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

  • From: "Urias McCullough" <umccullough@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: openbeos@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Sun, 20 May 2007 09:24:32 -0700

On 5/20/07, Jorge G. Mare (a.k.a. Koki) <koki@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Simon Taylor 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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."
>
> This doesn't follow the letter of the guidelines exactly (but the fact they're 
guidelines and not "rules" suggests that may be OK). I still think it's a good 
idea to make it clear these CDs are unofficial and to disallow use of the Haiku name or logo.
>

I should have said that I was not talking about a demo for end users. I
was actually talking about a demo CD for developers that you can hand
out at, say, conferences or even seminars.


Thanks for clarifying that. I guess I knew you meant that, but I
realize maybe some others didn't.


Yes, there are some people
out there giving Haiku seminars at universities and even at work, and
for them it would be great if they could easily churn out a few CDs with
some additional stuff such as the development tools, and maybe even some
additional documentation.


This, unfortunately, is not must of a reality yet :( GCC does run
under Haiku, but when trying to build anything bigger than a couple of
small source files, it tends to go south I think.


Haiku already has test images available (both HDD and VMWare); a demo
CD/image for a conference/seminar/etc. would only be an extension of
that, with the same intended audience but a bit more demonstrative of
what it can do, and better suited for the event or a non-English
audience where appropriate. Even if Haiku had an official base distro
today, that will not change the fact that it can be enhanced as a
demo/promo tool by a few harmless additions.


I think the problem is that "few harmless additions" is subjective.
Some may consider an addition harmless, while others may feel it is
distasteful or inappropriate for the Haiku image.

Firefox would be an example (even though it's barely usable in Haiku
at this point anyway) - Many would consider Firefox to be a sub-par
browser to distribute with Haiku, while others would consider it to be
the "best choice so far". It's a debatable point because Firefox *is*
the most useful browser available for BeOS and derivatives, but it is
certainly not performance-friendly yet (nor stable on Haiku).

At this point, I have to assume that the only thing that can be
distributed with the Haiku name and logo intact are the images created
from a virgin build of Haiku. Given the guidelines, possibly this
means supporters will be forced to release this side-by-side with
their "customized" version (where the logo and name have been
removed)? That almost correlates with some recent mentions of a
"second CD" containing apps, etc. that separate distributions can use
to separate their customizations from the base distro.

Localized distributions are even trickier. In these cases, it would
probably be mostly a localized font and input methods (Japanese) and
localized strings. Since Haiku doesn't currently have any built-in
localization support, community members who wish to maintain separate
localized versions are subjected to the same guidelines as other
distros - even if they change nothing else in the system.

It would be nice if there was a program where distribution authors
could seek some type of "authorization" to use the Haiku name/logo for
non-nefarious purposes :)

- Urias

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