Bernd Korz has announced that he will cease all development on Zeta [German], which effectively means Zeta will no longer be in development. Korz already wanted to quit development on Zeta when YellowTAB went belly up, but the numerous requests from customers to continue development eventually dragged him across the line. However, after the spat with Magnussoft, enough is enough for Korz. He states that he is not sure if and when the service pack to Zeta 1.5 will be released. He also states that he is not sure if and when he will open source or give to Haiku his contributions to Zeta. He explicitely states nor yT, nor Magnussoft own the source code to his work. My take: While I can understand Bernd, I am also sad to see this happen. For the little money and manpower Bernd had at his disposal, he did a magnificent job in making Zeta a usable operating system. I already knew this was about to happen, but a sad day it remains for Zeta users.
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Member since:2005-07-06
What is so hard to understand when I propose merging the best of both worlds? Take the stuff that's good in Haiku. Take the stuff that's good in Zeta. Throw it in one bucket. Bugfix, stir, release. After all, don't we share one common interest - making the best BeOS ever?
And even if not: competition is good. Choice is good. If this would mean two parallel competing fully open source systems, I don't see how this would do any harm.
"Imagine if Windows was open-sourced... would that make ReactOS better?"
That's simply because ReactOS is way behind. But if Zeta is as bad as you say, then Haiku has nothing fear, does it?
Member since:2007-03-12
What is so hard to understand when I propose merging the best of both worlds? Take the stuff that's good in Haiku. Take the stuff that's good in Zeta. Throw it in one bucket. Bugfix, stir, release. After all, don't we share one common interest - making the best BeOS ever?
Nothing is ever that simple. Like it or not the "baggage" will weigh heavily on peoples minds, and tainting Haiku's image for a quick fix just isn't worth it. Success isn't just about lines of code it's about the marketing. If people perceive Haiku as dubious it's not going to get traction. By keeping its independence it doesn't risk that. It might not matter to you but Haiku's success depends on getting ordinary people on board, and that means playing it safe.
Member since:
2006-01-26
I guess I'm only stating that despite all the possibilities that might emerge from the open-sourcing of Zeta/BeOS code - it probably won't benefit Haiku much.
If anything, it would likely "destroy" the Haiku project entirely, or probably cause a great number of people to lose interest in it. A great many people will end up flocking to the "official" BeOS/Zeta codebase and start building their own distro out of it.
It sounds like you are one of those people. In other words, you would immediately care less about the design choices and code quality of Haiku, and rather have something now. That is not the goal of Haiku.
Imagine if Windows was open-sourced... would that make ReactOS better?
Edited 2007-04-02 22:35