[openbeos] Re: news: development mailing list, distro guidelines

  • From: "Urias McCullough" <umccullough@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: openbeos@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Sun, 20 May 2007 08:12:17 -0700

On 5/20/07, Simon Taylor <simontaylor1@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Koki said:
>
> These changes would not be intrinsically intended to create a separate
> distribution from the official one, but simply to make the Haiku demo
> experience more accessible and interesting, and therefore enhance its
> promotional effect.

If Haiku considered itself in a state ready to be handed out as a demo CD, 
there would be an official pre-alpha demo release. There isn't (not sure on the 
VMWare image you mentioned), for the reason that the experience is not yet 
anything like R1 should be. Yes, so it basically works - which is great to see 
if you're an ex-BeOSer who thought the goal unattainable - but it's unoptimised 
and pretty slow, still pretty buggy, and not all that stable.


Haiku needed to consider itself in a state ready to hand out as demo
CDs years ago - when they needed to find developers. It didn't, it
hasn't, and it doesn't appear to have any intentions to before the end
of this year.

What were all the BeOS DR versions for again? How many long-time BeOS
users were introduced to the DR versions?

The fact is, you can't attract developers by standing on your island
and screaming at them with a megaphone - you have to enter their
domain and leave your message where they'll trip over it.


The fact that there isn't a base distribution yet does make hard to know what to do with 
people wanting to build stuff now. I don't think allowing the use of the Haiku name is 
the way to go though. The disclaimer "not the official Haiku distribution" 
could be changed until such a distro exists.


It is very unfortunate that there's no base "distro".  But even if
there was, what software would be included? Has anyone even started
thinking about this? Has it even been discussed? Is there a list being
maintained somewhere that community hasn't seen?

Some people are obviously putting in the effort to generate this list
themselves - people like vaspers of BeOS Max and the Pingwinek author.
Maybe it's time to tap their talent and desire to help and get the
ball rolling. All it takes is a couple emails and I suspect things
will start to happen.


In the case of a CD produced to demo at a single event, say SCaLE, the distro could be 
called "SCaLE 2007 Demo", and then lower down on the CD it could include the 
text:
"This CD is based on pre-release Haiku code. The Haiku project will release an 
official distribution of the OS when it is ready. For information about the official 
Haiku project, please visit http://haiku-os.org.
This software is work in progress and has missing functionality as well as many 
(known and unknown) bugs. Use at your own risk.
We are not affiliated with Haiku, do not contact them for support."


That's very interesting - marketing to developers and technical users
with a demo CD and then treating them like average users... That seems
like an effective way to turn away potential developers.

The disclaimer is fine - but I would replace the last line with
something to the effect of: "We support Haiku's efforts, if you are a
developer or otherwise interested in improving the quality of this
fledgling OS, please contact Haiku to help!" You get more flies with
honey right?

Sometimes I wonder if the Haiku communiity and admins truly want to
grow, or if they want to hide their OS from the world and stay small
forever...

Well, anyway, sorry for the semi-rant.

- Urias

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