FreeLists / openbeos / [openbeos] Re: To Whom may interest... (I wanna be a beta-tester...)

["Michael Phipps" <mphipps1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>
>    To Whom may interest,

This is usually "To whom it may concern:"

>    Hello. My name is Cristian Iorga (aka Ubik3000 on ICQ). I'm from Romania
>(I guess this doesn't count as a bad mark, doesn't it?). I hope that my
>english is readable (and enjoyable... ;-) ).
>    Ok, let's cut to the subject. First of all, I love BeOS. But I don't

        Don't begin a sentence with "but". 

>like the lack of professional audio applications for BeOS (but this is
>another story). I want BeOS to continue as a OS dedicated for multimedia (or

Needs a preposition - I want BeOS to continue on as an OS dedicated to 
multimedia.

>at least to have the strongest multimedia support in the OSes world). So, if
>BeOS is not gonna be continued from now on, I want to support the OpenBeOS
>solution. For the start, I wanna help by being a beta-tester (I say for the

(gonna and wanna, of course are not proper) "To begin with," not "For the start"

>start, because after I gain some experience, I wanna be a part of a
>development team, if this is possible). So, make profit of me. I'm open to

Make use of me, not make profit of me

>proposals from you. I hope that you gonna take my proposal seriously (I
>consider myself to be a very serious man... I forget to tell... I'm a
>male...). I wait for your reply.
>
>P.S. : If you gonna reply to me, I expect you to correct my english mistakes
>(that's a method for me to improve my english) :-). Thank you in advance.

You asked for it. :-) :-) :-) I am often called on to be a proofreader, but I 
make
people crazy sometimes. :-)

>    Future is Now.
        The future is now.

So. Anyway. About what you actually said. :-)

There are a lot of new people around. The mailing list is now at ... around 120 
people.
There are about 10 of us active. That means that there are 110 of us lurking. 
That is OK.
Lurk all you want. But if you want to contribute, I will find a place for you. 
Talk to me.
We need lots of people. Heck - we need people to write preferences apps. That 
is 
fairly close to "intro to programming BeOS stuff". We need people to spread the 
word.
We need people that are proofreaders for a new BeBook that is in development. 
We need
people who know code, who don't know code and people who want to learn. I would 
like to
start a planning group for the future (R2 and beyond). We need more help. 

I will do all of this on my own, if I have to. Really. Quick story - I was an 
Amiga user. I know this
pain. :-) When it became ... clear that the Amiga was dead (yes, I know what is 
going on now - I
am talking about 1996-1997) I sketched out designs for an operating system. I 
still have those
designs, and if you put those designs, the Be api and Atheos in a bag and shook 
them up, you
wouldn't be able to tell the difference between the 3. I mentioned (and showed 
the design) to a 
friend. His jaw dropped about 2 feet and he went to a workstation and showed me 
Be's web site.
That was when I knew that Be and I both had something. :-) 

I know that I won't have to do this on my own. There are a dedicated group of 
people out there. 
A few more joined today. A few fall away at times. Honestly, as "leader", I 
always wonder why.
But no one has convinced me, yet, that there is a better idea than what we are 
doing. There are
easier ways (run Linux, for example). Easier, but not for me. There are harder 
but cooler ideas
(dump the Be API and design our own cool, neat API). There are lots of things 
that CAN be done.
This is the one that we have chosen. I think that we have a good chance of 
pulling this off. There
are some neat things coming soon. Really. Progress is not as fast as we might 
like, but there is 
progress. I hope that it encourages you as much as it does me - I spend 3-4 
hours a night on OBOS
related stuff. From source control to documentation to mailing list admin. I am 
so excited by this stuff
that it is the high point of my day. I can forsee a future, not too far off, 
when we can start to run our
own pieces completely in place of Be's. Look at mail_daemon. They can and havbe 
done it. We can
too. 

Thanks