[haiku-inc] Re: Replacing OsDrawer - hosting platform for open source (and others?) Haiku applications
- From: pulkomandy <pulkomandy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: haiku-inc@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2012 17:52:50 +0200
On Wed, Oct 10, 2012 at 12:50:52PM +0200, Ingo Weinhold wrote:
> pulkomandy wrote:
> [...]
> > Anyway, the involvement of Haiku, Inc. in such a project would likely
> > help bootstrapping it. But maybe it requires more thinking before
> > entering that launching phase.
>
> I'm not questioning the usefulness of a Haiku specific site. Such a site
> would certainly be nice. I'm just wondering what you're asking of Haiku, Inc.
> Haiku, Inc. has two assets: money and the Haiku related trademarks. So they
> could fund the hosting (I suppose a virtual root server would suffice
> initially and thus hosting wouldn't be that expensive anyway) and allow the
> use of the trademarks. However, they do not have a hidden reserve of
> manpower. So the main issue -- the long-term administration -- still remains.
> I don't think the approach you seem to have in mind -- initiate the project
> and then have others take over -- is realistic ATM. But by all means, if you
> think it is, please go ahead. Just don't expect Haiku, Inc. to provide you
> with things, they don't have -- administrators to take over. (*)
Let's see what happens with the 4 mentionned attempts : OsDrawer,
BeBits, Haikuware and HaikuFire. All of them are today more or less
unmaintained. BeBits was here first, OsDrawer added the idea of hosting
sources, and the two later projects are meant as BeBits replacements.
Without support from Haiku, Inc., I don't think it's possible to get out
of that loop. A project starts, lives from some time, the developper
gets bored and the projects dies slowly. Someone else starts over and
goes for another cycle, on another domain name and with another
codebase. It's a waste of time and the users get lost.
I think having the hosting paid by Haiku, Inc. helps securing the fact
that the website will stay online. The use of the trademarks will make
the site the official place to learn about Haiku software (this doesn't
prevent a marketplace / package manager app on Haiku, possibly sharing
the same app database). This lessens the risk of having some other
website made somewhere else and doing the same thing.
The third thing I'd ask is that Haiku, Inc. gets the copyright of the
website engine and contents. This makes sure that if the administrator
leaves, Haiku, Inc. has a right to take over the website and allows
another administrator to pick up the work. This should avoid the
administrator of the website saying "don't worry, I'll fix it in 10
years when I get some time" and running away with the data. To be able
to do that, Haiku, Inc. needs to own both the domain name that points to
the website, the data, and access to the data (which means it's hosted
on an Haiku, Inc. server somehow).
So after some thinking :
* Let's set aside the issue of hosting development tools. There are
suitable platforms for that on the internet already.
* Reusing HaikuFire sourcecode seems to be the easiest way to go. I did
not have a look at it yet, and I don't know if the licencing fits with
what I mentionned above.
* The contents should be at least a list of apps that run on Haiku,
with user-oriented data (screenshots, aplication description, ...) like
software marketplaces we're seeing for some other OSes now.
* As much as possible, share data with the future package manager
application, which would allow to browse it in a native application in
Haiku.
* I'd like to add information about BeOS apps that don't run on Haiku,
the idea being to show them to developers in the hope that someone will
take over development. If people think this should not be on that
official website, I'll keep doing it on my own server for now anyway.
--
Adrien.
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