On 10/11/2011 05:09, Matt Nawrocki wrote:
On 11/10/11, Brian Hague <alphaseinor@xxxxxxxxx
<mailto:alphaseinor@xxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
My point exactly, the argiment is we need developers, but somehow
targeting the small shops is taboo... Reminds me of the old beos
days... Give it away, but only if you sell hundreds of thousands of
computers
we need to stop putting the cart before the horse... We wont get
Dell anytime soon...
Hmm… I see what you are saying Brian. Definitely we need to consider a
course of action then for Haiku, whether it be to start small with the
mom and pops, or wherever else we need to go. I really want to figure
out a game plan because I see potential commercial interest that may
invest in the Haiku ecosystem, should it prove itself to be useful
enough as well as more widespread.
We've got to be realistic here. Haiku is absolutely nowhere near Ubuntu for the average consumer. Ubuntu is now at the point where I would actually install it on my parent's computers if their windows partition got wiped out by some virus. The problem for Haiku (along with it being still alpha software with all the instabilities and compatibility problems that brings) is that there is really no modern, competitive software available yet. I don't count Qt stuff - using Haiku as a base to run only Qt apps (a pre-beta not-officially-supported platform for Qt) doesn't seem very sensible either.
Software availability will change when the core OS is stable, the community larger, and more development time can be spent on applications rather than the system. There are still holes in Open Source Software availability, and as much as I hated the "media OS" branding I am yet to find a decent OSS video editor. Clockwerk may well be the base for that, but it clearly needs work.
I'm afraid it's pure fantasy to think Haiku has a proposition that would remotely interest anyone selling computers to consumers at this point. Right now it's for the geeks, the developers, and the fans. We can build it to be an interesting consumer proposition and I believe we'll get there, but we're nowhere near a point where a random person would walk into a computer shop off the street and think a Haiku machine was a better choice than a Windows/Mac (or Ubuntu...) one.
Simon
