Submitted by The Haiku developers are preparing to finalise which features should be present in the first official release of Haiku. “This general interest poll, is to allow you – yes you! – the opportunity to effectively express your thoughts on which features should be present in Haiku R1 (Final). For R1, a balance must be attained between delaying the release and making Haiku R1 a well polished, impressive and feature rich release.”
It almost seems like they want to limit the results to people who really know their shit (AKA developers), because most of those choices are extremely vague and hard to understand from the point of view of someone who would be a user. I didn’t vote in the poll for just that reason; I’d rather not make some stupid choice and have it counted; might as well let those who seem to be targeted, developers. Even though the poll claims to be trying to get opinions from everyone.
I got maybe halfway down the list and only understood maybe 5-8 choices enough to be even semi-confident in selecting it, so I just gave up and closed the page. I wouldn’t mind helping, but damn… could at least give a better explanation of the choices. Or maybe sort them by ease of knowing WTF they’re talking about.
This is gonna sound kinda ass-holish, sorry about that.
It sounds like you aren’t the target audience for the Poll then… A large percentage of those questions could be rolled into a single question: “Do you want all your hardware to magically just work?” – but that’s not a realistic way to approach individual hardware issues impacting Haiku, so they have to be separated into specific problems that affect certain situations.
If you have actually used Haiku, and encountered any of the issues listed there, and then reported bugs on them, you very likely know what matters to you and what doesn’t.
Edit: Note, the hardware example above was just an example, not meant to be an explanation for the entire poll.
Edited 2010-12-10 00:20 UTC
From the article:
“However, there are also elements of a representative democracy, where the voting body will consider the thoughts of the larger user base of Haiku when making decisions.”
“This general interest poll, is to allow you — yes you! — the opportunity to effectively express your thoughts on which features should be present in Haiku R1 (Final).”
I don’t know how you’re reading that, but the article certainly starts off claiming that it’s asking the input of the future *users* or *user base* of Haiku R1. Sure there’s some overlap between developers and users, but if that is their intention, the article is worded in a bad way. Maybe they should’ve left out the “”users” and “user base” parts and just said that this is for developers.
Yes, but it would help if you knew WTF some of the stuff they are talking about to begin with even means. Yes, if you’re a developer and you’re using this currently-alpha operating system on a day-to-day basis to understand all of what they’re talking about, you’re definitely the target it seems. Which is why, as I said, I just cancelled about halfway down the list. Once again, if they were specifically targeting ONLY developers and testers, then they should have said so instead of claiming to target the “user base.”
It reads, to me, as a poll for future potential *users* to come in for once and let their voice be heard. Because face it, developers already know what *their* general opinions among the group are (they are working together and communicating, and have been since the beginning of the project), and it can’t hurt to get outside thoughts.
Edited 2010-12-10 00:37 UTC
I think you’re not giving tech people enough credit. Some of the material there can certainly be understood by non-developers – like the Locale Kit, most of the hardware-related tasks, network pref rewrite, web+ enhancements, etc. As I suggested, if you haven’t used Haiku much, or participated in the community mailing lists, etc., then they may be foreign to you.
The input you can provide on the questions you do understand is still useful, and I encourage you to submit results for those anyway.
I got through it, and I’m a total idiot.
I think you’re wrong there – the developers don’t know what the thousands of people who visit haiku-os.org daily are thinking (many of which are not developers in the project, but are still very likely familiar with the topics at hand). And they certainly don’t know what people are willing to cope with and what must be fixed before R1 is complete.
Perhaps the bigger problem with this poll is that it puts no “scope” around the issues mentioned. If for example “Package management” or “Wifi” was going to take 3 years to finish, would people be so willing to call it a “must-have”?
Edited 2010-12-10 00:51 UTC
Quit trolling.
I know all of jack and shit about some of the questions asked, but none of the ones I didn’t know where more then a 5 second wiki search away since the basics you as a user would need to know are spelled out in the summary there.
Most of the things asked where about drivers, APIs and the GUI. All things you should actually want in the R1 along with some basic documentation so everyone can hit the ground running.
Okay. I’m a troll now for being honest. Gotcha. Riiight.
Edited 2010-12-10 18:18 UTC
No, they don’t. From the first sentence of the poll itself:
The intention of this page is to gauge what you, the users want
Again, from the poll’s instructions:
If you are not sure what a certain proposition is about, select ‘dont-understand-what-this-means’ — this will help to keep accuracy for the ‘must-have’ and ‘only-if-ready’ selections.
What exactly are you complaining about? So you might have to click the “I don’t know” option a lot; your opinion on the things you do know about still helps tremendously. Serious question: If you care so little about Haiku why are you wasting time making excuses not to vote? Why bother even going to the poll in the first place?
If you do care about the project even a little, please take the time to vote even if you don’t think you know anything about most of the questions. I’m no developer either, but I want Haiku to succeed and anything I can possibly do to make that happen, I will.
Serious answer: If I really didn’t care about Haiku, I wouldn’t have:
1. Read this article summary, after having my eye caught by the headline.
2. Clicked the link to read the entire article.
3. Scrolled down to the poll under the article.
4. Proceeded (or at least attempted) to answer half of the damn questions on the poll.
5. And only then decided it was pointless answering so many questions with “dunno” or some “answers” I wasn’t confident with.
So how about you quit putting words in my mouth?
Either way, I’ve said my opinion and I’m done with this thread. Maybe I’ll just delete my Haiku Alpha 2 installation image and avoid all Haiku-related articles from now on? After all, I’m being accused of being a “troll” by Kivada and I apparently “don’t care” about Haiku according to mind-reader Morgan.
Or maybe sometime in the future Haiku will ask for input for outside users and make the questions something they can feel comfortable answering, and maybe then I’ll fill out the form. But I’ll be sure to keep my troll ass out of any elitist Haiku forum posts on this site.
So with that… I’m out of here.
For people interested in doing a little development on Haiku, I encourage you to check out this article:
http://www.osnews.com/story/22903/Writing_Applications_for_Haiku
It’s a little out of date but still worth a look. Paladin is a great IDE to start with and with the last release it now has the ability to read the old BEIDE project files.
Haiku has come a long way, but it still needs applications to make it really great. If you would like a gentle introduction of BeOS/Haiku development look here as well:
http://www.haiku-os.org/tags/tutorials
Haiku is a great OS and it is certainly worth a little of your time.
@UZ64:
Err, as a long time Haiku contributor i feel embarrassed at the uncalled hostility you faced. Your remarks are perfectly valid and quite true, even if i’d like to put things into perspective a bit.
The poll was mainly a one person initiative that didn’t receive the help it deserved, including from myself. The goal was to help selecting the features we want to include in the first stable release (R1), and help spread the work across the next alphas and betas. Like we did for previous releases, it started as a developer only poll on the development wiki with voting restricted to developers and close contributors and was thus very specific and undetailed. Though even as a developer myself, some of the items were somewhat unclear to me, but the thing is that we wanted to go fast and not spend days to develop the poll itself… it was good enough to progress in the internal discussions, and could anyway be refined in another round.
The idea then popped out on the mailing list that we might just extend the poll to a larger audience (just to see what happens really), not really to the general public, but to close followers (mailing list readers etc). The reason that it is a bit raw is mainly by lack of manpower to refine to poll for a larger public (it would’ve needed a specific dev to detail and “sell” each item). This is also the first time we ever did a public poll and were expecting to learn from it for the next one.
And if it might help to remove some confusion and frustration, the person publishing the article isn’t related to the project and might have unwillingly exposed the poll to a unexpected audience. The people calling you troll aren’t part of the project either and probably didn’t understand half of the questions, how much work they represent, what problem they solve or what perspective they offer.
(and sorry for the bad english)
Calm down a bit dude. I don’t recall putting any words in your mouth. I asked an honest question: Why bother with the poll if your previous statements show that you don’t give two shits about the project?
I get it, really I do. I’m sure being called a troll by that other guy got under your skin, and then here I come questioning whether you care about Haiku or not. And fine, take your anger out on me, I can take it and then some.
But to say you are going to delete your Haiku install and never read a Haiku post again because you got butt-hurt in a news website’s forum…dude, that’s just childish and you know it. Come on, be a freaking man and just tell me to piss off or whatever, and drop the emo shit. It doesn’t become you.
And before you try to claim “this is why I won’t support elitist projects like Haiku”, keep in mind I speak solely for myself. If this had been a Slackware or Fedora or BSD or OSX or Windows story and you were pulling this juvenile tantrum, I’d still call you out for it.
Grow up or grow a pair, I don’t care which.
Alright, I wasn’t going to respond again, but I will anyway. First of all, thanks to aldeck for clarifying things. It all makes sense, and it does appear that my thoughts were at least on the right track, despite what some (nah–most) of the others have said. Despite what it seems some people here seemed to have thought right from the beginning, I have nothing against the Haiku project itself and would like to see it succeed.
Second, yes Morgan, I did get a bit irritated with the replies I received–and the “troll” part wasn’t even the beginning of it; that just kind of ignited an existing spark. But once again you’re claiming I “don’t give two shits about the project.” Once again, how so? Did I not make that clear enough yet that yes, I actually AM interested in Haiku? I mean, come on, seriously–I *do* speak English. How do I have to put it for it to be understood? Seriously? And you claim you’re not putting words in my mouth.
Let me make it clear that I did *not* actually delete my Haiku installation images, and I did *not* decide once and for all to abandon checking out its progress. Those types of decisions take some time and thought, and trust me–I’m not that dumb. If anything sticks, I may just avoid Haiku-related topics/articles on OSNews.com. Ever hear of a rhetorical question? Look it up. That is exactly what I said/typed–a sentence not meant to take 100% seriously, but to cause the reader/listener to *think* about something–maybe about, oh I don’t know, something I just said? To be fair, maybe I can blame that at least partially on the fact that it’s hard to get thoughts across on screens in plain text, but still.
Also, while it may have seemed like I was taking my anger from the last few posts out purely on you–I didn’t really mean it to be that way. It just happened to be the way the post was laid out (for simplicity reasons–otherwise it would be a bunch of incomprehensible, unorganized gibberish). It just pisses me off when I give my completely, 100% honest opinion (which an actual Haiku developer clarified to be at least partially accurate) and here come a bunch of people, seemingly not knowing WTF I’m talking about, slamming my viewpoint and automatically taking just about everything I said out of proportion, mocking me, whatever else.
At least *read* and *understand* what I mean before coming to some crazy conclusion and slamming what I say. Look, I’m *sorry* my thoughts on the “article” and poll were negative–sometimes honesty isn’t 100% happiness and roses. But I cared enough to explain my opinion on the situation. And really, constructive criticism is good for anyone–including the Haiku project. Or at least, I *hope* what I said could be read and interpreted as “constructive criticism”. It seems that aldeck understood and took it for what it was, and on top of that clarified the situation.
Now if you don’t mind, I really am out of here–I would like to enjoy my beer.
[Edit: Damn–I might as well have wrote a book. I’d be surprised if anyone actually reads all of that.]
Edited 2010-12-11 07:59 UTC
Okay let me first reiterate that I’m not personally hurt or offended by what you’ve had to say to me. I got really assertive with you and you responded in kind, nothing wrong with that. As I said before, don’t bother sparing my feelings, they don’t get hurt over heated internet discussions.
My biggest issue is that you say you are passionate about Haiku, yet you seemed to try to encourage others not to bother with the poll because you didn’t understand it. Now that we know the source of the poll, we can say in hindsight that you were somewhat justified in that. However, at the time of your first post no one here, including you, knew that information. You came across as someone trying to “poison the well”, so to speak, and that’s what I was calling you out for. No mind reading, no words in anyone’s mouth, just a frank observation of your actions. Combine that with your flippancy regarding dropping all things Haiku (and say what you will about being “rhetorical” but it still stunk of sour grapes) and hopefully you can see why I threw down the gauntlet. I am most definitely passionate about Haiku.
All that said, and please forgive my continued skepticism, but I sincerely hope I haven’t turned you away from the project. It needs all the support it can get.
Eh, I did? I know I’m sounding like a broken record (really, why am I still here?), but I was only stating my own opinion as I see it; I wasn’t trying to force it onto anyone else (honestly, I don’t see how you get that). I mean, by all means, if you feel you are qualified for voting on the poll and really feel like you can help and make a difference–go for it! You would obviously be much better off voting than me. But as I see it, as I mentioned several times already, it’s just not something I, as a potential future Haiku R1 user (not an all-knowing developer), can feel comfortable doing in its present state. I was simply stating that. In reality, I meant nothing more.
I was simply trying to point out a flaw/misdirection (as I saw it) in the article/poll, not trying to prevent anyone from voting in it if they felt qualified to do it.
I understand that to you those rhetorical questions may have “stank of sour grapes” though; as I said, what is read by one person on a screen is not always interpreted as originally intended. That was apparently just one of those cases (and an understandable one at that).
One more thing I want to highlight:
But you see that is exactly what I was criticizing and trying to highlight (I honestly thought there was something fishy about it all along). I wasn’t slamming them–I was simply bringing up a point. Which was later pretty much confirmed for the most part by an actual member of the Haiku team. If I didn’t think something was up, I wouldn’t have bothered to touch this thread. Sure, I didn’t *know* for sure at the time, but I had a sneaking suspicion.
Now, I’m about to get outta here and get some sleep.
Edited 2010-12-11 10:25 UTC
The poll made sense; but not strategically (if there’s no WiFi with WPA2, how far then to R2 is of distinct disinterest to non-Haiku-kernel-hackers as opposed to when it’s really Ready.) You just had a fungus-enhanced lunch or something.
If the buzz is still on, go on and -write- a book, get Syrah Palinn to sign on as coauthor for the epic bearhunt in it, then write sequels with lycanthropic sex in them and arrange with her to take simultaneous profit for never releasing them to sale and for distribution.
I can’t wait for Haiku to get released. BeOS was one the best OS around and I hope Haiku will carry that tradition.
Hello World!
I sure hope like BeOS before it, it includes a working IDE or dev chain ready to compile and debug sample sources (even the old samples perhaps). Working with the old BeIDE and samples was lots of fun in the day. Last time I tried Haiku alpha 1, I wasn’t sure if it was possible for one of the new IDEs to just be installed with suitable sample toy apps.
If that is addressed, I’d think lots more inquiring developers would jump in!
It already has an IDE called Paladin which is the successor to BeIDE. It’s great and very useable! Also, if you are interested, there already exists everything you need to get started developing! That’s what I’m gonna be doing after my last exam.
Edited 2010-12-10 07:00 UTC
Yes, for instance there’s a great introductory series for programming on Haiku by long time contributor Darkwyrm which you can find in the blog-o-sphere section on the Haiku homepage. It’s a work in progress but it already covers/touches alot.
The Alphas did come with a full toolchain (in fact, Haiku alphas and nightlies should come with everything necessary to download the Haiku sources and recompile Haiku itself).
As for a full IDE, it doesn’t come with one yet, but it does come with Pe which is an excellent syntax highlighting code editor. You can also download a more featured IDE such as Paladin and just drop it onto your Haiku install and get to building projects.
As for “Sample Code” – the best sample code is probably the various apps and demos in the Haiku source tree. Granted these don’t come with much documentation, but if you learn how to use the Haiku build system itself, they’re extremely easy to compile and run.
BeOS/OpenBeOS/Zeta/Haiku needs to have much more than a IDE and dev chain, it needs a true OO based graphical interface dev kit like that in OSX to even be remotely successful in the OS world. I hope the developers have the skill set and knowledge to pull this off in C++, which I don’t think is an easy task due to the lack of a runtime object system that is dynamic enough to do proxy class substitution and the poseas-ness that ObjC runtime allows. Good luck, and I mean it. I loved BeOS also but it lacked any reasonably simple model for GUI development.
Paladin was absolutely nowhere near as advanced as BeIDE last time I looked at it. I hope it got a lot better.
Will BeIDE not still run under Haiku? IIRC, it was a separate download – well, at least, I don’t remember it being part of PE. Maybe I’m wrong.
http://dev.haiku-os.org/wiki/FutureHaikuFeatures