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

Jorge G. Mare (a.k.a. Koki) wrote:

Michael Phipps wrote:

Jorge G. Mare (a.k.a. Koki) wrote:

Timothy Brown wrote:

As for attracting developers, I think they are less impressioned
by flashy GUIs and more on a technical basis of what Haiku has the
potential to offer them over other operating systems. In other words,
developers don't need a demo CD, they are very much in user land.


Right. And that's why Haiku has so many developers?
Please, let's be civil here. There is nothing in this but sarcasm, and fairly pointless sarcasm, at that. 

I think it does make a point, and a valid one.
But, knowing you as I do, I am 100% certain that you could make it more kindly. :-D
Linux and 3 different BSD's have lots of developers. They sure aren't flashy.
Where did I said anything about being flashy? If you and the gentleman had read my emails carefully, you would understand that I was not talking about making demos flashier with a nice GUI, but more effective as a demo tool and useful. Please, point me to any of me emails in this thread where I suggest anything about being flashy, and then I will take your rebuttal as being valid in that context. 

You didn't. You responded to someone who did.
The problem is convincing the target market that Haiku is viable, successful and useful. If the target market is developers, well, wouldn't developers, by definition, know how to sell to developers?
That's an oversimplification. Being a consumer does not necessarily make you a person with knowledge on how to market to consumers. Or, if you prefer an example that as a developer you can relate to, GUIs are designed for end users, but that does not make end users the most knowledgeable about how to design and create a good GUI.
Having said that, if Haiku takes the position that demos are useless and prefers that non-devs do not pursue this sort of promotional tools, then they should say so loud and clear, so that people who may have an interest in contributing in this area don't waste their time and effort in something that in the end may not be appreciated.
I never said anything like that. I do, however, think that this conversation is hypothetical, at best. Haiku, having decided that it will make a distro, has not yet decided what will be in it. Given that, the question that you originally raised: " Let's say that a user group in country X will be attending an open source conference, and they want to hand out either a Haiku live CD or a CD with a Haiku VMWare image of their making with some customizations like, say, a few additional apps, fonts to support their language, a little localized documentation, and perhaps branding/contact info specific to their user group. "
is probably premature. Since we don't know what our distro will look like, it is awfully hard to guess what will and won't be there.
Having said that, my personal take is that given what we are encouraging people to change (and, more importantly, not change), any additions/subtractions are custom distros and should be treated as such. I don't personally think that there is any point in saying, "well, if you only change this or that and only distribute it this way or that, you can keep the name". That is the world's largest support nightmare, IMHO. If someone says "Haiku does X when I do Y", you can no longer be sure what actual software they have. Is it a broken font borking the app_server? Don't know. Invalid formatted icons? Could be. Maybe a broken compile of something (don't laugh - I have seen it happen).
I am not opposed to demos (are you kidding? I am DYING to hand them out myself!). But I think that there was/is/should only be one official set of software. Anything custom is, just that. You can't be a little pregnant and you can't be, IMHO, a little custom.

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