Both sad and good news from the Haiku front. The sad news is that Rudolf, known for his hard work on bringing (accelerated 3D) drivers to BeOS, has posted on his blog that he wants to focus more on ‘real life’: “I have to follow this new path unfolding before my eyes. It’s my destination. It’s real life. I love it, I need it. So, I’ll no longer work on all those drivers much. Maybe even I’ll quit alltogether.” Sad for BeOS, but happy for him. A heartfelt ‘thank you’ for his hard work is deserved. As for the happy news, Seamonkey and Romashka now run on Haiku.
The name is Rudolf (not Rudolph) Cornelissen.
I know this has been mentioned in the past, but it seems only right that Haiku gets its own OSNews topic logo.
Afterall, Zeta has one, and many flavors of Linux have their own as well.
I do realize in this particular article that the bit of news about Rudolf affects all current BeOS-derived OSes (including Zeta) – but I still feel that Haiku has built enough of a community and functioning system that it can be considered its own topic now.
Don’t complain. It used to be the Zeta logo for openbeos/haiku, blue eyed os, and cosmoe.
I had to bitch, moan, whine, yell, beg, plead , blackmail and threaten Eugenia to change it.
All those didn’t work.
Then I rationally explained that all the projects (including Zeta) are all children of BeOS.
I changed her mind (or someone’s anyway)
pule
If he needs time to clear his head and reorganize his priorities, I’m wondering if he’ll be gone for good.
If it’s whole new life, he might not be back.
Looks like we’ll have to wait and see.
Good luck being a luddite or hippie or whatever 😉
It reminds me of a song by Steppenwolf.
After all we are humans. Hacking is fun, but when life calls you _have to_ go !
Good luck Rudolf, and thanks for all.
Thanks Rudolf!
Now the BeOS 3D world is more fun!
Sucess for you!
Michael VinÃcius de Oliveira
Be Inc focus shifted to death,
He focus shifted to life!
I think he got it right.
I would think this is the fait of most of those who work on OSS projects, it’s all fund and good for a while, but then your realize how much your missing for not getting much back, if anything. This is the great flaw of Opensource projects, they may not die because the code is secret, they just die because no one cares or wants to work on it, which in the end is the same result. This is why the bulk of the world is perfectly happy with closed source stuff, it works, and they don’t have to do anything but use it.
Many of the kernel hackers and several OSS project contributers are employed to do what they do. I don’t have any specific numbers, I just know there are quite a few OSS employees now and as OSS grows, this will be more and more true.
Not only that, companies are waking up to funding OSS projects they benefit from. Hardware, software, and money are a few ways OSS projects are getting support.
Students and Universities are also large contributers as OSS is easy to learn and to teach. Their contributions are large and numerous. This trend will contiue.
OSS is open. One may stop work on it, but someone else might pick it up again (especially true for complex and important projects). And even if the project dies, someone might come along one day and analyze it, taking some idea, concept, or technique they didn’t know of before and applying to their project.
While I certainly will miss hearing from him and seeing news about the cool things he’s up to, I, for one, am happy for him. As much as I love to write code and do any other things on the computer, there is more to life than computers and technology. Tech is _so_ short-term. Come on, I doubt that 50 years from now anyone will be running an operating system which even remotely resembles the current crop of well-known OSes.
It doesn’t have anything to do with open-source vs closed source — it’s about priorities. There is something to be said about opportunity cost. The guy that works 12-hour days at Intel for 20 years is missing out on a lot that is going on around him. It took me a while to figure that out, but I’m still here. I’ve got a bunch of code projects that I maintain and yet I went jet-skiing for the first time last weekend, and was it a rush! Going out and living life is part of what makes life worth living. My $0.02 + a hefty tip.
I’m sure nobody in 1969 thought there’d be anything resembling UNIX in 2009…. I’m sure there will be, however, considering its as strong if not stronger than ever in 2006.
Theres a damn good chance a BeOS-alike will be around in 40 years from BeOS starting (1994/5 to the public). We’ve already made the first ten years, and I can see another ten years for BeOS even without Haiku (look at how long RISCOS is lasting, for instance), and possibly 20-30 more with a solid Haiku R1 and nothing further ever happening. 50 years it not pushing it.
Every time theres been a “new concept” in operating systems since the late to mid 1980’s, its been rejected. Standard WIMP GUI’s are here to stay…
Good luck in all your endeavors, Rudolf! May you find whatever it is you’re looking for (if you haven’t already). Nature has a way of reminding us to pause and realize the things we truly want and need. If this doesn’t include Haiku or even computers at all, then so be it. Life is too short to spend doing things that don’t bring you joy.
…for years for BeOS/Haiku/Zeta. Thank you for all your hard work and have some fun!
i think this guy just discovered what life is all about. it happened to me a few years ago and it lasted no longer than a week or two. i had alot of fun for a while and i dont even remember checking my mails during that short period of time.
but one day you just wake up and its raining outside. you pick up the phone and everyone is working. guess what you do? and then you kinda rediscover computing again.
you know, life isnt all about computers but its cool after all. when im really bored, i just do something different and sometimes i just plug my c64 or some old 386 back and i realize how much fun i had during all these years. unfortunately, good days are gone, well most of them. but sometimes…its still cool to be here!
It happened to me, too, whenI fell in love like a mule, some time ago. Life feels much more real since then, and I am doing plenty of new things, and requiring more of myself. If something similar hapened to Rudolf, I say, go for it, we won’t stop you now!
at least oss volunteers _can_ decide for themselves to have their own life.
if he was a codemonkey and paid salary from a big company then that company decides what u do.
you end up being “skills” and “resources”.
this rudolf probably will be back sometime lol
at least oss volunteers _can_ decide for themselves to have their own life. if he was a codemonkey and paid salary from a big company
If he was a codemonkey at a big company it wouldn’t be an issue because he could do it for a living and then clock out to live a real life. Instead of doing the 9 to 5 and then coming home to work an unpaid second job.
There’s a lot of good to be said for the open source philosophy. But, love it or hate it, I think most would agree that it’s hard as hell to juggle work/school, a social life, and even a moderate sized coding project at the same time.
In some way, software developers are a uniquely stupid breed. This is particularly clear when you look at open-source games. How come open-source games have sucky sound and graphics? Answer: People who can do professional-quality sound and graphics work get jobs doing that, and their time costs much more than free. By contrast, many people who can do professional-quality programming work seem to do it for the sheer fun of it.
Suppose I develop a software application (cost to me: no money, lots of time), and then charge $20 for it. If 2,500 people buy it, I’ve just earned $50,000, which is pretty respectable for something that should take /well/ less than a year’s worth of work (especially if you write it in a language like Python). If 5,000 people buy it, I’ve earned $100,000 — not bad at all. Certainly, this is the kind of money you can live off.
Now, suppose I develop that same software application, but I put it under the GPL and give it away for free. Now, maybe well over 5,000 people will use it, but I won’t get anything except a few donations. Instead, I’ll have to get a job at some company, which will take up well over 40 hours a week (since there’s also commuting, etc.) and a lot of my energy. I’ll probably spend much of my most productive time working on someone else’s project, and I might not make as much money.
So why is there so much software under the GPL, when basically no other skilled laborers would even consider giving away their work for free? Here’s the reason I can think of: Some programmers are comfortable with risk — they start startups. Others want security, and so they wouldn’t want to take the chance that they might starve. But they still want to make their contribution to the world, both selfishly (something to be remembered by!) and altruistically (if you have talent, use it to make the world a better place). Any extra income they could earn wouldn’t be worth the pain of having to deal with angry customers, the IRS, and all that. And GPLed software certainly lasts longer than closed-source software (which almost definitely dies with the company/developer).
That said, there comes a time when you have to ask yourself: how much is this all worth, really? Any software I write isn’t going to be used in 10 years, maybe not in 5, maybe not in 2. Maybe, rather than creating a “legacy” this way, you should just stick with your day job (and if you don’t like it, get a new one!) and spend the rest of your time doing something /else/. Or, if you really like your project (and other people do too), then make that your job; sell the program, quit your job, and use /that/ time to do something else.
My point (if I even have one anymore) is this: If you’re a commerical software developer by day and an open source developer by night, you’re doing two jobs and getting paid for one. That just isn’t fair to you, and everyone who uses your program could give up $20 much faster than you should have to give up $50,000 (which is basically what you’re doing). And really, life’s too short to spend the whole thing doing two jobs, especially when they’re both the same thing.
The moral of this story is that I don’t see this as “sad news” at all. Yes, it means that Haiku will take longer to reach fruition (if it ever does), but if more people adopted Rudolf’s philosophy, we’d all be much happier whether we have Haiku or not.
What a sad world you live in where money is the only motivator and the value of all you do is zero if you don’t get paid for it. People are social animals and have been doing things because they enjoy themselves doing it or to help eachother out.
Consider the busker who stands on the streetcorner playing for his own enjoyment and spare change “donations”, or the grafitti-artist who creates his works of art because of the kick he gets out of people seeing and admiring his work. Consider mormon barn raising where people get together to help other likeminded people out and have a good time doing it.
The guy enjoyed helping out his peers by using his coding talent and apparently made a lot of friends doing it, don’t cheapen it by saying it was worthless because he didn’t get money out of it. Now he wants to focus on another part of his life, I hope he enjoys whatever he will be doing next too.
“What a sad world you live in where money is the only motivator and the value of all you do is zero if you don’t get paid for it. People are social animals and have been doing things because they enjoy themselves doing it or to help eachother out. ”
What an even sadder world it would be if people with such skills that take massive amounts of personal investment in time and energy (and often money) were unable to make more than a meager living doing it or be forced to make their income doing something else they don’t like because nobody thought they had the right to expect pay… “free as in beer” doesn’t work when you expect that out of accountants, stock brokers, etc.
“Consider the busker who stands on the streetcorner playing for his own enjoyment and spare change “donations”, or the grafitti-artist who creates his works of art because of the kick he gets out of people seeing and admiring his work. Consider mormon barn raising where people get together to help other likeminded people out and have a good time doing it. ”
Going by your weird incorrect statement of “mormon barn raising” (I believe you were searching for the Amish – they raise barns as needed, in groups: those of the LDS church also do large service activities as well, but aren’t exactly known specifically for raising barns, and in major contrast, the LDS church very heavily uses technology and has the world’s largest geneology database available online) I’m making a wild guess your “grafitti-artist” is someone on the street that paints whatever they want wherever they want without getting explicit permission and approval: those aren’t “grafitti-artists” but purely vandals, who would serve their needs much better by writing code for themselves and for the public’s pleasure to use, if so desired, instead of defacing other’s property and making the area look bad. The type of “grafitti-artist” that doesn’t get explicit permission from the owners and violates their properties don’t have such altruistic motives, but as much as anything, have anti-social motives in mind, such as seeing what they can get away with and not get caught.
“The guy enjoyed helping out his peers by using his coding talent and apparently made a lot of friends doing it, don’t cheapen it by saying it was worthless because he didn’t get money out of it. Now he wants to focus on another part of his life, I hope he enjoys whatever he will be doing next too.”
This part I can completely agree with: regardless of how he was paid, he learned many things from it, and earned respect and other intangibles as a result: for example, I’m gratefully using one of his 2D nVidia drivers in the machine I’m typing this on right now. When you don’t feel like you learn anything new from something you’ve been focusing so much time and energy in your life on, it’s usually a sign that you need to change focus, because you’ve reached a stage of burn out. It’s also common to burn out on something you’ve put more time and energy into than you should have at the expense of the rest of “real life” and is a dangerous thing to do career-wise and life-wise, and needs to be balanced out, preferably by living life in a manner where you don’t focus too much on any single thing for too long, and you take vacations from your various activities you focus heavily on.
Going by your weird incorrect statement of “mormon barn raising”
Oops, yeah stupid mistake. I indeed mean Amish, but it’s just an example to illustrate communities have been getting together to get complicated things done that benefit their members for as long as there have been people.
You have a really negative view of grafitti BTW. The park around the corner where I live contains some *amazing* pieces of art, including portraits celebrating births and such. There’s also a guy who has been going around painting ladybugs on various ugly walls along the route of my train to work. How can it be vandalism when it’s so damn beautifull ?
Where it isn’t expressly permitted by the property owners/maintainers, it is vandalism, end of discussion, regardless of any perceived beauty. Please see the main dictionary definition on http://www.dictionary.com for reference. I ask you this question: what would you do if you had a piece of property and someone decided to “redecorate” without your permission? What if you for some reason wanted it to look exactly one way, perhaps symbolic? Would you truly want someone putting their name on your property, or initials, or sign that they’d been there? Perhaps such things don’t happen in Belgium, but in the US it’s even possible that some of what you might consider art is used to mark the territory of gangs. There might be a lot of artistic talent involved in the graffiti, but if the owner didn’t give express permission for it, it is still vandalism. Also, the owner usually ends up footing the bill to cleanup graffiti due to various laws and local ordinances, since studies have shown that once graffiti (I’m referring to anything that isn’t expressly permitted under the category of art) goes up, so does the crime rate in that area, so a lot of the more progressive cities have decided to be very aggressive at removing it ASAP.
Now, to get back on topic, people who are defacing the property of others clearly need to get to work on something like code for free, or something, because they’ve clearly got their lives in the wrong balance of too much “play” and not enough work, and they aren’t benefiting themselves or others nearly as much as they could be. Rudolf clearly needs to get out and smell the roses, instead of listening to cooling fans and hard drives, because he’s been too focused on work
Working in law enforcement, I wholeheartedly agree with Jonathan. We are currently working a case of tagging and property damage at a local grocery store that is unoccupied but slated for reopening. Some of the grafitti is indeed artistic, but the majority is not and it is all done by a local street gang. The property owner is obviously not happy at all and even if we manage to find the taggers the owner will have to spend several thousand dollars and many hours of time to repair the damage.
Art that interferes with or destroys someone’s livelihood ceases to be art in my opinion. It rather becomes just another invasion of one’s space and personal property. There are wonderful examples, even here in Atlanta, of artistic grafitti done with the owner’s or, in the case of public property, the city’s blessings. There is nothing wrong with artistic grafitti when done with permission. However, street taggers who vandalize another person’s property, regardless of artistic intent, are breaking the law as well as disrespecting the property owner.
Back on topic as well, I hope Rudolf enjoys his much-deserved time with his family. I am looking forward to the future of Haiku and I know that it will be here in full form much sooner thanks to his work. Best of luck to him.
Probably the best thing said here in ages.
I can’t see any good old “Download ” link on the haiku website (Am I stupid or sth ?
).
I recommend checking out the Haiku Wiki at http://haiku-os.org/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page
There you’ll find, among other things, links for downloading images. Be advised that Haiku is still in alpha phase.
On topic: Good luck for your future projects, Rudolf, and thanks for all the fish!
This ‘Real Life’ commenting is just a veiled attack on the FOSS community. He’s probabl;y got a job with Microsoft.
OSDL and others are paying money to FOSS projects now but whetever.
I guess since FOSS isn’t mainstream it’s not Real Life.
Well, I know what has the higher priority in my life:
Family or Coding – the winner is Family a any time.
But perhaps Family isn’t Real Life?
This whole thread is silly but I will continue to discuss since I have heard this phrase I think too much in the community.
He does explain a little more here at the end of the BLOG entry:
“Before continuing life, hopefully finding inner tranquillity; Before continuing life in a much more complete, sensitive, loving and personal way, I need to do some soul searching. So, I’m taking a time-out. I’ll probably not respond to Email much.”
So he wants to take time out from his work to rethink life, that’s cool.
Also I consider anything that is heavily concetrated “work” wheather money or not.
Family can be work sometimes but that’s not a bad thing. Maybe he just needs to cool off. Anyway, Haiku looks great and I hope he stays with it. Seems like he has a TODO list there. I do like the name better then BeOS.
Reading his blog entry, it sounds like what a lot of us are going through. He just feels it’s time to take some time out, experience different things and take stock. Nothing wrong there, it happens to us all and I wish him peace and tranquility.
Who knows? Community pojects being what they are, maybe he’ll take some time away and come back more enthusiastic than ever? It doesn’t look as if he’ll be gone forever, and he’ll be doing one or two bits and pieces.
Reading this was a bit scary actually, since I was just thinking about this the other day while reading Rudolfs blog. I was wondering where he got the motivation from since he obviously puts a lot of energy and effort into writing haiku drivers. Few people put that much time into their hobbies. And I was actually thinking about asking him if he ever thinks about focusing on other things that could perhaps be a bit more worthwhile. Not that what he’s doing is unimportant, but I don’t get the feeling that it’s getting _him_ much further. But I was afraid that it was going to sound rude, so I kept it to myself.
But I am happy that he gave this some though and decided to change his priorities if that’s what makes sense to him. Sometimes you can be stuck in a narrow tunnel and you dont see all the other possibilites in life. I’ve been there myself, a lot of times, and I regret always taking such a long time to realise it. Always make it a habit to question what you are doing and why. And as long as it makes sense, keep doing it.
He has done a huge amount of work for the Haiku/BeOS community, and he has always done it with a smile. I remember years ago when I was doing bug reports on his matrox driver, and I remember thinking what a nice, friendly and dedicated guy he was. Also a very talented developer.
I don’t know if you are reading this Rudolf. But I’d like to thank you for all your hard work and I wish you the best! Have fun!