Submitted by The
latest newsletter Michael Phipps talk about the
Haiku’s Challenges: “Since I last wrote about the reasons that Haiku is relevant, I thought that it would be balanced to write about the challenges that Haiku faces.“
Haiku’s Challenges
About The Author
Adam Scheinberg
Technology Executive • Web Developer • Father • Foodie • Music Snob • OS enthusiast
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The Haiku team seems to have a few decent heads on their collective shoulders. I didn’t know their provisional non-profit status was up next year. Does anyone more connected to that community know if they’ve got the mindshare to form a board of directors?
They need to change their Copyright in the footer of their site.
To not release Haiku until it R1 is ready is not, in my opinion, the wisest policy.
Whilst it may appear more professional, Haiku is not in the business of making money – it is volunteer run. Therefore pragmatism must take precedence over professionalism.
By holding back on making any formal releases, it vastly reduces – even minimizes – pre-R1 exposure of Haiku. For a project that openly admits it is low on developer resources (this newsletter even says 80% of the work is done by 20% of the contributors which could be reduced to 10% by an accident – i.e. just 2 people doing the majority of the coding) failing to attract new blood is paramount to severly delaying [or even dooming] the project.
By making pre-releases available, it generates buzz and interest and gives people a simple starting point. Microsoft even do it (look at the Vista builds) as well as SkyOS and it creates a sense of anticipation for the upcoming stable releases (even if they are fairly far into the future).
If Haiku were to adopt a policy of creating development snapshots for people to play with, it could attract more attention and, by virtue of that, more developers. More developers would most likely mean more progress and an earlier release for R1. Why wait “until it is ready” for something that you are not going to sell? It all seems a little silly to me.
I think the eventual goal is to hire some developers full-time, so yes, the goal is to make some money. If Haiku makes a public release, sites like Slashdot will surely report it, and you’ll have everyone and their kid downloading it whether they remember BeOS or not, and likely there will be problems seen or unforseen. This is what they wish to avoid.
But since Haiku has an SVN repository online 24/7 (BerliOS), you can build the thing yourself, or download a VMware image from a number of different sources (I do this every time there’s a significant change). So it’s not like people with the knowhow can’t try it. It takes me 10 minutes to get code that was built from source no more than 6 hours old.
Eventually I do believe they should make some DR releases, like Be, but I don’t think they’re at that point yet (we need a working netstack folks).
“Eventually I do believe they should make some DR releases, like Be, but I don’t think they’re at that point yet (we need a working netstack folks).”
Oh yes! A good soul needs to work a lot here, to port FreeBSD stack… Is somebody there? (Don’t look to me! I’m a C/C++ newbie
“I use Haiku, and you?”
~ Michael Vinícius de Oliveira ~
“Eventually I do believe they should make some DR releases, like Be, but I don’t think they’re at that point yet (we need a working netstack folks).”
Oh yes! A good soul needs to work a lot here, to port FreeBSD stack… Is somebody there? (Don’t look to me! I’m a C/C++ newbie
“I use Haiku, and you?”
~ Michael Vinícius de Oliveira ~
Problem is other than Sky-OS what other ‘hobby’ OS has done pre-releases to generate buzz and shows continuing progress today?
And considering how many other sources for Hauki images already exist out there than if you can not find them yourself, you were likely not that interested.
Problem is other than Sky-OS what other ‘hobby’ OS has done pre-releases to generate buzz and shows continuing progress today?
Syllable?
Apart from SkyOS, there is AROS, Syllable (my favourite – and LiveCD apparently works again), MenuetOS, ReactOS.
No doubt I’ve forgotten several like the Spoon OS (based on the Spoon microkernel – it does have a GUI).
I stand correctted on hobby OSes with buzz.
Thanks.
One could look here: http://sikosis.blogspot.com/
If one can’t find a build there, one is probably visual challenged
Instead of having money sitting in the bank collecting interest (which is probably barely more than inflation) why won’t they pay key developers to work full time on the project? They did it for Axel Dorfler (http://axeld.blogspot.com/) for a couple of months in 2005 and in that short period of time he moved the project miles forward. If other developers were working full time, even temporary, the first release would’ve moved much closer to becoming the reality.
They would if they could. I highly doubt there are enough donations rolling in to support even one developer full-time.
They do have one full time developer, the guy is a mad coding machine. I forget if it was just a contract job for a few months or if he was a full time salaried person. Unfortunately his name escapes me at the moment.
You think of Axel Dörfler.
[edit:] And AFAIK it was a short term contract.
Edited 2006-04-05 15:53
That is a well-thought out, well-written letter. It sounds like the folks at Haiku are definitely taking the time to think out their steps before they take them.
It’s very pleasent to read. Cool-headed, balanced look at the project. I actually passted both URLs to AmigaWorld to show guys from OS4 scene that you can be optimistic when it comes to work, and realistic when you plan your targets.
Sorry for the double post…
I have one here: http://blindmindseye.com/2006/03/28/haikuos-vmware-image-update/
Please be gentle on the bandwidth though. I update this image from sikosis.blogspot.com periodically. I’m in the process of updating it to the 4/2/2006 nightly build.
Just a reminder that TeamHaiku on Seventeen or Bust is still looking for contributors to help us search for primes in the name of the Haiku project.
This will help raise awareness for the project – and maybe one of us will get lucky enough to find the next prime!
See the TeamHaiku forums:
http://www.haiku-os.org/forums/viewforum.php?f=29
and join our team:
http://www.seventeenorbust.com/stats/teams/team.mhtml?teamID=337
I simply must work up an interview for him. Right after ELQ completes the one I wrote for, erm, him.
There are two unadvertised articles on BeDoper right now, though:
XBOX360 to run BeIA says Sakoman
YellowTAB hit by Codename Shortage
http://www.bedoper.com/bedoper/2006/40.htm