âŚvery interesting OS⌠but i never try it out when know its discontinuedâŚ
You needed a license for it to be able to use it, was pretty cool, did some library/game building on it also back then
yes⌠last time when i see the official website⌠creator make it freely download (trial?) but iânot trying it⌠looking screenshot seem very promisingâŚ
and i hope creator released it as opensource⌠but my hope seem not become true
@Starcrasher Found the thread! Thanks for directing me to this. Turns out it doesnât work with GPT partitions though.
I find it ironic that one of the Haiku/BeOS collaborators from 2004 rejected the idea of a driver to read BFS files from Windows, and then turns out some Haiku devs actually needed the tool. Almost like that person wasnât actually thinking about practicality and usability.
Haha, bringing back memories 
Some of that development back in 2007 actually landed me my first job 
Well, usually one can just mount such partitions or external drives inside a Haiku VM running on a Windows host and access them that way; then you get full read-write access of course. I think thatâs the more ânormalâ way to do such accesses. (And, well, this isnât actually âa driverâ, which in 2004 would have been a ton of work, while now itâd probably be less as thereâs ways to build FUSE drivers for Windows now.)
Sure. But if you want people to move to your Operating System, you need the tools to let people transfer their files between OSs, especially in dual-boot cases. I was about 6 years old in 2004, so I donât know how popular VMs were back then, but I first encountered VMs much later, more like in 2008 or 2010 with Microsoftâs Virtual PC. Virtualboxâs initial release was in 2007.
Iâm not sure where you saw that? Especially as this thread starts in 2007. Anyways, I donât really see the irony, mainly because not all of Haiku devs have to think exactly the same way, especially with a timespan of 20 years.
I would be curious who it was and what they said exactly, however. My guess would be they said âIâm not interested in doing itâ or something along those lines, which I would agree withâŚ
That is very complicated and cumbersome. I think turning this into an actual Windows driver and maybe syncing it with current Haiku BFS sources could make for an interesting GSoC project, and would make everyoneâs life much easier.
I donât get the reason for your reply here, it is a âtell me what you need, I will explain why you donât really need itâ and I donât see what it brings to the discussionâŚ
I would be curious who it was and what they said exactly, however. My guess would be they said âIâm not interested in doing itâ or something along those lines, which I would agree withâŚ
Their reply was more along the lines of âwe wonât do that because weâre trying to create our own OS hereâ. Anyways, it hardly matters. Being volunteers is a bit different from being main developers, and so sure, I agree that if someone isnât interested in doing something, then they shouldnât have to do it. But for me personally, if I were to volunteer for a project, I would put effort into more than just myself, because thatâs just how I view software development should work - you program for others, not just yourself, and programming for others is a very rewarding feeling for me, personally. This is certainly a different mindset from most of the open source community though, and I realize that.
The irony is the view that creating your own OS somehow implies you donât need to make tools for other OSs, which I think has shown to be false.
Well, thatâs cool, we certainly will appreciate it if you contribute some things 
I would love to be able to do more work for others, but it turns out, first of all, I need my computer working so I can work on the OS, and that keeps me more than busy already. Everyone has different motivations: writing an OS for their own use, getting some fame and praise from users, earning money, just hacking on very specific topics and learning more about how computer worksâŚ
So I can very well understand why a developer of Haiku in the state it was in 2004 wouldnât put a BFS driver for Windows on their top pile of priorities.
Also, you say I needed this solution, but that is not true: I chose this solution because it was the easiest in the situation I found myself then. This was the case only because someone else had already done 99.99% of the work. Otherwise, I would have taken a different path, there were many possible ones.
So, I appreciate the work, it was helpful in that situation, and I donât plan to get more involved into Windows development, it is beyond my understanding how this system works and why people keep trying to use itâŚ
Well, thatâs cool, we certainly will appreciate it if you contribute some things
I would if your OS worked, but it doesnât. Thatâs usually what happens when you only program for yourself. You cannot expect users to contribute and do all your work for you. I donât understand why Open Source developers donât get that this mindset is like extremely exclusionary and selfish. If you are going to make a project, you cannot be exclusionary like this. The OS is supposed to be for everyone, not just skilled programmers who have the time and money trying to do your job for you.
Also, you say I needed this solution, but that is not true: I chose this solution because it was the easiest in the situation I found myself then.
I was actually quoting you when I say you âneededâ this solution, FYI. If you want to blame me for something YOU said, by all means, but you look foolish. Access BFS partitions from Windows
Any post taking the troll bait will be hidden as off-topic.