[haiku-development] Re: Beta1 and R1 release plan
- From: Adrien Destugues <pulkomandy@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: haiku-development@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 2 Nov 2014 21:25:55 +0100
On Sun, Nov 02, 2014 at 12:04:19PM -0800, Niels Sascha Reedijk wrote:
>> The goals here are multiple:
>> * Finally provide a stable release which third-party developers can use
>> * Setup a better release cycle so we can put out releases more frequently
>> * Let the developers work on more exciting things without making them
>> feel guilty for not working on the important R1 stuff
> Overall I concur with the goals. What is missing here is the end-goal,
> meaning why are we still working on Haiku? Quoting the mission statement
> from our homepage: "Haiku is a new open-source operating system that
> specifically targets personal computing. Inspired by the BeOS, Haiku is
> fast, simple to use, easy to learn and yet very powerful.”
>
> Is that still our main goal? To create an operating system that specifically
> targets personal computing? Or have we evolved to the goal of a fun
> playground for OS-developers to play around with modern OS concepts?
As far as I'm concerned, we have already reached the goal of creating a
great desktop operating system. I've been using Haiku for years as my
main system and I wouldn't trade it for anything else.
The goal that we have not completely reached is to create a 100%
compatible BeOS R5 replacement. We are "close enough", and the remaining
issues are too difficult to solve and probably not worth it, since BeOS
users have either moved on to other things, or found other source of
software (Java and Qt stuff as well as new native software) to continue
using Haiku.
>
> I am making that assertion since the three goals are seemingly in support of
> that mission. The 1st one, to put out the beta as soon as possible, really
> leads op to 2 and 3, which is to better enable a playground for developers to
> do cool new stuff.
>
> Note that I am in no way upset about this evolution of the mission. In fact,
> I do think that the PC-landscape has changed dramatically since the inception
> of the project, and I also underscore that there is a clear lack of focus
> when it comes to accomplishing our current mission. I would go so far as to
> say that the severe lack of interest of developers into finishing R1 is a
> great indication in that there really hardly seems to be any place for a new
> (mainstream?) desktop operating system anymore? Even the Linux on the desktop
> guys seem to have ceased preaching their gospel.
>
There isn't a change to the mission of creating "an open-source operating
system that specifically targets personal computing". I don't think we
can reach that goal while keeping our anchors to the BeOS R5 legacy
anymore. It is time to get a release out, and let our developers have
fun working on the project and come up with some great new ideas on how
to make the system better. Being a fun playground for the devs is not a
goal of the project, but a way to keep the developers interested into it
and making things happen. There are already a lot of ideas floating
around.
That being said, you have a good analysis of the situation: some of the
developers (including some who agreed on this proposal) are working on
Haiku not because they want to use it as their main system, but because
they use it, as you say, as a playground. I think this is fine, as the
results of such experiments is production quality code that we can put
into a release (the most recent example being package management).
This is why it's me stepping up as the release coordinator for beta1 and
R1. As an Haiku user, and as a 3rd-party app developer, I have more
interest in seeing the release happen than Ingo and Oliver do. An
earlier plan discussed during this week was to not do any stable
releases from the Haiku project, similar to what AROS does (leaving the
work of doing releases to distributions such as Icaros). I did not agree
with this, and this led to realizing that we all have different visions
of what Haiku should be. But this is fine, and there is space for all of
us in the Haiku project.
--
Adrien.
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