Today linux is an operating system very used. It used so much so that will become a standard like Windows. But there are in linux great disadvantages which unfortunately are established in the base even system (structure of the file-system, the kernel which includes drivers…). And also a serious problem with the license: Imagine thousands of programmers throughout the world devote to only one distribution, this single distribution linux would be an exceptional distro quality and perhaps even would be able to be competitive in front of Windows. In short my idea is of saying to Haiku-OS to not make this error and thus to prohibit in the license haiku any person from creating a distribution based on Haiku. In short to force very voluntary programmer to join the Haiku project and not to create them another distribution. Because that would divide the power of the community of programmers. And would generate distributions per hundreds and of course bad qualities. The license of haiku must be modified in this direction ! "Yes, if you give your support in programming to Haiku-OS. But NO you do not have the right of entirely duplicate the system to make another distribution of it!"
Sorry i’m french and i don’t speak english well.
Michael Phipps, project leader, specifically wants other people to be able to create distributions.
Haiku should release a full distro themselves IMHO, and then it will not split developers too much. At least all the code is in one place with Haiku, unlike linux which is split into many seperate projects (kernel, drivers, KDE, file managers - all in different places and worked on by different teams).
Add a restriction, and a large number of coders who have contributed will take their source back. Including me. And I wouldn’t give any more code, or support in any form (donations, tech support for newbies, etc)
Would be suicide. All Linux/BSD/Whatever systems ‘borrow’ code from each other. Always have, always will. Theres FreeBSD source in the Haiku kernel/ c library, for instance…
Not to mention, adding this restriction would probably prevent other OSes such as SkyOS from using pieces of the Haiku code (such as BFS) – as that could be construed as a separate “distribution” of that code.
Ultimately, the code is free to do as anyone wishes - as long as the copyright remains intact.
NO My idea is just TO NOT ALLOW ANY NEW TEAM TO APPEAR FOR TO NOT DIVIDE PROGRAMMERS ON POOR QUALITY DISTRIBUTIONS.
IDEA IS TO PROHIBIT DUPLICATION OF ENTIRE SYSTEM AND OF COURSE ALLOW ANY PERSON TO JOIN HAIKU PROJECT OR TO REDISTRIBUTE ANY MODIFIED COMPONENT ONLY.
OPEN-SOURCE COMMUNITY SUFFER FROM DIVISION OF HER POWER INTO SEVERAL DISTRIBUTIONS !!!
No need to shout. As I said in my first reply, it is Michael Phipps’ intention that others take the base Haiku distros and release modified ones. It’s a vital part of the “free use” stuff in the MIT licencse. If Haiku’s release is good, there wont be much reason to make derivative distros and there won’t be many.
Linux is forced to have distros as they don’t have one main tree as Haiku does…someone has to put all the bits together. For Haiku it will just be a case of bundled app choices. The base distro produced by Haiku themselves will suit most users and (I believe) will be the most popular.
Also potential developers wouldn’t waste time creating a distro - that is just a case of packaging stuff and not writing code. All of the code that goes into all of the Haiku distributions will be dealt with by the Haiku project, and be managed in the Haiku svn tree. Any interested developers will come here.
The question that does remain is whether Haiku should only produce a base distro (similar to R5 PE) and rely on others to make larger distros. I am in the camp that thinks it would be good for Haiku to also create an expanded, possibly paid-for distro (akin to R5 Pro), and not to actively encourage others to make their own distributions. I don’t agree with your belief that Haiku should disallow people from making those distributions, they should just make a good enough release themselves that people don’t feel the need to.
NO My idea is just TO NOT ALLOW ANY NEW TEAM TO APPEAR FOR TO NOT DIVIDE PROGRAMMERS ON POOR QUALITY DISTRIBUTIONS.IDEA IS TO PROHIBIT DUPLICATION OF ENTIRE SYSTEM AND OF COURSE ALLOW ANY PERSON TO JOIN HAIKU PROJECT OR TO REDISTRIBUTE ANY MODIFIED COMPONENT ONLY.
OPEN-SOURCE COMMUNITY SUFFER FROM DIVISION OF HER POWER INTO SEVERAL DISTRIBUTIONS !!!
Err, that kind of licence a: Will CAUSE divisions as most of us would refuse to work on it and b: probably be illegal based on how much BSD and GPL code is in use
HOWEVER: The MIT licence already forbids using Haiku’s name on a fork. If someone forks Haiku, they will not be allowed use the Haiku name or logo to promote themselves. This cancels out most of what you’re getting so fecking hysterical about.
Haiku should be free for everone, and there definently shouldn’t be any “Pro” versions which cost money.
To download Haiku, should be completely and forever free. Isn’t that the point of recreating Beos?
We’ve had these discussion before already.
Haiku will forever be free, and source will always be available. So will the “built package” that can simply and easily be installed on user’s machines.
The point is there are some things that could be added but that would cost money. For example paying for the patents apple own in freetype, paying real to license real player as Be Inc did, paying Macromedia to port a flash player.
These additions could be in a paid-for distro, any profit from which would be the same as donations and could go to fund things like paying full-time developers.
there’s no disadvantage about having different distros. Look, Windows and MacOSX also have different distributions e.g. XP Home, Professional, Business, Server, N, Russian LiveCD edition ( 
), Media Center Edition. Or look into an another direction: there are vendor-specific distributions of Windows XP - ones for Fujitsu-Siemens having some differences to MSWinXP, same for some others.
And why is it so bad in Linux? There are distributions for every kind of desires - Server (Debian, Gentoo, Slackware), Desktop(Mandrake argh Mandriva, Suse, LinDOS), Scientific Workstation(private ones), High-Performance(Gentoo), Minimal(fli4l), embeded (on PDAs) and of course LFS (Linux from Scratch).
And what is about BSD? Ah, yes, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, DragonFlyBSD, BSDLite and so on.
And what is about DOS?
All kinds of DOS flavors(well, all DOS-compatible ones), Windows 1.x-3.x, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows ME - those are all different DOS distributions.
Or Darwin - OpenDarwin, Darwin (private Apple’s system - dunno if they use aqua), MacOSX, MacOSX Server.
Although I took BSD separately, there are also different UNIX-distros made by Sun, IBM, HP, SCO and a lot of others.
As you can see, even Click’n’Flowers Windows has different distributions made for different workspaces. If someone else wants to create a distribution - he should try it. It is even better, if there will be a financially strong distributor since those are interested in providing a good product and so contribute to the main tree(s).
Have a nice day
Server, Desktop, etc. etc. is reasonable but when you have 100+ desktop distributions, it gets a bit of a joke.
I don’t feel like another distro debate, but here is my basic argument.
Linux needs distros, as the code to make a complete desktop OS is scattered all over the web. Haiku has all the code here, so different distros aren’t necessarily needed.
Windows XP’s different editions are commonly to do with what OS-level features are supported and how much you’re willing to pay for them. Haiku distros wouldn’t be like that - they would all share the same core functionality with the only difference being the 3rd party apps that are bundled. Also note that although there are different XP versions, they are all by Microsoft - so at least any money generated goes to the people who work on the code.
So the question then becomes whether the downside of having many distros (confusion for new users, keeping them all in sync with core Haiku changes) is worth the choice they get of which 3rd party apps to download with it, and which to download later. I really don’t think it is, especially with a central repository for software like BeBits.
Finally we get to the financial argument. Haiku are all set up as a non-profit, so they are ready to legally take money for things (non-profit doesn’t mean non-money, just no shareholders getting dividends). If anyone was going to create a paid-for distro I would much rather it be Haiku than anyone else so that they can get some reward for the effort they put in, and so the money will be directly used on improving the OS (ie employing Axel full-time :D) and not just go towards a nice new car for the head of an independent company. This would be on top of the freely available downloadable distro Haiku will also provide of course.
I think you’ll find there will be more of a lean towards a ‘Customized Haiku’. That is, alot of people (Including myself, and i’m sure most people that read this), will create their own Haiku CD packaged with THEIR choosen applications, preferences, drivers etc.
Linux Distributions are there in order to Distribute Linux with a certain look, feel and bundle of applications.
My point is, most will want their own customized haiku, who wants to distribute something thats tailored for their own PC?
Finally we get to the financial argument. Haiku are all set up as a non-profit, so they are ready to legally take money for things (non-profit doesn't mean non-money, just no shareholders getting dividends). If anyone was going to create a paid-for distro I would much rather it be Haiku than anyone else so that they can get some reward for the effort they put in, and so the money will be directly used on improving the OS (ie employing Axel full-time :D) and not just go towards a nice new car for the head of an independent company. This would be on top of the freely available downloadable distro Haiku will also provide of course.
There are some major problems with having a paid distribution with extra stuff in it. For one thing, how would we keep people from distributing the extra stuff, and making the paid distribution worthless? Do we keep it closed source and under a restrictive license? I don’t personally think that’s good for the project.
However, I think it’d be a nice idea for Haiku Inc. (it is Inc., right?) to release a nice, glossy boxed set or something like that. I’d definitely buy a copy, just like I bought my copy of BeOS R5 Pro back when Be was still going strong. I didn’t have any particular need to purchase it; Pro didn’t really come with anything extra (or didn’t at all, I can’t recall), and it’s easy to install PE on a real disk partition. But I wanted to support Be, and was in the position to do so at the time, and I got a nice boxed copy in the process.