, and being an extremely rude person who resorts to insulting people because you are incapable of using reason and logic when trying to argue a position. In all of my posts on this topic, I've tried to keep any criticisms I have confined only to the implementation the Haiku project, not to the people who are coding it. If anyone took any of my criticisms to heart, let me offer my most sincere apologies. I admire the dedication of the Haiku team, I just think they should make adjustments to the project goals. As far as me being sheep like, I currently run Mac OS X, Debian, FreeBSD, Windows XP, Solaris, Irix, and BeOS at home. I like to experiment with many different OSes and am not that interested what everyone else is using. My point was simply to illustrate that a lot of the people who were deeply involved with BeOS,people who made a living either writing about, or actually coding the OS, no longer find value in it as everyday OS. Their love for the BeOS doesn't blind them to the fact that there are massive deficiencies in the BeOS that need to be addressed. Whenever I read an interview with an ex Be engineer on BeOS Journal (sorry, Haiku Journal), ZetaNews, OSNews, whatever, they always seem to be amused that people are still using BeOS as their main OS. BeOS was very cool, and there were some excellent features that it had that would be nice to see incorporated into a viable OS, but the strengths of the BeOS no longer outweigh its weaknesses.

RE: Sikosis (by Jack Greene)

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 26 Aug 2004 06:02:00 GMT

> My point was simply to illustrate that a lot of the people who were deeply involved
> with BeOS,people who made a living either writing about, or actually
> coding the OS, no longer find value in it as everyday OS.

But this is a rather weak point, wouldnt you agree? I'm sure we can find people who have been deeply involved in Windows who doesnt find any value it in any more. Or people who previously used Linux but have changed to Windows because Linux have no value in their everyday use. Or from FreeBSD to Linux, or vice versa or..etc etc, you get the point.
An OS isnt a mean unto itself, it's a means to accomplish tasks. The merit of an OS should be valued on it's ability to perform a task and not on wether random person Y uses it or likes or or have some other opinion on it.
Is BeOS today suitable for every possible desktop task? Most certianly not. Will it ever be? Hopefully not. If you try to please everyone all the time all you'll end up with is a bland product that noone really likes. I guess that's fine if all you're interested in is making loads of money but it's not suitable if you actually care about the quality and reputation of your product.

> Their love for the BeOS doesn't blind them to the fact that there are
> massive deficiencies in the BeOS that need to be addressed.
Naturally there are deficiences, that's what Haiku is fixing on a small scale now and will do on a larger scale *later*.
Linux, for example, didnt become what it is today overnight. If we look back I am certain we can find almost the exact same arguments against Linux. Things take time, not everything can or should be done overnight.

Re: Switch to GPL?

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 26 Aug 2004 09:01:00 GMT

Tqh wrote:
> I do not have a problem with GPL itself. Just how some suggests it should be used.

It' s because as far as I see, that "train", generally speaking , runs faster that BSD|MIT.
I have nothing against BSD|MIT, only that psicology, is also important when you have to do something big.
Maybe , for someone, GPL could be seen as a fashion, but it just works.
Now, there is the problem of viral GPL, but with a wise use of LPGL, it can be resolved.
For example, if I want to develop a commercial application in Haiku (guessing it is completed and all MIT), I can without problems.
If I want to develop a closed application for Linux with Ncurses libraries , I can't because, afaik, they are GPLed.
If they were LPGL, I could do that!
So, MIT vs GPL-LPGL (wise), I think the second is better
for fashion and so fly on that wave ;-)
In addition, there wouldn' t be problems for third party commercial application (or driver) developers, and that thanks to LPGL.

All IMHO.

All this GPL nonsense

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 26 Aug 2004 09:24:00 GMT

Ever noticed how all those "big" projects, ie Apache, XFree, Perl, Python, Sendmail etc, isnt under the GPL or LGPL?
The Haiku license is decided, it's BSD/MIT, it wont change. There's no point in arguing for or against this choice. If this is such a big issue then tough luck, I guess the Haiku project isn't for you.

@Looncraz

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 26 Aug 2004 09:26:00 GMT

BeOS has PostrgreSQL as well as SQLite, and Postrgre is at or above MySQL (apparently, don't start another flame war people). So that could be used to test.

Re: All this GPL nonsense

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 26 Aug 2004 10:00:00 GMT

Well, mine was only a thought about how useful could have been LPGL;
sure it wasn' t meant to be the ultimate Truth...
as you wrote:

> The Haiku license is decided, it's BSD/MIT, it wont change

Les jeux sont faits
so I do my best wishes to Haiku team to achieve something important :-)

@ Kian Duffy,Looncraz�

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 26 Aug 2004 10:11:00 GMT

Who ported PostgreSQL to BeOS ?

Eugenia Loli Queru of course

http://www.bebits.com/app/1723

Thankyou Eugenia

@ Tenzin

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 26 Aug 2004 10:17:00 GMT

error...

Who ported PostgreSQL to BeOS ?

"This port was not made by me.
Cyril Velter has ported it in 1999"

RE: Lars Hansson

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 26 Aug 2004 10:45:00 GMT

"Ever noticed how all those "big" projects, ie Apache, XFree, Perl, Python, Sendmail etc, isnt under the GPL or LGPL?"

A handful of projects. Ever noticed that there are far more GPLed apps? Ever noticed the license ratio browsing Freshmeat or SourceForge?

"The Haiku license is decided, it's BSD/MIT, it wont change. There's no point in arguing for or against this choice."

Yeah, no point in arguing. No point in intelligently considering the pros-and-cons to a license; let's all just do like you, put our fingers in our ears, and pretend everything is fine.

Go look at the state of Haiku development, and tell me there's not a problem. They're severely short of developers, and they've not chosen a popular license -- indeed, they've chosen one in which contributor's code can be taken by companies pushing closed products.

A license change could bring about many new developers. But no, you think it's not worth talking about, and would rather let Haiku stagnate. Wow...

Changing to GPL

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 26 Aug 2004 11:02:00 GMT

Changing to the GPL would lose some of the current developers. Although my contribution has been measly, I would completely stop contributing to the project if it was GPL. I don't know about the other developers, but I'm sure some of them have the same feelings about it.

RE: Michael Saunders regarding me

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 26 Aug 2004 11:28:00 GMT

> A handful of projects. Ever noticed that there are far more GPLed apps?
> Ever noticed the license ratio browsing Freshmeat or SourceForge?
Quantity doesnt equal quality but I'll be sure to inform FreeBSD, OpenBSD and every other non-GPL project that their efforts are in vain. They should no longer care about doing what they want or what they feel is right because, hey, there are more GPL project on Freshmeat and if they switch to the GPL more people will like them.

> No point in intelligently considering the pros-and-cons to a license; let's
> all just do like you, put our fingers in our ears, and pretend everything
> is fine.
Do you seriously think this hasnt already been considered over and over again a long time ago? This wasnt decided on a whim over a lunchbreak or on the subway on the way home from work. It's a concious decision so that the code will be completely free and can be used by as many peple and companies as possible.

> Go look at the state of Haiku development, and tell me there's not a problem.
Thank you, I am well aware of the state of the Haiku project and what problems there are.
However, I, and obviously the Haiku Team, dont think those problems can be best fixed by changing license. GPL isnt a magic bullet. When the going gets tough the tough keeps on going...and the rest changes license in desperate attempts at gaining attention.

> indeed, they've chosen one in which contributor's code can be taken by
> companies pushing closed products.
I've never understood this obsession with "companies pushing closed products". You do realize that this is possible also with the LGPL, right?
I, for one, dont care if company X is modifying my code and make a closed product of it as long as they dont claim copyright and original authorship of the code. The BSD/MIT license "guarantees" just this, that copyright is maintained and credit given.
Different folks, different strokes. Not everyone subscribes to the views of the GNU foundation.
Obviously these are views shared by the core Haiku team otherwise it would probably have been using GPL or LPGL.

RE: Lars Hansson

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 26 Aug 2004 12:08:00 GMT

"I'll be sure to inform FreeBSD, OpenBSD and every other non-GPL project that their efforts are in vain. They should no longer care about doing what they want or what they feel is right because, hey, there are more GPL project on Freshmeat and if they switch to the GPL more people will like them."

Meaningless argument. Those projects already have developers; they're not in desperate need of any more, so the license is working fine for them. And "like them"? It's about attracting developers, not making buddies.

"I, for one, dont care if company X is modifying my code and make a closed product of it as long as they dont claim copyright and original authorship of the code."

That's fine; I never said one license was better than the other. But that's just your feeling on this matter -- and you can't speak for the thousands of open source coders out there. The simple fact is, many more open source programmers prefer the GPL than BSD-style licensing. By choosing a less popular license, the Haiku project has limited its possibility to attract new developers. That's just a fact!

(The other big issue is forking. Should Haiku really take off, having a codebase that can be incorporated into closed products will not be productive -- it'll just lead to incompatibilities and fragmentation akin to UNIX in the early 90s.)

RE: Micheal Saunders

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 26 Aug 2004 12:12:00 GMT

(The other big issue is forking. Should Haiku really take off, having a codebase that can be incorporated into closed products will not be productive -- it'll just lead to incompatibilities and fragmentation akin to UNIX in the early 90s.)

And how does one explain the incompatibilities between various Linux ditributions?

So it seems, MIT or GPL, both create the possibility of forking/spin offs/incompatibilities.

RE: Michael Saunders

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 26 Aug 2004 12:40:00 GMT

> Meaningless argument. Those projects already have developers; they're not in
> desperate need of any more, so the license is working fine for them.

Keyword being "any more". Instead of chickening out and get new developers at the expense of their convictions they stuck to their guns and made it thru the rough times. What's to say Haiku wont?

> The simple fact is, many more open source programmers prefer the GPL than
> BSD-style licensing. By choosing a less popular license, the Haiku project
> has limited its possibility to attract new developers. That's just a fact!

Getting GPL-preferring developers is lower on the importance list than keeping Haiku free and BSD/MIT licensed.
I would have hoped that prefering the GPL license didnt make one so narrowminded that one cant contribute to OSS projects using other OSS licenses.

> (The other big issue is forking. Should Haiku really take off, having a
> codebase that can be incorporated into closed products will not be
> productive -- it'll just lead to incompatibilities and fragmentation akin
> to UNIX in the early 90s.)

GPL'ing the Linux kernel sure havent prevented it from being diversed into all too many distributions incompatible with eachother in more or less creative ways.

RE: Lars Hansson

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 26 Aug 2004 12:57:00 GMT

"they stuck to their guns and made it thru the rough times. What's to say Haiku wont?"

That's true, and I wish them all the best! But, equally, we could say those projects could've progressed faster had they been under a different license...

"Getting GPL-preferring developers is lower on the importance list than keeping Haiku free and BSD/MIT licensed."

OK, but how high on the list is attracting new developers? That's my main point -- right now Haiku doesn't so much need money, or apps, or marketing; it really needs a lot more developers. So doing something to achieve that should be a high priority, and I'm just suggesting a license change could do a lot of good.

"I would have hoped that prefering the GPL license didnt make one so narrowminded that one cant contribute to OSS projects using other OSS licenses."

Yeah, I'm not saying Haiku should have total GPL zealots on board -- not at all. And yep, many hackers do contribute to projects under different licenses. But at the end of the day, the majority of coders prefer contributing to GPLed projects; they want their work always kept open, with community success as the remuneration. To many the terms of the BSD license are less of an incentive.

There are loads of talented coders out there who support the GPL, programmers who could give a lot to Haiku, but are likely to avoid it with the current licensing.

"GPL'ing the Linux kernel sure havent prevented it from being diversed into all too many distributions incompatible with eachother in more or less creative ways."

Well, you name me three open source apps that only run under one Linux distro (proper apps and utilities, not installers etc.). I'm struggling to think of just one! There's no incompatibility issue mainly because of the GPL -- it means that one distro vendor's enhancements can be added into others.

I'm not saying BSD-licensed projects are massively prone to forks, but the successful BSD projects have been server-side and geek-targeted. If Haiku takes off, being an end-user desktop OS it'll have more commercial interest (and therefore incentive for companies to add their own closed and incompatible features).

Yeah, that's a long way off and I'm just speculating. And I respect your opinion -- I just believe licensing should be considered particularly given the projects current status, thinking about how it can help, and make any moves early on before it's too difficult.

wow...

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 26 Aug 2004 12:59:00 GMT

looks like quite a few people here are in dire need of rectal cranial inversion surgery...

GPL

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 26 Aug 2004 13:02:00 GMT

If for some reason they go insane and move to the GPL, I will be requesting any code in the tree I wrote (OK, its the modifications to the Terminal application at the moment, as my sounddrivers aren't good enough to go in yet) be removed.

GPL will attrat oh, lots of GNU zealots. Maybe. But then again, they're all stuck to Linux anyway.

RE:Michael Saunders

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 26 Aug 2004 13:14:00 GMT

"There are loads of talented coders out there who support the GPL, programmers who could give a lot to Haiku, but are likely to avoid it with the current licensing."

Hm, do you really think that we just need to switch to the GPL and we'll have a load of developers who jump on board ?
Seriously, grow up. It's not that we get loads of e-mails like "yeah, I'd really like to contribute but I'm a GPL zealot and will never do it".

Kian:
"If for some reason they go insane and move to the GPL, I will be requesting any code in the tree I wrote (OK, its the modifications to the Terminal application at the moment, as my sounddrivers aren't good enough to go in yet) be removed."

I'm not sure you could do that. You have accepted your code to be licensed under the BSD/MIT license, and you can't do anything, anymore about it.
The code you've "donated" will always be under that license. You can choose not to contribute anymore, though.

RE: Kian Duffy

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 26 Aug 2004 13:17:00 GMT

"If for some reason they go insane and move to the GPL, I will be requesting any code in the tree I wrote (OK, its the modifications to the Terminal application at the moment, as my sounddrivers aren't good enough to go in yet) be removed."

Well, that's the gamble. Haiku could lose a couple of Terminal patches, but gain some talented kernel and appserver developers who prefer the GPL...

"GPL will attrat oh, lots of GNU zealots."

What an utterly ridiculous thing to say. Linus licensed his kernel under the GPL -- is he a "GNU zealot"? The thousands and thousands of coders who've released code under the GPL -- are they all "GNU zealots" too? Do you have any idea about how the community works at all?

Most OSS coders like the GPL because they don't want their work incorporated in closed products. Simple as that. 99% of them aren't members of, associated with, or interested in the GNU project.

You know, moving to the GPL might attract a bunch of talented, dedicated coders who want to see their work always open, and could really give Haiku some steam. How is that a bad thing?

Or would you rather things stayed as they are, with very few developers, slow progress and some guy doing two-line patches mouthing-off on subjects he doesn't understand, tarring the vast majority of the open source community with the same brush?

I really hope you don't represent the Haiku community, because your attitude and lack of understanding isn't doing it any good.

GPL

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 26 Aug 2004 13:22:00 GMT

If gpl is so great why don't Sun,Apple,and Microsoft use it for their OS ?

@ Michael Saunders

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 26 Aug 2004 13:22:00 GMT

oh get the hell over it all ready. they aren't switching to GPL so stop going on ang on about it.

GPL

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 26 Aug 2004 13:38:00 GMT

Please, if GPL is the solution to all worries, and that many developers are attracted by it, why isn't there a fork under GPL license already?
If you want a GPL licensed Haiku, you will need to do it yourself. Haiku will stay MIT/GPL.

Fine, OK, whatever :-)

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 26 Aug 2004 13:39:00 GMT

Wow. An interested Haiku follower notes that the majority of open source developers prefer the GPL, and suggests that a license switch might bring on board new developers and coding talent.

Then a load of you angrily respond with bitter flames, labelling me as some kind of "GNU zealot" and ignoring the issue at hand -- that of getting more developers.

(Respect to Lars Hansson for actually thinking about the idea and debating it, rather than ignoring what could potentially be a boost to the project.)

I'll say no more. It's your choice. But looking at the responses, it's no surprise that Haiku is pretty much stagnant and barely making glacial progress...

erm.. sorry saunders

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 26 Aug 2004 13:50:00 GMT

my post was totally out of line.

RE: GPL

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 26 Aug 2004 13:54:00 GMT

If for some reason they go insane and move to the GPL, I will be requesting any code in the tree I wrote [...] be removed

So much for the spirit of the MIT/BSD licence...

If you want your code to be free for everyone *except* people happening to like the GPL, you should consider writing your own licensing terms. The BSD licence is designed to allow anyone to do anything with the code as long as credits are given where due. Not to play petty games with the guys you don't like.

@Anonymous

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 26 Aug 2004 14:03:00 GMT

I contributed the code under the assumption that it would be free, and totally free whilst being used by the Haiku project. Moving to GPL stops it being free. I don't care what third parties do, I just want the code to be under a proper, free licence whilst in the Haiku projects hands. If they want to change it, well, they can either stop using it, or lose a user.

And..

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 26 Aug 2004 14:06:00 GMT

Just to note, I have contributed code to GPL'ed projects. I've had patches accepted to Open Transport Tycoon (GPL), and I've offered patches to Nano and UnrealIRCD - both not accepted/ignored/whatever - both GPL. I just want and hope Haiku to stay under a real free licence - BSD or MIT.

my 20 cents

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 26 Aug 2004 14:09:00 GMT

Actually, i prefer GPL too.
I conisdered several times if i should dig Haiku sources, read some additional books with coding wisdom inside and switch to dedicated Haiku work instead hacking some BeOS apps here and there. And one of my doubts preventing from that step was just BSD license.
Maybe it was caused by YT influence, though.

RE:Fine, OK, whatever :-)

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 26 Aug 2004 14:10:00 GMT

The appropiate place to make any suggestions to Haiku and its developers is the forum on the Haiku website http://www.haiku-os.org/forums/ or the OpenBeOS discussion channels on irc.freenode.org #openbeos now #haiku or by email.

The appropiate time to have done that re licensing and legal status would have been a long time ago before any legal negotiations and licensing agreements began.Preferably before any developers agree to join the project and commit to working in it.

Telling the people who are working for some years under a different license to change it is not constructive,and this is certainly not the place to do it.You are lucky any Haiku developer or BeOS user has spent the time it takes to read such posts,let alone answer them at all.

@SD

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 26 Aug 2004 14:13:00 GMT

Considering its unlikely YT will last the winter, that shouldn't worry you as much. They've got no chance of making real money, their investment is going to be burning fast considering they have full time coders.... They're going to die.

re: @SD

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 26 Aug 2004 14:21:00 GMT

>They're going to die.

There is a BeOS based company, paying full-time money, as you put it - to their employees, allowing people to live by coding for BeOS again, and you sound like you wish them to fail.

Shame on you.

@fye

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 26 Aug 2004 14:27:00 GMT

Their CTO publicly slandered me as "unsuitable to be a member of the community". They sell a shoddy product. Of course I "want" them to fail.

I'd prefer not to see some of the developers they have out of a job - theres some very good people there - Rene, Voidref, Francois, etc. But the company as a whole has serious problems - bad management, a bad CTO, bad PR. This will just damage Haiku in the future as people may associate them with YellowTAB and the problems of Zeta.

Re:fye

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 26 Aug 2004 14:27:00 GMT

did i say that?
I rather meant that this company uses my hard work getting all my free time WITHOUT ANY "thank you" but rather presenting results of that work as its own achievement.
See story with Decaf and Firefox credits, at zetanews archives or at bezilla blog. And this is quite common practice fro them, it seems.
I have nothing against their bussiness, lets do what they wanna. I just don't wish that such companies use my potential work without any obligations in giving something back.

I'm looking forward to two OS'es...

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 26 Aug 2004 14:29:00 GMT

One is Haiku, the other is ReactOS.

I'd like a version of BeOS that runs on modern hardware, has modern drivers, and has a slightly updated UI.

And I'd like a Windows Compatible OS I can run on my older hardware so I can give it away to friends without Pirating a Commercial OS, and have an OS where the programmers believe in making it small and bug-free rather than bloated and buggy.

Haiku IS taking a long time. I'm hoping I'm right in reading between the lines in thinking that a bootable version of Haiku (a major milestone) will be possible in under a year.

ReactOS is currently bootable, but not feature complete and it's fun to watch it grow.

I think a LOT of the PR problems with Haiku could be solved by more communication. A weekly or monthly newsletter that says what's happening.

WINE is taking forever, but the communications on the WINE HQ website let's people know that it's coming along, and new things are being added every month.

I think this the ONLY think Haiku and other projects do wrong. They put communicating with the user base (or potential user base) very low on the totem pole.

And this is a place for a Non-Programmer, but Web-Savvy conributor to help...

Projects need not only Programmers, the need web developers, documentation writers, help screen writers, Artists, etc...

@SD

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 26 Aug 2004 14:32:00 GMT

Uhm, I didn't mean you.

re:MYOB

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 26 Aug 2004 14:36:00 GMT

"Considering its unlikely YT will last the winter"
See, Kian, this is nothing special about YT in this sense, bussines is harsh by definition, and more ore less every company dealing with money and targeted to profit will behave
in less or more in similar way, until it is reach enough with cash and experience to take care about public relations and future. YT was rather example close and familiar to our small community.

BeOS died like ZX Spectrum...

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 26 Aug 2004 14:49:00 GMT

Whe Sinclair reaches the top of home computing with ZX Spectrum machines, some bad business decisions make the empire fall. Remember that Sinclair invented the windows display system with the Sinclair QL computer in 1983

I was a Sinclair User, and I was a BeOS user, but my little Speccy gets me more fun hours than the Internet and my BeOS runs everyday to remember me that somtimes it was fun...

... but Be realistic, I need AutoCAD to make my work of everyday, need some other apps that BeOS can't offer by now. I can't connect my Palm !.
Well, I have a frien that is working by now with the Spectrum Stylesheet to control its home finances and saves it to the tape, yes, a cassette...
Well, I think this is going so far...

Bye.

^..^
sabreman

@sabreman

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 26 Aug 2004 14:54:00 GMT

An OS is only Dead when the last user cannot use it for their everyday use. As you've just said, you know someone who's use a Sinclair for everyday use at home. Then that platform is not "dead".

However, anyone who calls BeOS, RiscOS or AmigaOS "Dead" should look at the large number of people still using them as their everyday OS, both for work and home. Although much of the RiscOS users are under emulation (VirtualAcorn) these days.

Re: @fye

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 26 Aug 2004 15:03:00 GMT

Kevin, did the _CTO_ really tell you that? You're not confusing the CTO with the CVO - Bernd?

Definitions of dead...

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 26 Aug 2004 15:06:00 GMT

> ... but Be realistic, I need AutoCAD to make my work of everyday, need some
> other apps that BeOS can't offer by now. I can't connect my Palm !
I need to use openssh everyday, there's no (good) openssh for Windows, ergo Windows is a dead OS. I only use it for amusement now and then when playing old games.

CTO/CVO

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 26 Aug 2004 15:10:00 GMT

Sorry, the *CVO* slandered me. Not the CTO. Thanks to tic for reminding me what weird title Bernd was using today.

Chief Visionary Officer... hrmm....

Re: CTO/CVO

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 26 Aug 2004 15:15:00 GMT

Actually, I just read an article about them different titles; expect more of that coming... The CTO is actually very friendly. And well, I think the CVO is, too, although I haven't talked to him as much.

One thing about Zeta..

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 26 Aug 2004 15:15:00 GMT

It's overpriced.

I think it ought to be priced at no more than $39.95US.

It's just not worth over $100.00

YT might be surprised at a simple business practice, Pricing your product to sell....

At $39.95 (even $29.95 for a downloadable edition), people who would otherwise not touch it for over $100.00US, might try it.

I certainly would.

If YT is hurting for cash... Lowering the price to increase sales would be smart.

Especially since Zeta is Beta product... And its competitors in the same space are free (BeOS PE, and PhOS).

I don't mind paying for an OS. But I DO mind OVER paying for it.

@ sabreman

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 26 Aug 2004 15:16:00 GMT

Whe Sinclair reaches the top of home computing with ZX Spectrum machines, some bad business decisions make the
empire fall. Remember that Sinclair invented the windows display system with the Sinclair QL computer in 198

wait, what? windows display system? i thought windowing had been around for quite a awhile before the ql.

Re: Michael Saunders

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 26 Aug 2004 15:17:00 GMT

Dear Michael and others,

It might way past time to remind you (and others that would rather prefer GPL licensing to MIT in Haiku) that *absolutely no standard or reference implementation was, is or is to be coded under the GPL license*. It's illogical. A standard is there to be used as a guide for others to implement, improve upon, create a product, package it, sell, whatever. GPLing a standard defeats the very purpose of calling it a standard.

Haiku is BeUnited's standard reference implementation for a Open Standards BeOS Compatible Operating System. Not by design, but things happened to be this way. Were Haiku GPLd, it just couldn't be considered a standard.

Now, for those wanting a GPLd Haiku-ish OS, praising how many more developers it would attract, we could view this in two different ways, and this addresses another big complaint I've read in this board: binary compatibility. There are no GPLd projects aiming the recreation of BeOS in a binary-compatible way. Period.

So, let's break binary compat and "keep the BeOS spirit". How about AtheOS? It geneted a flurry of optimistic views in the past, it was touted as the Next Big Thing, but now the excitement went down to zero. And anyway the project was pretty much dead the last time I checked it. Most newcoming, GPL-attracted devs moved on to Syllable, and I can concede this: it did attract some devs. However, considering AtheOS had been in development for several years by then, and considering that Syllable has been developed by GPL-adhering, innovation-hungry people since the fork, *it's absolutely unimpressive so far*. That's the general consensus from what I've seen in the comments on the LiveCD4. So what if it boots, has a GUI etc? AtheOS did that. I somethimes fail to see the point of this project as it fails to bring the atmosphere, the "oohs", the nostalgia of the sweet memories and the hope for a new, true BeOS? I'd rather run Workbench on UAE.

However, I just responded this question: "I'd rather run Workbench on UAE". So it's a matter of passion. They do it because they enjoy doing it and they don't give a rat's feck to what I think. And I'm happy they're enjoying it; they're at least doing something *useful and fun* instead of sitting in the peanut gallery and whinning about licenses or binary compatibility.

So, now this leaves us with BlueEyedOS. It's got X11 as the GUI engine, and Linux as the kernel.

Last posting on their site: May 2nd, 2004. Saying that OT did compile and link. Wait a minute, so it was linked against *stub*, empty functions? Even I could do that! Where's the progress in there? From the best of my knowledge, they actually did some original work, then used some Haiku code and now they're trying to tie everything together. And the previous message states that they're having trouble to open a SF/Savannah account to upload the project and have it open for the general public. For Heaven's sake, how many projects have been opened on these sites since last February? How about the message before that one? It dates from last December. One news posting every 3/4 months.

I'm glad that *even* when they're dealing with the site transition and the non-profit paperwork, the Haiku team is seldom silent for that long.

Now, Cosmoe. It ditched X11 but it's got Linux. Guess what? They leverage on the work of Haiku, Cosmoe and Syllable.

Unless we're running in circles here, there's absolutely no progress bein made.

Wait, we are running in circles. I explicitely conducted this message to get to this point: Haiku is where the real progress is being made, even if it's behind the curtain. The man behind OpenTracker, Axel Dörfler, is the leading Haiku developer. Actually, if you read the OT changelogs, you'd be surprised by how many of them are also part of Haiku. The people behind Mail Daemon Replacement are also in the team. François Revol (mmu_man) did some substantial contributions. Marcus Overhagen, who developed the ICH AC'97 and two Gigabit Ethernet drivers, is there as well. Caz, who ported an obscene amount of emulators and SDL games to BeOS, is there as well. Looncraz was but a script kiddie 2 years ago (Hi Loon! ), and now he's quickly maturing as a developer. And he's coding with Haiku in mind.

Bottom line is:
a) The other opensource projects aiming to recreate the BeOS experience are either experimenting much-less-than-blazing development speed, irregardless of adopting the GPL, X11 or the Linux kernel, and despite the fact that most of them already come from a WORKING, SOLID, GUI-BOOTING base (AtheOS);
b) The most prominent BeOS developers bar the former Be engineers are already at the heart of Haiku.

Conclusion: Please, do yourselves a favour and step out of the peanut gallery. The whinning is happening because you're not seeing progress being touted left and right, because the developers aer *busy coding*. However, discussion does happen, all the time, and the devs do get involved. So I suggest you people to join the mailing lists, watch the progress happening in realtime as I do, and, if possible, contribute something (even volunteering to update the site!) instead of whinning out of misinformation.

**END OF RANT**

@tic

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 26 Aug 2004 15:19:00 GMT

The CVO is the infamous Bernd. He can be nice, but he has a very short temper and often serious issues are caused by him misinterpreting something you say in English. He has a great habit of putting his foot in his mouth at times. And doing things like slandering BeOS users for being involved with BeBits or the BeOS Journal.

Linux Developers at Year 2

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 26 Aug 2004 15:20:00 GMT

is openbeos at year two or three? you might reserve judgement regarding the lack of developers that haiku has until you compare it to the total number of developers that linux had in year two or three.

I have a feeling linux was not doing so much better at year 2 or 3.

Re: And

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 26 Aug 2004 15:22:00 GMT

Kian Duffy wrote:

>I just want and hope Haiku to stay under a real free licence - BSD or MIT.

Well, MIT is a very free license,yes, but here we were discussing about *number* of developers...that prefer one license instead of another. Yeah, if I can have Linux developed under MIT it could be even better, but actually it isn' t so (it don't exist).
Let's call it fashion, GPL or what you like, but the fact is that Linux
has grown quite well and with many supporters.

To do an example on the other side, OpenBSD uses BSD, but you can' t just copy their CD images,
their team works hard, it has some goals (i.e. security),
and with this CD-IMAGES® escamotage, they survive.

So there are case and case, where to choose license, and how to boost a project.

With GPL, it seems there are more developers...that's all.
Ah...and in my first post I wrote about many Haiku developers that hate GPL...that's why I wrote "Les jeux sont faits".

Yes, I know that if openBeOS project started as GPL, many of them they didn' t help it, it's their choice, right :-)

GPL imho is unconfortable, but with LPGL...
Ok, "les jeux sont faits" ;-)

@ryan

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 26 Aug 2004 15:24:00 GMT

Its just entered the third year. Just.

BeOS/Haiku

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 26 Aug 2004 15:31:00 GMT

Be may be dead, but we're alive. Haiku is making progress. You're all spoiled by the current mode of "release early / relase often".

Yes, it's tempting to cut corners and use Linux 2.6. In many ways it's an awesome kernel. But, it's probably close to impossible making a application platform (or "OS") based on Linux without it ending up a mere Linux distribution with the usual Linux apps. And there are aspects of Linux which we, the BeOS community, do not enjoy. Technical ones. Licensing ones.

Anyway, here's my vote of confidence in the Haiku project, and here's hoping I can find more time to contribute in the coming months.

Thank you.

RE: meianoite

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 26 Aug 2004 15:43:00 GMT

the one good comment you should read

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 26 Aug 2004 15:46:00 GMT

(by meianoite)
http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=8114&limit=no#274430

About Haiku LOC

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 26 Aug 2004 15:58:00 GMT

What happened March 2004?

http://haiku-os.org/statcvs/loc.html

RE: Definitions of dead...

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 26 Aug 2004 16:08:00 GMT

OK.

Perhaps we must say Dead, as Kian Duffy said, when last user deads...
So we have to search for another definition of dead. How about : hibernate ?
My Spectrum is hibernating until I play some tapes (that is some times a week, so isn't dead and isn't hibernated)
My BeOS is really hibernating, so I used it twice a month.
My Windows isn't hibernating because I used everyday.
My QNX is hibernating since first week of use cause my USB modem isn't working

So hibernate could be a better word than dead, but it's like Woody Allen said: it's like Anything else.

Re: Standards

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 26 Aug 2004 16:09:00 GMT

> OK, but then you can end up with multiple standards, which isn't good for anybody.
That's a bit of a leap. I cant think of any current standard (ie ANSI, IETF IEEE etc) that is under the GPL. Of course, we could be talking adhoc and informal standards but in the BeOS world there's something kind of like IETF, BeUnited. Come to think of it, BU is more like OpenGroup but anyway....
BU is the organization that sets the "standards" in this case so if a company goes incompatible, well, hey, you're officially no longer standards compliant.
Also note that it is quite possible to make an incompatible Linux distro without violating any license. Since Linux "allows" non-GPL'd kernel modules (the nivida gfx drivers come to mind) to be loaded it is possible to replace most/all modules with your own closed ones. Voila, a very incompatible Linux without violating any license.

> I understand what you're saying, but it may not work out so well in the long-run...
Worked out pretty well for the *BSD's and most other non-GPL projects.

> If Haiku was GPLed, modifications to the core couldn't be kept under wraps;
> in this way, there's less chance of serious fragmentation and
> incompatibilities emerging.
To continue the above discusson, this would still be possible since the BeOS kernel is highly modularized so anyone wanting to be incompatible could just write their own app_server or whatever module and be incompatible without breaking any license.

> Besides, a huge amount has happened in Syllable, but most of it has been
> under-the-hood (drivers etc) rather than snazzy end-user features that really
> stand out

That's pretty much like Haiku then, lots of changes under-the-hood.

Story with Firefox

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 26 Aug 2004 16:10:00 GMT

SD wrote:
>See story with Decaf and Firefox credits, at zetanews archives or at bezilla blog. And this is quite common practice fro them, it seems.

It's always nice to see your own hard work (with lots of tweaking and bugfixing) demoed on german TV as if it was YT's own. I wish they would have contacted me before. Afterwards I posted an article asking what all that was about, and the CEO called me a 'Zeta hater' for posting that (which I am not). Although I must admit I'm not a big fan of CEO's that resort to namecalling.

@tic

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 26 Aug 2004 16:12:00 GMT

The GNU coreutiles/sharutils/etc were checked it. Most of the missing CLI apps

Re: Michael Saunders

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 26 Aug 2004 16:45:00 GMT

meianoite, thanks for the detailed post and explanations. That's exactly what I was hoping to see -- proper discussion on licensing, and the pros-and-cons of adopting the GPL. (Some people got the impression I was dogmatically saying "GPL good, all else bad, Haiku should use it or it sucks" etc. Not at all; I just think it's something worth considering.)

Well, I was not addressing YOUR specific concerns about the GPL; anyway, I believe you're the only one who still cares about this discussion. I guess I'd just have to repost that message when this discussion resurfaces again.

OK, but then you can end up with multiple standards, which isn't good for anybody.

That's a risk that might happen. However, it hasn't happened with X11, and when it happened to BSD, it was "for the good", as the big innovations always flow from one project to the other. The BSDs are more like siblings with different personalities, but in the end they just happen to share mostly the same DNA. So in a way the project can ger fragmented, but in the other hand History has proven that this could be a good thing.

Which is in flagrant contrast against the Linux distro fragmentation, in which they rarely truly contribute anything to the other distros. You don't run YAST on Gentoo. You don't get Portage on Fedora. When such things happen (like linuxconf being used in some non-RedHat distro), it's a community effort which would be better spent improving something else. IMHO.

If Haiku takes off, you might have five companies all making their own variants, adding closed features and modifications -- and they won't want to release them, in order to maintain their advantage. So software developers would have to target multiple Haiku-flavours and it gets messy. I understand what you're saying, but it may not work out so well in the long-run...

You still fail to see the point that Haiku is NOT a distribution; it's more like a body of standards. It's no surprise that they are not booting a GUI: it's not the point to do this just to show some VESA graphics, a mouse pointer, a blue background, and some ugly-looking windows. A GUI will be ready when it's ready to be pronounced The Gold Standard. This is the same in regards to the other kits: some are production quality (MDR was recently donated to the CVS tree and is now considered an integral part of Haiku; then there are the Matrox/Nvidia/Neomagic/Radeon/AC97/... drivers, all of them under the Haiku umbrella as well) and usable right now, some are beta quality, some are alpha. None stuck in the "planning" phase.

As I said, those kits are not being released (as in announced, touted, made easily and readily available) to the public for the sole reason of not being production quality by the (extemely high) standards of the BeOS community. Those curious enough can download and test the kits; there are tips on how to get them on the Haiku site itself. What they won't do is endorse using those kits, apps and drivers that are not production quality, because that would backfire in an extremely painful manner. I hope you agree with that point.

You see, there's no distro ready, that's obvious. However progress is made in several parallel camps. They're not completing each task linearly, one after another, but everything is being tackled in parallel. So, as NathanW put it, I guess people will just be surprised when Haiku "sprouts from the ground". Actually, it won't come out of the blue, because great progress has been done though all these years. It will just seem that it came from nowhere to become something big becaust it won't be released in a distro form (and notice: BY SOMEONE ELSE. Haiku is not a distro company, they only provide the source and that's all. Sort of how CrescentAnchor is distributing DragonFly BSD) until it's thoroughtly feature complete.

Also, you'd better read some mailing list archives instead of relying on the progress meters on the site. I'd be *very* sad with their "progress" if I relied on it. It gives false negative impressions. Trust me.

If Haiku was GPLed, modifications to the core couldn't be kept under wraps; in this way, there's less chance of serious fragmentation and incompatibilities emerging.

I seriously believe that this won't happen. First, because BeOS as-is still runs on a variety of hardware, old and new, and some won't bother to "upgrade" if they can just run BeOS on the legacy hardware and Haiku on modern hardware. Apps are still being developed, ports are being made, and people just want to run their software on the platform they like most. Take MorphOS as an example: it runs on modern hardware (Pegasos boards) and it retains compatibility with most of the older 68k Amiga apps, and Amiga is still run on legacy 68k machines to this day. Breaking compatibility in any form will backfire at those who break it. People have expressed their concern about Longhorn breaking compatibility and how that would backfire at Microsoft; how come in the case of Haiku people just become doomsayers and say it's an inevitability? People are not stupid and the BeOS community is at least as united as the Amiga community; they don't want and won't let incompatibilities happen.

The second reason is that not everybody wants to trash their old hardware for one reason or another. I still have my NES. I still have a Performa 6360. Same goes to my Pentium 133. The latter 2 are used *daily*, perhaps more than the newer Athlon XP on NForce2 mobo. When one gets comfortable with their setups, there's really no reason to change unless absolutely necessary (like a hardware failure). Becoming incompatible is the worst idea for those kind of people (which are the majority of the users of any OS that got past the status of "curiosity", "toy").

Yes, AtheOS is dead now, and Syllable is carrying on where it left off. Bear in mind that AtheOS was already feature-complete in many respects, in that it had a full GUI, network stack, development toolchain etc. -- so there's hardly anything revolutionary for the Syllable developers to add.

My point exactly. So I hardly understand why people tout Syllable's qualities and fast pace of development when the hard work was already done, and ditch the efforts of the Haiku team when they came from ground zero (except for the kernel; that one was perhaps 15-20% ready for its intended use in Haiku)

[continues...]

Re: Michael Saunders

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 26 Aug 2004 16:46:00 GMT

Besides, a huge amount has happened in Syllable, but most of it has been under-the-hood (drivers etc) rather than snazzy end-user features that really stand out. Due in the next release (0.5.4) is a brand-new desktop and file manager, an incredible project by Arno Klenke, which gives Syllable a massive visual overhaul. So development is progressing well (not as rapid as everyone would like, but decent nonetheless), with over 500 mailing lists posts this month and all sorts of things in the pipeline:

http://msa.section.me.uk/sdn/

That's absolutely great, and I congratulate the whole Syllable team. I have nothing against them and I wish them the best of success; I'm just a little ticked off when people start comparing stuff that can't really be compared, like saying "look where Syllable stands now, and it's being only 2 years in development!", or how "AtheOS and SkyOS are mostly one-man projects, and they are MILES ahead of Haiku!", when both are false, misleading statements. They are both hobbysts OSs (and I don't mean that in a prejudiced sense) which are nowhere near production quality, and that's the whole reason why people join their teams: to take them to the next level. I mean, seriously, how many features are really complete on those OSs? It's not difficult to show some progress when you expect nothing more than the "works for me" and "fulfills my needs" statuses; hence the pace of development when only a single pair of hands is driving the project. When people start demanding more and more hands join the project, the perceived speed of development usually decreases, because more is done under the hood (as you just said). Then again, as foundation is better laid, the speed picks up again (hence the new flurry of excitement over the 2.6 series of the Linux kernel). I believe that, by now, you understand that
1) Haiku must already fulfill a whole community's need, and aim for more. Their standards are much higher than those of hobby OSs. In recent times this became valid to Syllable and SkyOS as well. I see no miracles in the development of those projects, neither in their former fast pace of development, nor in their current mature, well-thought-out-albeit-slower-than-before progress;
2) Because of that, it will be *way more impressive* than people expect, because it'll be feature complete *and* as mature as serious users would expect. It's only natural that it takes longer to achieve these goals.

And please, keep in mind that Haiku R1 is only the beginning: it will work like R5, bar some really bad bugs. It will be faster (OBFS already is, and the app_server and kernel are going to that direction too: just check the archives of the newly-created haiku-optimization list. They already got speed improvements of 20% on areas that BeOS was considered to reign supreme).

Those who follow their progress closely just can't lose their faith, because progress is definitely visible and almost touchable. Join the lists, you won't regret it.

re: the one good comment you should read

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 26 Aug 2004 16:48:00 GMT
I'm completely, thoroughly, entirely flattered.

Thanks, Jonas ^_^

re: About Haiku LOC

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 26 Aug 2004 16:50:00 GMT
I guess it was when some of the GNU CoreUtils code was updated to newer versions, and when the MDR were submitted to the CVS.

No voodoo

doh me

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 26 Aug 2004 16:51:00 GMT
uh. sorry about that comment going all bold from some point on.

(the preview button doesn't show the markup effects =P)

@menanoite

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 26 Aug 2004 16:54:00 GMT
The MDR isn't in CVS yet. It was entirely the GNU stuff. Another massive jump will happen when MDR goes in, and then eventually when OpenTracker goes in there'll be a third huge jump.

doh me (2nd)

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 26 Aug 2004 16:54:00 GMT
Sorry for some spelling mistakes, redundancies and bad grammar as well ^_^

Not a native speaker, bear with me.

re: Kian Duffy

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 26 Aug 2004 16:58:00 GMT
The MDR isn't in CVS yet. It was entirely the GNU stuff. Another massive jump will happen when MDR goes in, and then eventually when OpenTracker goes in there'll be a third huge jump.

Oops. My mistake. I guessed it had already happened as Nathan has warned the subscribers to the CVS list that it would happen soon, and that was maybe 2-3 weeks ago.

So it was GNU stuff. "Nothing to see here, boys; move along". ;D

RE: Definitions of dead...

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 26 Aug 2004 17:17:00 GMT
Be Inc.: It looked into the eye of the 'redmond' T-Rex and 'focus shi#tted".

BeOS: Left for dead but still shows eye movement and nerve twitching.

Haiku = New Open Source not Old BeOs

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 26 Aug 2004 18:40:00 GMT
haiku is not beos. Haiku is a new open source project which will emulate SOME of the features of BeOS. Its sounds as though the team is already modernizing elements of the OS and trying to correct for mistakes made in beos.

the arguments here suggest that many of you perceive haiku as beos. It is not. It is really just a new OSS project which is luck enough to be able to draw fans of beos.

that gives haiku a leg up on a lot of other open source projects. Haiku will also evolve and it may still be unique in its product offerings when it is available. After all bloat is the route for the other operating systems.

Haiku has received very very little publicity which is ultimately why it remains a relatively small group. That might change. Linux was once small as well. You might remember that there were once very few computer users and no internet users. What is today may not be tomorrow. nothing is static other than the chronic negativity of a few who continue to criticize this worthwhile effort.

So give these guys a break and quit the negativity. They are doing something cool and i applaud that. What do you do with your spare time? They code. We criticize. Which is better?

Market success may or may not appear but they do have the luxury of time since they are open source.

Notably, the audio/visual world still has no optimized OS for intel hardware and that is a market which i don't expect to see filled anytime soon.

Editorial

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 26 Aug 2004 22:19:00 GMT
Ok, folks!

Haiku STILL HAVE A BRIGHT FUTURE.

Haiku will be finished in two years.

Haiku isn't a market product to think in a timeline.

Go Haiku!!!

Michael Vinícius de Oliveira
~ BlueEyedOS.com Webmaster ~

Look at

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 26 Aug 2004 22:41:00 GMT
Look at : http://80.48.65.2/black.jpg

Re: Look at

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 26 Aug 2004 23:01:00 GMT
Wow, a freakin' black square. Am I supposed to be impressed?

I'll be a lot more impressed when I see a Haiku live CD, or even a screenshot for that matter. Until then, Haiku is just the biggest piece of vaporware since Duke Nukem Forever.

BeOS noob question of the day

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 26 Aug 2004 23:02:00 GMT
Er, while the attention of so many BeOS people seems to fixed on this thread, can anybody tell me what "Bone" is? The only thing I know about it is that it's apparently illegal.

@Ruslan

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 26 Aug 2004 23:09:00 GMT
Replacement kernel-level BSD compliant networking stack. Improves stabiliy and network speed for some; improves POSIX compliance for all. But its leaked and illegal.

300 posts, must be an OSNews record

Re: FH

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 26 Aug 2004 23:31:00 GMT
Vapourware, as you put it needs for there to be no code to show of any development progress, just verbal statements that the project is alive. My understanding is that Haiku has more than hot air supporting its progress. The fact you seem to purely ignore. There are many parts of BeOS that can be replaced by working code from the Haiku project. If that canstitures "Vapourware" then I seem to exhibit ignorance as to what "Vapourware" means.

Get a life!

p.s. The waiting is worth it and already there are parts of Haiku making its way into PhOS.

Re: A call to arms!

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 27 Aug 2004 00:07:00 GMT
Since I have never commented on BeOS/Haiku in the past (except to say "I'm getting involved!" above), here's my take on all this:

1) I am a realist (and often a pessimest), but as long as a starry-eyed dream is achievable, no matter how long it takes, I'm all for it. Who cares if it takes 20 years to finish Haiku - I blinked this morning and realized that 41 years of my life went by even faster than that. Haiku 1.0 will be here before you know it, and it will be pure object oriented joy. Even if it won't be finished until my grandchildren are old enough to use it, fine! When they do start using it, they'll be using a system that runs without restrictions and is as fast, extensible and usable as humanly possible. It took us 10 years to get to the moon against overwhelming odds and I am still amazed to see pictures of man walking around up there. Haiku is daunting, but then, so were the moon missions. We could have settled for moon orbit, but that would have been a disappointment, and we wouldn't have learned as much (or enjoyed it as much). Remember that "The Journey is the Reward" thingy...?

2) We can multiboot. We can use VMWare (or some equivalent). We can coexist until the deed is done. No one needs to give up Windows (or Linux) before Haiku is done. Use Windows, but gird up for a future coup! If Windows refuses to work with multiboot setups in the future, use an old computer to run Haiku and a new one for Windows - such drama!

3) Haiku does not have to contain all of the functionality that Windows does, but it will only succeed if it presents a better user experience while doing what it *can* do. Even if Haiku can do 85% of what Windows does, it will fail unless the Haiku developers can find a way to avoid "DLL Hell", find a way to prevent security holes before they open, and find a flawless way for end-users to find out the *REAL* reason why an application crashed or isn't working right. We have to set these goals for Haiku.

4) I think a top goal for Haiku R1 is to write a "wrapper driver" that allows Linux or Windows device drivers to be used for slower peripherals (i.e., anything but the monitor). I know it's possible because I've seen articles about similar efforts for other OS's (unless I'm mistaken). Someone who really knows Windows driver development needs to step forward and tackle this ASAP. Yes, the drivers will be slow, but having drivers that work with modern hardware is crucial. With the resulting user base (and some donated "bribe" money), we'll get the vendors on our side.

5) I also don't think Haiku R1 needs to be binary compatible. If we keep Adamation, Gobe et. al. well informed along the way (and set realistic goals), it shouldn't be too hard to convince them to stick around and step forward when the time is right. Perhaps we should assign someone the fulltime job of keeping track of these vendors so we can contact them when the time is right? In the meantime, we can recompile the source that's available to us and write all sorts of new and interesting stuff for Haiku!

6) I don't like Linux. I can't see how it is any better than Windows (sorry, "It's not Microsoft" doesn't cut it), and giving it WiFi, BlueTooth and the Tooth Fairy won't redeem it. If they eliminate all the problems today that make it unusable for Average Joe Consumer, it would be ok, but why not put that effort into something that is "clean and sober" from the start, without any past baggage? Why not Syllable/SkyOS/etc.? BeOS/Haiku is much better known, has no Linux baggage and far more people are using it TODAY than are using all the other non-Linux alternatives out there combined (discounting embedded systems, of course).

I am guilty of sitting by the wayside and doing nothing with BeOS, but I'm stepping forward now (despite the fact that I have no more free time than I did in the past), and I want to know who's with me?

-- Bob Schnatterly

@Bob

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 27 Aug 2004 00:45:00 GMT
Good points in General. Just to note there are some reasons against driver wrappers (Lars/Soulbender has stronger views on this than me though). Namely we'll *never* get vendor support for real drivers, they'll just tell us to use the Windows drivers. Which will only work on x86, as they'll be x86 drivers...

Also, Adamation are Dead, basically. Doubt theres any chance of getting their apps recompiled. Considering the other video editor that actually made it "out there", Titan, is currently being opensourced, it may not be needed anyway - we already have god knows how many mail clients, Adam being their other app.

Beatware on the other hand.... exist, and could be convinced. But again, we have those apps repeated (mail/ftp/text editor/image editor. "their" spreadsheet is opensource)

Gobe, ahem... Lets not go there.

Other than that, good post. I'm "getting involved" to a higher stage. The bitchiness here has spurred me back onto my driver development list.

@Piers

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 27 Aug 2004 01:42:00 GMT
Until the kernel boots and runs all of the servers, or at the very least the app_server, Haiku is vaporware.

The rest of the stuff is just replacement parts for BeOS. Kind of like buying aftermarket upgrades for an old Chevy - you need the original framework for them to be useful. Until Haiku can do that, replacement parts for a dead OS is all they have.

Re: Windows drivers for Haiku

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 27 Aug 2004 02:37:00 GMT
I'm not so doubtful about getting vendor support once the crescendo of voices from an ever-expanding user base begins to assault them, but for the sake of argument, let's say you're right. Let's commit 90% of all money collected to support driver developers. The rest of the developers will do it out of sheer, unmitigated devotion! I used to own an Atari 800xl and an Amiga 500 and I'm tired of seeing my favorite (computer-related) pasttimes go by the wayside. This is only software - we can make it work! If we refuse to give up no matter how "suhweet" Windows looks (i.e., become the unstoppable force against the seemingly-immovable Windows), we'll achieve our goals. Linux has Microsoft running, so it's a good time to start hitting them from the other side. I've made up my mind, so don't bother dissuading me 'cause I ain't changing it!

RE: @Piers

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 27 Aug 2004 02:40:00 GMT
Until the kernel boots and runs all of the servers, or at the very least the app_server, Haiku is vaporware.

That means any project that has not been "officially" released, but marketed, is vaporware. Longhorn comes to mind, as well as OS X 10.4. These are products that are still being developed and tested, much like Haiku.

Please pick one exception from vaporware. Is it going to be all servers, or just the app_server. I have tested very early prototypes of the app_server some time ago, so it is working, just not final quality.

When OBOS formed, they clearly stated their intention was to recreate BeOS one-module-at-a-time. They are clearly doing this, and you can actually help them by testing. Sure the kernel and app_server are still a work-in-progress, but so was the Translation kit and Game kit, and these are well into development. Heck, you can actually use them, although they are still in some form of development (testing) like Longhorn.

I have seen many vaporware products come and go, and I cannot watch someone call an actively developed product vaporware without at least speaking up. Unlike commercial ventures, this is open source, and you can personally evaluate what is being done.

Side Note : I have switched from BeOS to MacOS X some time ago, but still have the PII-300MHz beast [ ;-) ] sitting around. All it needs is a new monitor and some electricity. Thank you Eugenia for the article, it has made me want to get her back running, and start testing the Haiku components again!

Kind regards.

RE: @Piers

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 27 Aug 2004 02:44:00 GMT
UPDATE

Please pick one exception from vaporware. Is it going to be all servers, or just the app_server. I have tested very early prototypes of the app_server some time ago, so it is working, just not final quality.

This was a very early build, and I should have mentioned this in my first post. It may have even been the prototype stage. I wanted to make sure I stated this, and I apologize for missing it the first time around.

re. All this GPL nonsense

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 27 Aug 2004 02:55:00 GMT
Lars wrote:
Ever noticed how all those "big" projects, ie Apache, XFree, Perl, Python, Sendmail etc, isnt under the GPL or LGPL?
The Haiku license is decided, it's BSD/MIT, it wont change. There's no point in arguing for or against this choice. If this is such a big issue then tough luck, I guess the Haiku project isn't for you.

Ah, but here's the distinction: those projects you mention are all used by experts. Their "clients" are clued-in, and they choose what software they use wisely.

There's no "mass appeal" effect with Sendmail. You don't see Sendmail box sets flying off the shelves at Walmart.

If OBOS/Haiku ever gets to R1 (which I think will be long road, given their choice of license), it could really take off with the general public (those folks at Walmart). That's just when the greedy marketdroids are most happy that you chose MIT over GPL. With MIT, they can just grab up your code, add some AOL pop-ups, some MS-specific extensions (making it incompatible with the free version), and BLAM -- your project has now been scooped away from you.

Well, of course, you could still continue working on your free version, but the mass public (and here's that distinction from Sendmail I was talking about), the mass public won't be using your version because it doesn't have the neato MS-feature-3000 that the WizBang version has. In fact, not knowing any better, they'll be annoyed with your project, since it adds to confusion in their marketplace and it's not fully compatible with the WizBang version anyway.

*That's* why the MIT is the wrong choice of license for a project with a huge potential for mass appeal to the unwashed public, and why it's so difficult to attract those smart prolific hackers to such MIT-licensed projects.

Vapourware

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 27 Aug 2004 03:06:00 GMT
So Haikus vapourware? Oh crap, my media kit just turned to steam. As did my graphics, sound and IDE drivers. And my fat/iso/udf filesystem drivers. And my entire image translation kit. And pretty much half to two thirds of my entire system. All up in steam.....

RE: johnMG

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 27 Aug 2004 03:21:00 GMT
> With MIT, they can just grab up your code, add some AOL pop-ups, some MS-specific
> extensions (making it incompatible with the free version), and BLAM -- your
> project has now been scooped away from you.

As I've stated before, the GPL does in no way prevent this from happening and it's not even designed to prevent this.
*Any* sufficiently modular software can be made incompatible with other implementations without violating a license like the GPL. The GPL isnt concerned with compatibility, it's concerned with keeping changes to the *source* open. Although this *might* keep your average code monkey from creating his own incompatible vesion it does in no way prevent anyone who's actually hellbent on doing it.

> *That's* why the MIT is the wrong choice of license for a project with a huge
> potential for mass appeal to the unwashed public, and why it's so difficult to attract
> those smart prolific hackers to such MIT-licensed projects.

Way to insult everyone working on the project. Nice to know that we're not as smart as those GPL coders...
And for the last time, the goal of the Haiku project is not to create an OS with mass appeal. How hard is this to understand? Not every OS project strives to compete with Microsoft and Apple and to sell boatloads at Wallmart.

RE: BOb Schnatterly

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 27 Aug 2004 03:34:00 GMT
Driver wrappers doesnt solve the root of the problem. The problem is not that there arent drivers for your OS, the problem is vendors who doesnt publish their API. By providing a slow (as you said) wrapper all you will acheive is giving those vendors even less reasons to publish their API since, hey, you can just use the driver wrapper. And as Kian said, the bulk of those drivers will only work on X86 wich isnt the only, and certainly not the most well designed, hardware platform in the world. Drivers wrappers are at the best a stop-gap solution but mostly they just makes the situation worse in the long run.

this..

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 27 Aug 2004 03:51:00 GMT
is just going to keep going and going...

record ammount of Posts for an osnews article pretty soon

....

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 27 Aug 2004 03:56:00 GMT
I only need to say two things:
#1
Haiku boots already.

#2
You can usually extract the driver API from drivers. A driver wrapper would be pointless. Though I use to very much not think this way. Such as when I tried desperately to get help on a wrapper for Windows drivers for BeOS. Namely graphics.

There is software already out there that will generate source code for a driver.. all you do is select the device that has a valid driver installed already (and perhaps not) and hit Generate.

I have used this software before, the demo version I had did not give me enough data to make a driver for BeOS that properly supported my old DSL modem with USB. But it write up everything except the actual device communication code (i.e. Driver API stuff).

If we created a driver API reversing application, it would be best not to let the whole world know we have it. That way we could convince those companies still to release the interface. Of course, we could automate the process, create a spyware app that went out to Windows machines, got the hardware list, compared it to the list of hardware not currently supported, and send in the data we need to create a new driver.. and then that driver could be more or less generated.

That would be a more or less permenant fix, however we would have to write code for Windows.. which would not be something I would like to do.

--The loon

@ Lars

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 27 Aug 2004 04:02:00 GMT
> *That's* why the MIT is the wrong choice of license for a project with a huge
> potential for mass appeal to the unwashed public, and why it's so difficult to attract
> those smart prolific hackers to such MIT-licensed projects.

Way to insult everyone working on the project. Nice to know that we're not as smart as those GPL coders...

Huh? Not sure where you got that from. The project seems to currently have a small group of talented developers. I'm of course still talking about attracting *more* of them.

@ Lars Hansson

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 27 Aug 2004 05:27:00 GMT
Do you seriously think this hasnt already been considered over and over again a long time ago?

Has it been reconsidered (self reflection)? Is there any numbers available which indicate how many other people have been ticked off by the license who would have otherwise contributed? Contributed in which way? What is their quality?

Seriously, i'm all in for the "GPL isn't a magic bullet" argument, but i'm not so sure on the positive impact of chosing MIT/X11.

Also, those who prefer GPL should consider that what they see as positive aspect of the GPL, one other could see as a negative one. Don't forget, these are opinions. One aspect of MIT is that the code is easy forkable and is allowed to become proprietary. You may find that bad, but it isn't from a realistic point of view bad. Bad is an opinion. (See BitTorrent as an example. Bram's code is implemented in loads of BitTorrent implementations.)

--

If gpl is so great why don't Sun,Apple,and Microsoft use it for their OS ?

Uhm, that doesn't indicate quality, but just to prove your examples are wrong: Sun is using the GPL (JDS), and Apple too (KHTML).

GPL

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 27 Aug 2004 05:45:00 GMT
How many GPL apps are "flying off the shelves" in Walmarts ?

@ Bob Schnatterly

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 27 Aug 2004 11:27:00 GMT
Bob Schnatterly writes: I think a top goal for Haiku R1 is to write a "wrapper driver" that allows Linux or Windows device drivers to be used for slower peripherals (i.e., anything but the monitor). I know it's possible because I've seen articles about similar efforts for other OS's (unless I'm mistaken). Someone who really knows Windows driver development needs to step forward and tackle this ASAP. Yes, the drivers will be slow, but having drivers that work with modern hardware is crucial. With the resulting user base (and some donated "bribe" money), we'll get the vendors on our side.

While i don't have an opinion about wether this is good or not, i'm not so sure this will get vendors on your side. The fact a piece of hardware works on a platform means there's less will for a developer to support a platform because it already works. This has been true regarding drivers for Linux, open-source drivers partly working for Linux (vendors), proprietary partly working drivers for Linux (Linux kernel hackers), and finally also games for Linux which ran via WineX while a native port was in arrangement but got stopped because of WineX "worked". Also, such proprietary software means it will only run on x86. It's worth it to take this into account and consider it IMO. I think you'll have to put considerable energy into getting support from vendors, and some of that will be proprietary drivers (which ain't by definition bad or so).

BeOS/Haiku is much better known

BeOS is pretty known (relatively), yes, but others argued in this thread Haiku isn't. The name "OpenBeOS" would have drawn attention, and i'm quite certain it did, but by renaming it (yes i know the reasons) Haiku lost its marketing name as a connection / "open" BeOS (which it actually ain't but oh well). I think you'll have to put energy into marketing it when its more polished (e.g. around R1 beta's).

About vapourware: Something typical about vapourware is the marketing and fuss behind it, mostly with screenshots and positive comments about one can and will be able to do. Haiku is rather quiet to the outside world while the mailing lists are open to anyone, so you're able to see what's going on at the inside. That's hardly the same as say Duke Nukem Forever, Longhorn, AmigaOS4, or that "magic emulator" with WINE screenshots from the Philipines.

You made good points though. Others did as well, it was a good read. I'm looking forward to give a beta a whirl on a test computer.

----

How many GPL apps are "flying off the shelves" in Walmarts ?

Who cares? Your one-liners are quite simplistic and reflect hate regarding the GPL as that's about the only thing you take into account with those one-liners. Anyway, Lindows is there, JDS is there, and probably others. Also, Walmart is USA-centric; in Germany and the Netherlands other (similar) stores lead such as "Media Markt" where you'll be able to buy the latest SUSE which resides right left or right of that new Windows and Office box.

OpenBSD financial situation.

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 27 Aug 2004 11:36:00 GMT
To do an example on the other side, OpenBSD uses BSD, but you can' t just copy their CD images,
their team works hard, it has some goals (i.e. security),
and with this CD-IMAGES® escamotage, they survive.

Barely. The real financial back-up is given by their free time while financially supported by their (OpenBSD-related) jobs. Also, grants like the one of DARPA help the project much more than the CD or merchandise sales. This has been pointed out at the OpenBSD mailinglists numerous times.

Btw, nobody mentioned AROS. Not that i demand it or something... but i do find this an interesting OS related to AmigaOS/BeOS philosophy.

Also, i'm looking forward to various performance-improving software for Linux such as: Kernel 2.6, ReiserFS4, DE's, X.Org, FD.o and related projects, DirectFB. Those might resamble what BeOS was once was, and it might be there quicker than Haiku R1 or R2. Some here believe no Linux software willbe able to do this, well, i for one don't. Might be worth it for others who wish for this to keep an eye on these projects.

Anyway, i'm out.

@dpi

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 27 Aug 2004 12:35:00 GMT
"Who cares? Your one-liners are quite simplistic and reflect hate regarding the GPL as that's about the only thing you take into account with those one-liners"

If you percieve any hate it is your own reflection...

...I have no bias re any OS or platform or licensing.

I use many OS's,for 24 years,each for the different purposes they were designed for and do not live in an illusion that any one of them suits everybody's needs.

My family have been in OS design for over 30 years.

I use Suse Linux now for some 8 years or more.If they intend to continue charging money for it they should include a commercial X server that works professionally instead of XFree.

If you had read my longer posts you would notice there is no point trying to tell Haiku developers how to do something you are not doing now,if you had any interest in this development or experience sufficient to contribute to an operating system's development you would have contacted the Haiku teams by email or through the discussion channels,before they all agreed what terms they are working in,and what they are to achieve.

If you have read any of the OpenBeOS aka Haiku websites you would know the answers to all your questions,even if you are not capable of understanding them from reading the same answers here repeated many times because most critics of Haiku have not bothered to read and understand anything yet.

It amazes me some of the people here can operate a computer at all,let alone earn a living from them.

Normally using a computer requires the ability to understand written information.

uhoh

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 27 Aug 2004 13:20:00 GMT
this is starting to stall out. we gotta hit 350!

so heres some flamebait.

bsd is dead!

haiku needs ot switch to gpl because it is teh end all!1!!1

linux sucks

ok, continue.

hehe

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 27 Aug 2004 13:45:00 GMT
GPL Sucks, Linux Sucks, Haiku needs to avoid GPL for dear life, it will bring upon so much ugly code and cruft it isn't even funny.

And, not to mention, that large companies will actually lose appeal because they cannot make changes to the code without giving it back to the originators. MIT is probably about the best way to go, though I believe a slightly more restrective license should be created for re-distribution en-mass of the products from the code.

Albeit that could just be a clause / amendment to the MIT license. (Ever hear of modified licensing?).

BSD dead? It is in my mine, for sure :-) Of course, it never came alive either. I do use a BSD compliant net-stack, does that count?

We could have hit 350 if I just split my posts into .5KB blocks :-)

--The loon

Slow progress?

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 27 Aug 2004 13:57:00 GMT
Good thing I haven't been home for a while so I didn't get to be a part of the action here (wasting my time).

However, I was just wondering why people are considering this project to be developing slowly? I think it has done an amazing progress with the limited amount of developers the project has.
They did the same mistake that most people does when they start out with a new project. They underestimate the time needed to complete it.
If you make a quick overview of what needs to be done then it looks quite simple. But as you start out and get deeper into details you find that it's a lot more work than you expected. Also, things never work flawlessly at the first run. Most of the time is spent debugging and going around issues and limitations (at least it feels like it).

If their main goal was to have the OS out withing one year, it would have been possible. But it would be really buggy, incomplete with a complete lack of attention to details.
It's a good time that they focus on making things right instead of getting it out as quickly as possible.

As for the market relevance of Haiku, I'm quite sure that it will never be a mainstream OS. However, in the audio production world, a lot of people are still wishing for something dedicated, light and fast to run the software on. Prodived Haiku gets the needed apps and drivers, it will surely have a place in the audio and video creation market.
Will it or should it try to compete with windows? I sure hope not.

YellowTab is doing a better job now than what they used to, and they have a bunch of good people on board. But I see no future there really, they don't have a focus and they don't seem to care much about the community.

I think that Haiku will be ready for _me_ to use within a year or so. But it won't be ready for public use, it needs a lot of testing and debugging for that. Something that I will try to help out with.

Haiku is in no way irrelevant, and longhorn won't make it less relevant.

licenses and linux

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 27 Aug 2004 14:12:00 GMT
btw...

...if anyone still thinks I am anti linux or gpl,why the hell would I be using a linux isp for hosting and dsl ?

in jest,not joust

@ Tenzin

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 27 Aug 2004 14:20:00 GMT
Just because someone runs Linux, does not mean he/she cannot hate the GPL ("i don't hate black people, since i have a black friend"). Enough people don't like Windows, yet they do run it. Anyway, if you say so, i look it from the positive side, and see you as honest on that regard even though it did not convince me based on your other arguments.

If you had read my longer posts you would notice there is no point trying to tell Haiku developers how to do something you are not doing now,if you had any interest in this development or experience sufficient to contribute to an operating system's development you would have contacted the Haiku teams by email or through the discussion channels,before they all agreed what terms they are working in,and what they are to achieve.

I've decided to post it here, sue me. But, quoting the bold, it says: "after decisions are made, there is no place for criticism anymore." Given you don't have a big readership since you're relatively unknown, don't you think that's quite short-sightened?

If you have read any of the OpenBeOS aka Haiku websites you would know the answers to all your questions,even if you are not capable of understanding them from reading the same answers here repeated many times because most critics of Haiku have not bothered to read and understand anything yet.

Actually, i have read the Haiku website partly, which cost me a great amount of time, but it was worth it. Just not everything since its quite a lot of content. It would have been more constructive when instead of writing that long reply, you just referred me to the relevant links, and said exactly to which questions you were referring to. But i don't need the latter, only the links.

I'll ignore your straw man, ad hominem argument for the sake of receiving a more constructive reply, with relevant links (all i want, no need to say anything else).

hmm..

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 27 Aug 2004 14:23:00 GMT
so tenzin is a straw man 'eh?

hehehe..

/me gets a lighter

Re: Slow progress?

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 27 Aug 2004 14:34:00 GMT
"As for the market relevance of Haiku, I'm quite sure that it will never be a mainstream OS. However, in the audio production world, a lot of people are still wishing for something dedicated, light and fast to run the software on. Prodived Haiku gets the needed apps and drivers, it will surely have a place in the audio and video creation market.
Will it or should it try to compete with windows? I sure hope not."

Agreed. Demand for such a product to run on cheap x86 hardware is real. Apple seems to be taking care of powerpc side of things.

Making music can be costly. A nice studio condenser microphone will easily cost you $1000. 8 channels of converters (a/d-d/a) run another $1500. 8 Channels of pro mic preamps will run you $2000 or more. 2 channels of premium mic pres (john hardy, neve, API) will run you $700 per channel. You generally want at least 8 channels to record a minimal band and that also means at least 8 mics, though some of these can be relatively inexpensive dynamics. Its not uncommon to use 6-8 channels for drums alone.

Most musicians will prefer to spend $$$ on microphones or preamps or converters than PCs as the former have the greatest impact on your sound. Samplers, instruments are add more.

And then there is the issue of performance. I'll use windows at home by myself but i refuse to use windows to track a band. Won't do it. I also won't pay for windows next upgrade if its really that bloated. those are cycles that could have been used for running a reverb.

@ dpi

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 27 Aug 2004 14:49:00 GMT
"Given you don't have a big readership since you're relatively unknown, "

How did you come to this ? I made no mention of readership or being known.

if it's too hard to find the links re Haiku for a person that states they are interested in it,how did you come to be aware of it in the first place ? where there no links in any previous article or discussion of OpenBeOS or Haiku in the last three years ? I doubt it.

anyway ...

http://www.haiku-os.org/learn.php

http://www.haikunews.org (formerly the BeOSJournal)

irc.freenode.net #haiku

I am not sure in what idiom you use strawman,but is seems to be an unfounded and personal insult.

RE:^2 Unrealistic

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 27 Aug 2004 15:57:00 GMT
> Where is the advanced audio capabilities (for your
> information, Media Kit always sucked, but Be's marketing
> was clever to call Be a "media OS" and everyone ate the
> lie).
The last time I checked, you needed third party ASIO drivers to achieve low latency in Windows. Be's media kit allows 64 sample buffer sizes, timestamping, etc. So what sucks more???

IMO, when Be Inc died, its media kit architecture was the best available. By now, Apple's core audio might have taken the lead, but as I've never used it, I can't judge it.

dragonflyBSD kernel

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 27 Aug 2004 16:11:00 GMT
BSD is NOT dead and HAIKU should use DragonFlyBSD kernel instead of NEWOS, because Dragonfly is the best kernel in the world! ;-)

(will we hit the 333 posts?)

sorry, i was wrong!

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 27 Aug 2004 16:12:00 GMT
l4 kernel is the best in the world!!! the Hurd people cannot be wrong!

Re: Haiku's future

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 27 Aug 2004 16:14:00 GMT
A lot of different OS's have been mentioned here that I've never even heard of (e.g., AROS). A *lot* of OS's. It would be truly frightening (for a certain company in Redmond, that is) if all of these developers got together and supported a single alternative to Windows & Linux. I'm challenging you all to do just that, and support Haiku. If your OS has something wonderful (and object oriented) that Haiku doesn't/won't have, bring it along. We could use your help. I've said enough on this topic - it's time to get coding! I'll be asking a lot of questions in the near future (like how to use CVS - I've got a lot to learn...

lalala...

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 27 Aug 2004 16:19:00 GMT
Man, this thread ain't dying :-)

The media kit is still the lowest latency kit I have ever run. When the latency is so small that it is nearly impossible to time even without enabling Real-Time Audio or Video, that should say something.

That is of course, the measurement of delay between when a sound is told to play, and when it actually starts.

The largest advantage are live-filters. This is not unique to Be's media kit, but I think it is the fastest system I have seen at doing it in comparisons. Of course, when you are saying that 1ms is super-vital, I simply don't understand. I am a huge BeOS fan, and a massive Haiku devotee, but I honestly don't see why people would argue over 1ms, when it will take the sound card that much time to get the sound out to the seakers.

Sure, that may add up to 2ms between saying 'Play' and actually hearing the sound, but I doub't anyone will notice.

There is more time wasted inside the program when a user is involved and hitting a button to play the sound. You have another 2ms maybe for that, doubling the time it takes for the action to occur. Of course, that time is very measurable, but the program itself would need to measure the time, which takes time, so it is likely not going to be a fair assessment. But I will see how long it takes when I get back on my machine at home, and off this one.

--The loon

Oh, yeah, and if you really are made out of Straw Tenzin, I will one-up helf and say: I have a torch, some gasoline, and a hand-grenade... let's roll!

Bob Schnatterly

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 27 Aug 2004 16:22:00 GMT
Howdy dude,

Come on to BeShare and speak with me sometime.

I can help you out with pretty much any help you need. I also have tons of code I would not mind sharing with you for integration with Haiku. It is not written to the OpenTracker coding standards, but I code fairly close to that way, so it would not be hard to see.

--The loon

helf looncraz� :)

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 27 Aug 2004 16:28:00 GMT
Now you know I ain't flammable bubba,

but we can git some 'shine and take yo grenades an go thinkpad fishing in the local swamp anytime

Are expert GPL developers really useful for Haiku?

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 27 Aug 2004 16:42:00 GMT
One point I have not seen anything about is if presently available GPL developers are useful in writting Haiku code? Most GPL developers today are Linux developers and have developed skills for that enviroment.

After all to write Haiku code they will need to understand for example how the BFS works but about two years ago I remember the diffirent FileSystems authors for Linux all saying they saw no need for all the features of BFS to be added to thier FS. So how many GPL developers know where and where not to use MetaData? Additionallt the tree of system files is diffirent than Linux's which will cause problems if they try and insist on using the layouts that they are use to.

I also remember Linux programmers complaining about BeOS's (now Haiku's) threaded model for programming. Single threaded programs work on BeOS, even I have written some but multi-thread programs are what are needed to make Haiku run properly and shine. Delivering Haiku with mostly single threaded programs is one of the fastest ways to destroy it's appeal.

Last but not least are the APIs and libraries, new developers need to learn them before they can start writting good code and for OS development that means learning a lot of APIs, plus so far BeOS/Haiku has avoided the stupid library problems of Linux, mostly by having all(?)/most(?) of the libraries publish being backwards compatible and not having fifteen people all write thier own version of a library.

To me the Linux GPL developers seem to have a lot of bad habits, but the worse one to me is the tendancy (sp?) to re-written libraries instead of contacting the original author to add a new/updated function to thier original library and if not possible why can't the Linux developers add an extra library of thier own with the needed code instead of messing around with the original?

Really, I don't see a large rush of new GPL developers to Haiku as a good thing at all.

Earl Colby Pottinger

@looncraz

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 27 Aug 2004 16:54:00 GMT
Sure, that may add up to 2ms between saying 'Play' and actually hearing the sound, but I doub't anyone will notice.

I see that you're not a musician As for simple audio playing low latency isn't a big need. It's when you start making music that the latency is important.
You need to be able to hear what you play when you play it. No matter if you are playing with a softsynth/sampler or recording electric guitars, the latency is important. Being a few ms off all the time makes it harder to play, and if you are playing along with pre-recorded tracks it won't sound as tight.
That's why a lot of semi-pro/pro audio hardware has hardware monitoring that takes the signal and mixes it with the output instead of going all the way through the computer. But if you want to monitor with VST-effects then hardware monitoring is useless and you need to get as low latency as possible in order to be able to play along at all.

In the same way low latency is important with softsynths/sampler. When you push that key you need to hear the note instantly or it will become hard to play. Trust me a good musician will notice the difference between a few ms in latency. And it's important to keep every link in the chain as light as possible to get a low latency all the way.
Sure, the soundcard will give you some latency, but it doesn't help if you ignore the latency of the rest of the digital audio chain.

That's one of the reasons I bought the Vox Tonelab instead of the Line6 PODxt. The PODxt has a noticable latency, which makes it less responsive and less fun to play with.

Bottom line. When recording music digitally, low latency and small buffers are vital.

to rain

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 27 Aug 2004 19:20:00 GMT
Makes sense :-)

I guess I should enable Real-time then for my guitar and vocal audio distortions I have running through BeOS. I may notice a difference. (I can tell a really faint delay, but it isn't troublesome).

Keep in touch,

--The loon

realtime delay

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 27 Aug 2004 20:56:00 GMT
looncraz

The differences re delay are the basis of the difference between reverb,chorus,flanging and echo.The smaller the delay,the more subtle the effect.

The other difference is the obstacles created for global web jamming using the 'seriously long midi cable' client and server for BeOS

Tell me more of your guitar>BeOS input.Is it a midi guitar,Synthaxe,Stepp DG1,Yamaha,Roland,Chapman Stick ?

My Guitar...

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 27 Aug 2004 21:12:00 GMT
Hanez acoustic with pickup for amps (plug doubles as strap :-))

I simply run it to my line-in, and use software for everything else.

--The loon

You guys are just trying to see if you can get the

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 27 Aug 2004 21:57:00 GMT
most amount of posts in a thread. Fine, here's another one...

Application and market

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 27 Aug 2004 21:57:00 GMT
Harrison LPC-D mixing console
http://www.glw.com/products/lpcd/index.html

Tascam SX-1 workstation
http://www.expandore.com/product/TASCAM/workstation/SX-1.htm

Mercenary-Audio RADAR®24 audio system
http://store.yahoo.com/mercenary-audio/radar24.html

Roland Edirol DV-7 digital video and audio editing system
http://www.edirol.com/products/info/dv7/dv7.html

Roland Edirol DV-7PR Digital Video Presenter
http://www.edirol.com/products/info/dv7/dv7pr.html

Roland Edirol DV-7DL Pro Direct Linear Video Editing System
http://www.edirol.com/products/info/dv7dl/dv7dl.html

LCS CueStation
http://www.lcsaudio.com/Products/CueStation.html

LCS System installations worldwide
http://www.lcsaudio.com/Installations.html

TuneTracker Radio Automation System
http://www.tunetrackersystems.com/

All dedicated BeOS systems,in professional use,worldwide,now.
Including as I have already stated Sydney Opera House and DisneyLand.

All running applications not available on any other platform than BeOS.

Wow...

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 27 Aug 2004 22:05:00 GMT
Holy schmolly!

I wonder how many are using PhOS :-) Heh, none probably :-)

That is a pretty impressive list, but your forgetting all of the little radio stations people setup around my area :-) I've listened to at least three within a 100 mile radius and heard TuneTracker or BeOS comments :-)

Anyway, yeah, we got off topic.. so here we go:

GPL Sucks, MIT Sucks too, Haiku rules, Eugenia has a right to her opinion, but thanks to her throwing it on the web, we all get to try and hit a record number of posts :-).

Linux sucks, Windows sucks, MacOS X is decent, BeOS is decent, PhOS sucks (and I make it :-)), Zeta sucks even more, DOS rules!!

--The loon

re: Application and market

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 27 Aug 2004 23:36:00 GMT
>>>All dedicated BeOS systems,in professional use,worldwide,now. Including as I have already stated Sydney Opera House and DisneyLand.

The problem is that all the very high end, high performance stuff are built on vxworks and qnx. Did you know that the founder of WindRiver (Jerry Fiddler) --- before he even founded WindRiver and vxworks --- created real-time video editing machines for NFL and Francis Ford Coppola in the 1970's.

http://www.cs.uiuc.edu/news/alumni/sp96/fiddler.html

Euphonix system 5 --- vxworks
http://www.euphonix.com/music/products/system_5/system_5.htm

Sony DMX-R100 --- QNX
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/may02/articles/dmxr100v2.asp

Sydney Opera House --- QNX
http://www.creativeaudio.com.au/media/mediab.html

Sydney Olympic Stadium --- QNX
http://www.peakaudio.com/CobraNet/Installations/Olympic_Stadium.htm...

The low end is occupied by Microsoft. And real Hollywood work is done on vxworks and qnx.

RE: RE: Application and market

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 28 Aug 2004 00:45:00 GMT
I use QNX,it costs over twenty times more than BeOS,and in my experience it's hardware support is no better than BeOS.

QNX has only recently developed professionally usable 3d.

BeOS has been capable of 3d for nine years and is faster at rendering on the same hardware than any other OS I have used for 3d.

As for real work in hollywood,a lot of it is done on SGI and Sun.

None of this or your examples change the fact that BeOS is not dead,is in professional use from low to high end,and will continue to be so,regardless of how many other systems are in use.

I use BeOS for field emergency medical practice and medical research,for it's unique databasing and 3d capabilities.

It helps me to save people's lives,and will continue to do so,in war zones,epidemics and disasters as well as clincal practice.

I am too busy to waste time on any more complicated OS for this task.BeOS installs in ten minutes,and boots in a few seconds.

3d - audio?

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 28 Aug 2004 03:43:00 GMT
Tenzin,
i'm assuming by 3d you mean 3d audio?
cheers
peter

I'd like to see it

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 28 Aug 2004 04:17:00 GMT
Make it to 400.

@ Tenzin

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 28 Aug 2004 05:52:00 GMT
if it's too hard to find the links re Haiku for a person that states they are interested in it,how did you come to be aware of it in the first place ? where there no links in any previous article or discussion of OpenBeOS or Haiku in the last three years ? I doubt it.

Idiot. I state specific arguments, not global ones. If you reply with that something similar to "use Google, you fool" without addressing any of my specific questions i find that quite ignorant. I am already aware of the websites you gave me. I also stated i already spend quite some time on "the Haiku website". My oh my, could that have been perhaps haiku-os.org?! Now, if you're able to point me to some specific developments, news or code then i might as well be interested (or getting involved). Some unique things for example, or some elements often overlooked. As i said, i already comprehend the basics. Otherwise i really see no value in what you write as reponse to me pointing me to some general websites not particulary interesting, written for users instead of technical inclined people.

I am not sure in what idiom you use strawman,but is seems to be an unfounded and personal insult.

Idiot (that's a personal insult). I said you applied a straw man. More specific, the last 3 alinea's are all straw man arguments. Stating such is not some kind of personal insult, but me calling you an idiot for not comprehending that is.

you know what happened to the dinosaurs

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 28 Aug 2004 10:49:00 GMT
""""I'm sick of this obsession with BeOS. It had it's strengths, but it had some serious weaknesses as well. ANYONE still using it in 2004 is a dinosaur, and well, you know what happened to the dinosaurs.""""

the dinosaurs went evolution to birds

And in your analogy today a dinosaur (beos) will eate all the mamifers (Windows, macosx...etc)

my analogy is very diferent for me the dinosaurs are windows (big, slow, crappy but dominate the world), Beos are the mamifers like in the era of dinosaurs:small, fasters and more evolved but as they cannot compete with the dinosaurs they live in its own specialized niches

Computer world is like biology, that dominates the world in a certain moment of the time not necessarily meants that is more evolutioned or that is better.there are a lot of cases on biology (that is aplicable to computers) that the only way to survive is specialize but the specialization is a evolutive trap.I am a biologist and i love computers so i know of which i speak

Sorry for my english but i think that the idea that i want transmit it is understood

RE: OpenBSD financial situation.

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 28 Aug 2004 14:56:00 GMT
>>with this CD-IMAGES® escamotage, they survive.

>Barely. The real financial back-up is given by
>their free time while financially supported by their
>(OpenBSD-related) jobs.

Yeah, and for *that* ecosystem, BSD license imho is even better than GPL, that's why I wrote about it.

But there are case and case to evaluate.

On other news.....

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 28 Aug 2004 18:05:00 GMT
...Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead...

...and so is BeOS...

...and Haiku is a long way from being even remotely close to usable.

@FH

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 28 Aug 2004 19:13:00 GMT
it's not "a long way off from being even remotely usable" . just a several months. And BeOS is NOT dead An OS is dead only when the last user stops using it.

yay, we hit 350 posts!

Dead

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 28 Aug 2004 20:44:00 GMT
BeOS is dead the day I and the other 1K+ users who use it *every day* on *recent hardware* for *normal usage* can no longer do so. That day won't come for a number of years. By which time Haiku *WILL* be done.

FH, I'd advise you to go off, use Linux and forget about other systems. It suits your type of personality.

RE: looncraz

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 29 Aug 2004 00:24:00 GMT
"There is software already out there that will generate source code for a driver.. all you do is select the device that has a valid driver installed already (and perhaps not) and hit Generate.

I have used this software before, the demo version I had did not give me enough data to make a driver for BeOS that properly supported my old DSL modem with USB. But it write up everything except the actual device communication code (i.e. Driver API stuff)."

What's it called, and where do you find it ?

@Mouth

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 29 Aug 2004 00:41:00 GMT
Mate, you should try reading my post before slagging off about me accusing Haiku/OpenBeOS being vapourware. I was responding to another post who was stating that and showing reason as to why Haiku isn't.

Looncraz,will your next version of PhOS have the memory workaround for systems with more than 1Gig??? would love to run a current version of BeOS on my Dual AMD system and I know I should be able to get most of my hardware supported.

Dual AMD MP 2000+
1Gig Ram
Ti4400
Hoontech DSP24 C-Port

Most noticable hardware.

Let me know
blitze at cheerful dot com

Thanks

@Piers

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 29 Aug 2004 01:07:00 GMT
Im using an Athlon 64 which is derived from the Athlon XP kernel patch. (http://www.bebits.com/app/3390)

I have a gig of ram and use the 512mb limited bootloader (http://www.bebits.com/app/3851)

The Nvidia driver can be found at BeBits also

And an early alpha version for the Hoontech DSP is here (http://www.kabunkie.de/BeOS/index.html)

Should have no problems using those

I smell a Bedoper article about this

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 29 Aug 2004 02:15:00 GMT
I hear good things about Haiku's progress all the time. In fact, BeOS Journal's name change to Haiku News was fairly telling, I thought.

Anyway, I predict a Bedoper story about Eugenia's birthday greeting by Monday. Not written by myself, either.

I'm glad to see BeOS and related OSs are still newsworthy, at any rate.

PearPC Developpers should give Haiku a hand or two...

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 29 Aug 2004 03:23:00 GMT
Seen PearPC, Love PearPC just the same a BeOS... Since the guys working on Haiku don't seem to be moving things along, maybe the guys from PearPC should give the project a hand. They're a bunch of the smart driven developers.

It would be fantastic to seem some virtualization technology built into Haiku at the kernel level...

Hummm dreamy..

@dohmar

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 29 Aug 2004 11:25:00 GMT
Sadly, that Hoontech/STAudio driver is very limited and unstable. And it doesn't look like Oliver will ever finish it (he has pretty much lost interest in BeOS since he got a Mac).
I did the mistake of buying it in hope of that driver (hello Echo users ). And now it seems that I'll never be able to use it properly under BeOS/Haiku. Oh well, I've learned my $700 lesson.

@rain

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 29 Aug 2004 14:27:00 GMT
Yes, unfortunately he doesn't seem to keen on open sourcing it. However when that driver was released, i was very excited for a time because i actually was able to record! (which Oliver told me I technically wasnt able to do:))

It cost me $1500 AU in 2000 to get the C-port, and I'm still hoping that someone will step up to the plate and help make a driver for this sweet piece of hardware (now inexpensive!)

Would be interesting to know if the fixes the haiku media kit multiaudio api has resolved the issues that Oliver was having with the driver. I guess we'll never know.

Still. that driver lets me play mp3s, which is by far *the* most important feature

Just to add further fuel to the dying fire..

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 29 Aug 2004 15:15:00 GMT
Howdy all,

I just almost completed the port of GPLFlash to BeOS / Haiku. Library compiles, plugin should (for FireFox/Mozilla), and I have already come to understand how the playback works.

Last steps:

Write a BeOS GUI (don't like command-line, like it has).
Get sound working. (BeOS API is actually almost identical to how the Sound.cc file was organized, so playback shouldn't be hard. May require creation of a decoder.

--The loon

re. still relevant

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 29 Aug 2004 15:32:00 GMT
> BeOS *was* the best operating system I've ever used,
> unfortunately, atm, i don't find it practicle anymore.

It *is* the best OS I've ever used (desktop end-user experince-wise) -- and I'm currently using OS X and Slackware.

That's why this thread is 357 comments long. BeOS was just so good that, what community is left hates to see its possible future fragmented. It's like watching an olympic athlete sit in front of the television and atrophy. We're ardent BeOS fans, but can't stand the flushing noise we're hearing.

This is why folks like me suggest OBOS go GPL whenever this topic comes up. Not only would it likely attract new developers, but it would probably draw in the Cosmoe and BlueEyedOS devs, and maybe even the Syllable devs (another awful name choice there -- sorry guys -- you're obviously very talented folks (like the current OBOS devs) but it's a tough name to google, has very little name-recognition, and is even easy to misspell).

The trouble is, the community has different goals than the OBOS devs -- but the OBOS devs are the ones doing the coding.

My best guess is that the OBOS folks like the MIT because it keeps the door open if they want to go closed-source down the road. Maybe they could start their own company and make a few bucks. Dunno. That would be great for them, for a few years anyway. But I've been burned once by Be's focus shift -- I'll only use GPL OS's from now on.

RE: re. still relevant (by johnMG)

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 29 Aug 2004 17:18:00 GMT
My best guess is that the OBOS folks like the MIT because it keeps the door open if they want to go closed-source down the road. Maybe they could start their own company and make a few bucks. Dunno. That would be great for them, for a few years anyway. But I've been burned once by Be's focus shift -- I'll only use GPL OS's from now on.

It keeps the door open for companies to take Haiku and use it for their own purposes. Wether they're the same as the current companies mentioned in this thread or other purposes like TIVO-like devices or even more interesting ones. Haiku doesn't plan to include every piece of software in their releases, that's up to any possible distrobutions (free or for money) or the individual users. It also keeps the door wide open for companies to release binary-only drivers or allow NDAs to be signed by developers for binary-only drivers. Yes, I know there are binary-only drivers for Linux based operating systems. However it took a while for that to happen, probably not least because the companies in question felt the need to spend some time researching how to go about it, without violating any part of the GPL (and any exceptions granted by the license holder).
The focus shift you mentioned was by Be from BeOS towards their BeIA. Not from free Haiku to money-grubbing Haiku (although, granted, that too would be a focus shift).

GPL again...

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 29 Aug 2004 20:17:00 GMT
...oh yeahhh, it's so funny. let's start the GPL vs MIT flamebait again.

please take the Haiku sources and fork the project. Make the license GPL and seel for new developers. OR SHUTUP!

RE: GPL again...

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 29 Aug 2004 20:40:00 GMT
I'm sorry. You're right of course. However, my intentions were to clarify Haikus intentions rather than justify chosing the MIT license over the GPL.

Considering....

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 29 Aug 2004 23:04:00 GMT
Ya know, considering this OS (BeOS/Haiku) is claimed to be "Dead" there seems to be 1) a heck of a lot of people still with BeOS on their machines (or with an old machine they keep to run it) 2) a heck of a lot of people willing to put it back on their machines (waiting for drivers etc) 3) a heck of a lot of people keen on talking about it!

360+ posts, don't remember reading this many before, all interesting and varied, the result of an active community!

For me personally BeOS is like an old friend, whom I love dearly and haven't seen in far too long a time. From the very beginning it actually "did what it said on the tin" in the best ways possible. From BFS to search queries, from intergrated email to drag and drop, from multithreaded ingenuity to audio/image translators, it was and still is a thing of great beauty.

The C compiler - quick and lean (ever compiled Gentoo??!), the dev tools and support 2nd to none (continued thanks to the OBEOS/Haiku crew) No dependency hell, no dll hell, no registry or other such hell.

Super small footprint and hardware requirements, small apps with big features(which download in seconds without spyware, malware, maulware).

What the hell am I doing in Windows? I'm waiting for hardware fixes (for BeOS) and I broke my Gentoo ;-)

Go Haiku team, bring back my old friend and end my suffering!! :-D

RE : GPL again....

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 29 Aug 2004 23:15:00 GMT
There's no need to justify choosing the MIT license over the GPL. It's the developpers' choice, and theirs only to make. It's their project, their time and their work. Their goals may or may not coincide with yours or mine, mais c'est la vie. Smoerk is right. If there are BEOS aficionados out there who would like to GPL Haiku, they can indeed fork the project and do just that. The fact of the matter is, after three years of diverse efforts to revive BEOS R5, such developpers appear not to exist... and that's that.

re: MIT License

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 29 Aug 2004 23:34:00 GMT
I think it would benefit customers in the prosumer arena like the professional Audio devices that could be created using Haiku or Video Editing devices. Not that this can't be done on GPL but companies prefere to keep their technology under wraps although any company taking Haiku and modifying it and improving upon it, it would be nice if they released the code back into the community for the benefit of all Haiku users.

I suppose we will see when things come to release time and the community see the response of companies to Haiku as a BeOS replacement (something they can either replace existing hardware platforms built on BeOS or create hardware platforms using Haiku).

BeDoper has the scoop!

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 30 Aug 2004 00:39:00 GMT
...on ELQ's new job writing birthday cards for Halmark.

http://www.bedoper.com/bedoper/2004/twentyninth.htm

re. GPL again

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 30 Aug 2004 01:24:00 GMT
There's no need to justify choosing the MIT license over the GPL. It's the developpers' choice, and theirs only to make. It's their project, their time and their work. Their goals may or may not coincide with yours or mine, mais c'est la vie.

Well, I'd say that it's a choice the project's leader makes. Then, if the devs like the choice, they can stay and continue contributing. Otherwise, they may go.

Smoerk is right. If there are BEOS aficionados out there who would like to GPL Haiku, they can indeed fork the project and do just that.

The trouble with that idea is that we don't really need any more slintering of the community.

The fact of the matter is, after three years of diverse efforts to revive BEOS R5, such developpers appear not to exist... and that's that.

How about the devs already contributing to Cosmoe? BlueEyedOS? Syllable? If the Haiku license were changed to GPL, how many of them would eventually find their way to Haiku?

re. GPL again

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 30 Aug 2004 01:31:00 GMT
Eeek. Sorry, it that last paragraph, I forgot to mention BeFree too. http://befree.sourceforge.net/

RE : GPL again

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 30 Aug 2004 03:00:00 GMT
How about the devs already contributing to Cosmoe? BlueEyedOS? Syllable? If the Haiku license were changed to GPL, how many of them would eventually find their way to Haiku?

More to the point (as far as I'm concerned), how many Haiku developpers would quit? They could have joined those other efforts if they had wanted to. You're defeating your own argument. If what you want is a GPL iteration of Beos, that's where you should go.

This isn't splintering but diversity, and it exists because it's necessary. Different people pursue different goals in different ways. In this effort, unity of purpose is far more important than sheer numbers. Numbers will fluctuate - and Haiku's might very well grow once they have something to show... Remember R5 is just a start.

Besides these other projects have somewhat different goals than Haiku. Haiku is the one project that caught my attention, because it's the most ambitious. And I see merit in the MIT license precisely because it might quickly attract some commercial interest to the platform. I'm thinking about the sort of video or audio machines like exist based on MacOs, a la Avid. This would boost the platform immensely...

GPL is not flooding the other BeOS clones with developers

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 30 Aug 2004 11:38:00 GMT
The title says it all. All the GPL pushers claim that if Haiku was GPL then there would be a flood on new developers from the Linux crowd. Well where are they with the other BeOS clones that are GPL'ed? Even using the Linux Kernel and X windows they can't attact many new developers so why expect them for Haiku?

I know away to attract even more devs than switching to GPL.

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 30 Aug 2004 18:35:00 GMT
Rename Haiku to Linux. I mean there are lot's of devs working on Linux.

(NOTE: This post is not to be taken serious, which seperates it from all the GPL-posts that probably wants to be taken serious).

RE: GPL is not flooding the other BeOS clones with developers

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 30 Aug 2004 18:54:00 GMT
> if Haiku was GPL then there would be a flood
> on new developers

Well, maybe now it is too late, but imho I think there would have *been* more developers.

> where are they with the other BeOS clones that are GPL'ed?

Oh, the following is my humble take :#)

They are different projects, with different goals, that are going to fill different holes, and with different competitors that may not leave enought "feeling the need" of investing very much in those projects by GPL community developers.

Haiku is (and was) a completely new project, not an alike-extension to Linux.

Anyway best wishes to Haiku and those BeOS clones,

...like BeFree with Fiorini & others

re. GPL again

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 30 Aug 2004 18:55:00 GMT
> How about the devs already contributing to Cosmoe?
> BlueEyedOS? [edit: also BeFree] Syllable? If the Haiku
> license were changed to GPL, how many of them would
> eventually find their way to Haiku?

More to the point (as far as I'm concerned), how many Haiku developpers would quit? They could have joined those other efforts if they had wanted to. You're defeating your own argument. If what you want is a GPL iteration of Beos, that's where you should go.

Sorry. I should be writing GPL/LGPL instead of just GPL.

Yes. Some might quit. You can't please everyone all of the time. You ask, why didn't they just join those other efforts? I don't want to step on any toes, but I'll tell you why: it's because their project leader (along with his right-hand folks) really has it together. The Haiku site is pretty, it's well-documented, they've got newsletters, tutorials, the works. If anyone can succeed, it's them. I've talked with Michael Phipps -- he's a great guy and a great team leader. Folks *want* to work for him. The other active groups (BlueEyedOS, Cosmoe, BeFree) have talented people, good-looking websites, and probably some good code already written (I've been out of the OBOS scene for a while, so I'm not sure who's accomplished what so far). I was very pleased to see BlueEyed finally choose a license. However, these other projects seem to be the work of cool hackers who want BeOS back. Haiku seems to be the nerve-center of the whole darn community that wants BeOS back.

The title says it all. All the GPL pushers claim that if Haiku was GPL then there would be a flood on new developers from the Linux crowd.

Look, in this thread I may be pushing the GPL/LGPL, but more importantly, I'm pushing Haiku -- and I think that for them to succeed on a grand scale, they're going to need to re-license using the GPL or LGPL.

Well where are they with the other BeOS clones that are GPL'ed? Even using the Linux Kernel and X windows they can't attact many new developers so why expect them for Haiku?

I can't pretend to know the future, and I can't predict reliably how many new devs Haiku would get by switching. What I can predict in general is:

A. it would likely consolidate common code (common to all the BeOS-related projects), which is a good thing. This alone would really get things sped up. You'd have a Haiku core site, then someone like BlueEyedOS would host their own X11 fork to run on Haiku core (that's just a quick example). Less overall work for them, more work getting done for everyone.

B. it would probably attract new talent to the project, and over time, I think you'd end up with *more* devs working on Haiku. LGPL is a very popular license.

C. it would address the software patent issue (note, the GPL/LGPL addresses software patents). This one issue alone I believe is crucial, since Haiku distribution makers will likely be forced by the current business climate to include patented code into their modified Haikus. What happens when your own users start preferring company X's Haiku over the official version because company X's has "more features"?

D. it would likely get a lot of folks happy with Michael, and a lot of folks very angry at him, at the same time.

If only...

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 31 Aug 2004 20:34:00 GMT
...for every word posted here in 360+ messages, the poster would have sent 5 US cents to Haiku Inc., the organisation would have enough funds to do many splendid things.

On an unrelated note: the good news among this discussion is that YOU ARE ALL RIGHT. None of you is wrong!

Those who say BeOS/Haiku/yT are dead, well yes, that's exactly how your reality manifests itself. Those who say that BeOS/Haiku/yT are alive and kicking, well yes, that's exactly how your reality manifests itself.

It's all energy anyway, and when there is enough of it, it becomes denser and matter forms - IOW, things start to "matter". Then momentum is gained and as such attracts more mass. Then it will grow for a very long time before it finally gets too big, too cold. No one knows what is going to happen to Haiku, but if the responses to this item are anything to go by, the future may look a lot brighter than many may believe. And if not, well, that's your reality. Just remember that whatever negativity you send out, it will come back to you. So be nice, play fair and just enjoy life!

My 0.02.

50C to Haiku

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 01 Sep 2004 17:29:00 GMT
I'd send 50C per message I posted here if they let non-US citizens donate. Looking at my IP you can see I'm far from a US citizen :-)