[haiku-development] Re: Haiku R1A5 release timeline
- From: "Andrew Hudson" <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> (Redacted sender "hudsonco1@xxxxxxx" for DMARC)
- To: haiku-development@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 29 May 2014 11:01:50 -0400 (EDT)
----Original Message-----
From: Stephan Aßmus <superstippi@xxxxxx>
To: haiku-development <haiku-development@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thu, May 29, 2014 8:49 am
Subject: [haiku-development] Re: Haiku R1A5 release timeline
Hi,
Am 29.05.2014 05:26, schrieb Ari Haviv:
> On Wed, May 28, 2014 at 8:47 PM, Urias McCullough <umccullough@xxxxxxxxx
> <mailto:umccullough@xxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
>
> On Wed, May 28, 2014 at 5:12 PM, SMC.Collins
> <smc.collins@xxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:smc.collins@xxxxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
> > Rant on/
> > This is just getting fucking rediculous. Haiku needs to release
> and it needs
> > to do it literally like yesterday. Secondly, this release process
> is just
> ...
> > Rant Off/
>
> I'm not angry but I hope everyone understands that this whole release
> issue is making it harder to bring in new developers and contributors,
> thus putting a bigger burden on the existing ones.
)
)I keep reading this argument. Haiku has made four releases in the past.
)Is there any evidence that making these releases has brought in fresh
)developer blood?
)
)Making a release accomplishes several things, IMHO:
)
)1) It gives a sign of live and generates publicity and interest in the
)project.
)
)2) It provides the next stable basis for developers to target with their
)applications.
)
)> Perfection is often the biggest enemy of the good.
)
)Ok, but what if its not about making it *perfect*, but about making it
)*any good at all*?
)
)IMHO, 1) and 2) above also depend on the actual release to be at least
)somewhat good. It's not helpful to generate interest in Haiku, when it's
)actually disappointing to try the release. And what good is a sucky
)release as a basis for third party developers to target with their apps?
)Nobody will keep using it anyway. And what then, just keep throwing out
)sucky releases until everyone writes us off once and for all?
)
)So please, we are not delusional about what the quality of an ALPHA
)release needs to be. It certainly does not need to be perfect. But
)please exit the reality distortion field and try to look at Haiku
)through the eyes of any random interested user or developer. There is
)*too much* still *too broken*. And what works nicely is most often not
)actually accessible.
)
)Best regards,
)-Stephan
I'm going to leave this message entirely intact because it is a very
interesting point and very important
to the health and future of Haiku. It also reflects some very different
opinions within the Haiku community.
Stephan's premise is that the popularity of Haiku depends on features in the OS
that are incomplete or broken,
and by extension this drives away developers, and then no one uses Haiku
because of this.
Personally I think Haiku as it is right now is 'good enough' for many kinds of
application development. I personally
believe that the future popularity of Haiku will be driven by applications that
people can use every day, and applications
that show off the differentiating features of Haiku. Haiku is good enough right
now to port a word processing app,
a spreadsheet app, a slideshow presentation app, and many kinds of multimedia
apps. These are apps that
the Haiku community wants right now, and I am not aware of OS issues that are
preventing the development of these apps.
I personally have had communication with developers who have apps that can be
ported to Haiku,
and they have told me they are waiting for the Beta release. Their code isn't
blocked by any bugs,
their code is blocked simply by the release status of Haiku.
I have always been really impressed with the effort of development that goes
into Haiku. Developing the web kit,
developing the packaging system, developing the new scheduler, updating the
debugger, keeping the builds going, fixing a ton of
really hard bugs. You guys are f*ing crazy with the passion and work that goes
into Haiku :-)
But I also believe that the future popularity of Haiku depends on applications
that can show and build on the features of the OS.
We don't have anything good to show the power of the media kit (besides Cortex,
bleh), or the new scheduler, or graphics, etc etc.
For all the hard work that goes into making the OS, we don't have enough apps
to act as a greeting committee for the new users
who are curious about Haiku or who used to use BeOS. This is something I think
the Haiku community should focus a little more
effort on, because it will have a good payback in terms of users, publicity,
and ultimately more developers.
Long winded post, sorry :-) But this is why I support moving to a Haiku Beta
release sooner rather than more Alpha releases. It is because
I think Haiku is good enough for the application development that we need to
grow the community. In fact I think it's pretty darn good.
Thanks,
Andrew
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