Maybe it should have a blog/news page, did that occur to you? Seriously people. Aside from the lack of an official announcement, @leavengood’s post no way would be valid for “membership”, since a consensus following a board meeting would be required (Inc. people can correct me if I’m wrong). It’s technically not even an announcement, just asking for help for the tasks that current Inc. members fail to fulfil.
I am a bit baffled by your post, for one @jt15s isn’t a member of haiku inc, and certainly isn’t responsible for their website design, so what good is it to use this hostile language?
The haiku inc board members may quite obviously choose any venue of communication, including this forum, where is the problem there? It’s not required for the inc to maintain a blog, and it especially makes little sense since they don’t have any steering power anyway.
I think by now the potential board members (that is, ones that the inc would even consider letting on) are quite aware that the inc wants new members, or help there. A blog on the inc website community members basically won’t see anyway doesn’t make much sense.
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I appreciate your thoughts, but I don’t think you fully grasp how legal entities work. Therefore I’d rather save my further opinions for the possible replies of Inc. members only.
My post was asking for people who would be willing to join the board, with the goal of helping to remedy perceived problems. The first step in any “board election” is a slate of people willing to be on the board. That is what I was asking for here, and this forum is probably as good a place as any. I could send an email too, or maybe post an announcement on the website.
It really is not so easy to spend our money as you might think. We have an amount that is enough to pay decently but still not close to enough to hire someone at USA wages for even a year. And we cannot just spend all our money hiring someone because we have other costs. If we put an announcement up offering some huge contract amount we will get all kinds of random applicants, just like tech jobs do, including people who have never programmed in their lives. Have you ever done technical hiring? In this case it is even worse, because if we hire someone unqualified we will still have to pay them even if they do nothing or actively make things worse. Pay them from donated money it took years to accumulate.
We had one very good possibility of hiring an existing Haiku developer, but for personal reasons that developer decided to not do it. We can’t force people to work for us either. That leaves us back in the situation of having to deal with random applicants. We have one current person we are vetting for a contract and I hope it can work out, but there also need to be realistic expectations. People will be disappointed if they expect a new contractor to solve the 3D acceleration problem in their first few weeks or months.
You may not like the situation, but your disappointment won’t fix current problems. Complaining won’t make current inactive board members decide to spend 20 hours a week they don’t have trying to recruit and manage a developer. Which is why I am asking for some help. It doesn’t mean one person has to take on the load, but if we had a few more people who could be more active that might help a lot. I don’t know if there is any magical solution beyond people willing to do work.
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Plese, you are super aggressive with everyone and that is not appropriate. Calm down and relax.
Also I think you don’t understand how Haiku and Haiku inc operate and work together. The inc is intentionally a passive entity and very behind the scenes. It is not here to do marketing, outreach, or anything like that. It is here only because we need a legal entity to own a bank account. That’s all it’s meant to do. That’s all it does. All other parts of the governance of Haiku are kept very informal. That is also intentional. It allows us to keep things working with our limited time (remember we are all doing this in our free time, which varies, and according to our motivation, which the aggressive tone of users like you is clearly not helping with). The informal nature of things allow people to jump in and out as they want or can.
So, if you have complaints about the lack of outreach and marketing, Haiku inc is certainly not the place you should complain about. It is none of their business. And if someone needs some funds for an outreach effort (things we typically do: travelling to opensource conferences to advertise Haiku there, print some flyers, …) then that someone needs to start setting things up and then ask the inc for funding. If you expect the inc to take initiative, you are somehow misled about its role in Haiku.
I know at least extrowerk has applied for joining the board a few month ago. What happened with that? He is a long time community member and I expected to hear about this a lot sooner.
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This is nice to know, but also disappointing to see that it only comes after a post criticising the current status quo (I remember a similar post of yours just after a similar enquiry a while ago too). Please make an announcement on the website, otherwise it will be forgotten just like the other forum posts of yours.
As for the other parts about the spending money and hiring a developer I am aware of the difficulties, so we are on the same page there. But I wonder, I remember making a suggestion directly to you to increase the donation threshold to something higher like $50k, so that it will make the project’s intention known to everyone that “Haiku is looking for the financial resources to hire a developer continuously”. You did not agree to that, but said maybe a lower amount would be acceptable. Was this discussed with the board? Why there is no official feedback about this? Why the suspense?
I am not aggressive, this is how I write. If anyone is offended by my words, they can speak directly to me, and I will apologise if necessary.
I understand this perfectly, and this is the exact thing I am complaining about. Haiku Inc. should not be a passive entity, instead it should evolve to cover the whole community, and give everyone who contributes to Haiku an official chance to participate in governing Haiku. I don’t see any other output but Haiku benefiting from this.
I got no answer.
instead it should evolve to cover the whole community, and give everyone who contributes to Haiku an official chance to participate in governing Haiku. I don’t see any other output but Haiku benefiting from this.
What you are proposing is a huge change of direction from the way things are done currently. The current situation is that Haiku is built by the people who can put work in at any given time, and the main decision body is not Haiku inc, but the Haiku development team, which is an informal (again, that is intentional) group of people with largely unwritten rules. You get co-opted into that group after a while if the existing members of the group think your contributions are good, your attitude and tone are appropriate, you are trusted by the other members, and you agree with the general direction the project is going.
Being part of the development team grants you:
- The ability to give +2 votes on Gerrit and merge changes
- A vote right in decisions where a vote by the project is needed
You have been around for a while and you probably have noticed that votes happens never or very rarely. The reason for that is that is very simple, we can usually discuss things and agree on the way to go (with input from the community) without needing a vote.
You may have not noticed that some members of the development team are not software developers. “development” is to be taken in a broad sense here, and the team has some users, and in the past also had people from the marketing team as well (we will probably do that again with the new marketing team as it gears up and starts doing more things).
Admittedly this organisation is a bit diffuse and loosely documented, however this has been improved a few months ago with an update to Governance | Haiku Project . Some of the rules are unwritten because it gives us maximum flexibility in the way we do things, or at least that was the idea. It probably does not work as well as it should, because rules that are unwritten (and therefore unknown or not fully known) are more difficult to challenge.
From your messages, it appears that you are either ignoring or rejecting the fact that the decision power is in the hand of the development team, and instead demanding from Haiku inc that they take control of the project (something they are not expected to do). Sure, it would be possible to do things this way. But I think we have to start by acknowledging the current situation and working from there. So, the first thing to do would not be to ask the inc to start doing things. It would be to ask the development team (who is currently responsible) if they would be ok to transfer some of their powers to the inc or other entities. I think you can see how, as a member of the existing development team, I perceive the way you handle this as agressive.
Why not accept the way things are done currently instead? If you think someone should join the haiku project “official” member list, I think anyone can nominate them, and see if someone in the existing team would vote against it and have convincing arguments for their vote. That will be much easier than completely reworking the way things are handled. And the decision to transfer the decision power from the development team to the inc would go through a vote or discussion in the development team first, anyway. Or at least that’s how I see things for a peaceful transition. Ignoring the development team in this discussion makes it sound like you’re trying to kick us all out of Haiku and replace us with another governance entity. While the end goal of having a more formal and organized workforce is understandable (still debatable, but understandable), the way you are going about it is not appropriate. It is probably not intentional from you, and caused by the way things are loosely documented in this area. I hope this post helps clarify my view of the situation.
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Not ignoring, but rather seeing development team transitioning to Inc. itself, and becoming some sort of foundation members. Under the foundation they would serve in the foundation board, and lower level members would have an incentive to contribute to Haiku more in order to continue their memberships. This contribution requirement would be valid for the development team as well. Generally it shouldn’t be a problem unless someone totally abandons the project.
This wouldn’t have any effect on the current commit accesses. It is more about integrating both structures into one, more flexible structure. It would be something similar to The Document Foundation.
This is understandable.
In the current way I do not see any incentive for the Inc. members to change the status quo. They can continue their membership, and the Haiku project would possibly miss the chance to evolve standing on the shoulders of an already present legal entity. Haiku Inc. could have become an Haiku Foundation, and open its arms to everyone officially. Currently it is very monolithic, and cannot even fulfil its own duties. Personally I find it hard to fathom that 5 people cannot find a way to make 10 minute meetings at least bimonthly or something.
Sorry, I will try to follow up on this. Obviously none of the other 4 members of Haiku, Inc replied either. For me, I saw the email, did not get a chance to reply, and then forgot about it. That I seem to personally have to deal with all Haiku, Inc business is part of the issue.
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That is a fair point. I will try to get a meeting scheduled soon to discuss some of these issues and hopefully we can get a quorum. At that meeting we can see about scheduling more regular meetings, and we can follow-up about extrowerk joining the board.
Edit:
For me, I saw the email, did not get a chance to reply, and then forgot about it.
Turns out we did have a short discussion and then it went stale and nothing else happened. As I said above we will follow up on this. Sorry again 
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I replied to your PM and then after a week or so I forgot about it. I have a lot going on in my life and I try to keep up but I forget about a lot of things, both at home, at my job and for Haiku.
Part of the issue for this is I think we should work out a situation with a contractor before asking for more money. Once we have some success there I think it will prove that donations are going to something valuable and people will be more motivated to donate.
We had a plan for a contractor, then the person involved needed more time, then they decided it would not work out. That honestly was a big part of the “suspense” on this issue, not even Haiku, Inc dropping the balls. I tried to communicate a lot of this but there was a lot of waiting time on our side too.
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Ok, now it’s more clear what you have in mind.
I think it would not help with the work of the inc board. It would mean something like this:
- Developers would need to formally join the inc to take part in some votes
- The board of directors (or whatever you want to call it, but restricted to 3-5 persons probably) would still have to run the nonprofit, check the bank account balance, approve payments, etc. We can’t just let all developers/contributors access the bank account directly. Also they would probably still deal with contract proposals and contact with paid developers, because this often involves personal data (at least bank account number, but also potentially health issues, it happened at least once that a contract had to be stopped because of that and we wouldn’t want such things shared with a wide audience).
So, basically, it means more paperwork (to track who is or isn’t a member and to track who is active) and otherwise no change, the same persons would still be in charge of the same things. Would it result in more things being done? I don’t know. I expect it would not change anything if it’s just the same people.
The people running the inc are doing so because, essentially, no one wanted to. It is not fun work. Maybe it would work better if we had a set term (let’s say 3 years) for the board members and elections every 3 years (ideally with not all members renewed at the same time). I think it would help for the current member if they want to leave, mainly because it will be a set date and known in advance and lets everyone prepare for it. And it will help for other people to have a more well-defined process to apply.
That is a simple change that could improve things a lot on the inc side.
Maybe if you consider that one is in New Zealand, one in Germany, and two in the USA in different timezones, and they would have to schedule the meetings outside office hours and other personal constraints, you can see why meetings are probably not the best solution here. Using e-mail makes things a lot simpler for everyone in that situation.
But details aside, in general, it seems a more formal decision process for the inc should be put in place. Even if it happens asynchronously by email, they should at least make sure that the request they receive are handled (be it someone offering to join the inc, discussions on contract work, or anything else). Indeed “the discussion has just stalled and we did nothing” is not great to hear.
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More paperwork, yes. But having developer team on the board of directors would probably help to ensure that Haiku is run by technically minded people, and people understanding what Haiku is, in order to preserve how Haiku differs from the rest of the operating systems/software available. Having a situation like Mozilla, where non-technical people making controversial decisions would not be ideal I guess. Some failsafe mechanisms would be nice.
All current board members of Haiku, Inc are also developers, though most of us are not very active as developers right now. So maybe the status quo is fine, just people need to be more active in Haiku, Inc? I actually think adding some non-developers to the non-profit might improve things, especially if they have more time. It will also provide a different perspective on things.
The core of the problem for Haiku itself, and Haiku, Inc, is time passed, some people had families, others just got busy with other concerns, and it is hard to find time with so many competing issues. I will say my family and managing my home takes a lot of time. When I am done with this post I need to eat before going outside to continue some extensive landscaping work. Such is life 
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I just want to add a bit of my two cents here.
Firstly that the Inc. is not as non-responsive as it is otherwise when push really comes to shove, so to speak, and money should or must be spent: we had multiple rounds of infrastructure migration that required the Inc. to shoulder some changing financial burdens, and the Inc. was able to get a quorum and approve those changes. Similarly, when @PulkoMandy or others have organized coding sprints, the Inc. has offered to and subsequently covered a significant chunk of the costs for those events. For less important matters, indeed the Inc. has a ways to go, but at least for vital things related to the use of money, the Inc. has kept up so far (and that is really what they are there for.)
Secondly, I am almost complete agreement with @PulkoMandy and @leavengood on this thread about the governance and direction of Haiku as a project, i.e. that it resides in the hands of the “Haiku team” and not in the hands of the Inc, which more or less does whatever the team requests of it. I of course share in the pipe dream that one day the “Haiku team” is majority employed by the Inc. full-time, but I think even then that the Inc. would still not be calling any shots, but that the team (or some kind of team leadership, if we had to create something more formal with more activity occurring) would still be directing the Inc., not the other way around, despite being employed by it.
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Late to the party, but yes… Haiku, Inc. does not manage the direction of Haiku (the operating system) itself.
Haiku, Inc. does have a duty to ensure all donated funds to Haiku, Inc. are used for “the advancement of Haiku”. In the past we have compared cost to effectiveness and made some hard choices (choosing to not spend money or not continuing to spend money on things we deem ineffective). This is why we generally keep (some) active / former developers on the board. There are some gray areas.
If you really need a steering wheel that should cost $50, but it costs $50,000… you would be doing a disservice to donors to buy it no matter how much you need it.
I think I have a better idea than I used to have of what the Inc does and doesn’t do, and I am happy to accept Waddlesplash’s statement that it is effective at disbursing funds when necessary.
I also entirely agree with PulkoMandy that the main stakeholders (the developers) are the people who should have (by far) the largest say in the management of the project.
However, there are in my view, two problems with the current set-up.
The first is that Haiku is now approaching the stage where it will be unleashed on an unsuspecting world as a viable, and in many ways better, alternative to established operating systems. Yes, there will be limitations, especially as regards hardware compatibility, but that shouldn’t stop Haiku being an attractive proposition for a great many people.
And at that stage the OS is going to need much more in the way of structures and procedures than it does currently. Jt15s is making a valiant attempt to get a marketing group off the ground, and some of us have offered help with accounting and legal matters. But we are all operating in a vacuum at the moment because there is no proper recognised decision-making body. There is no defined individual or group of people who can authorise the marketing team to spend money or kick off a proper marketing campaign.
And unless or until a structure exists that facilitates action, Haiku will continue to be nothing more than it is currently, a group of developers producing software.
Which leads me to the second problem, and that is that while it’s right that the developers should control the Haiku project, they are by definition a group who have one skill. Many skills are going to be needed if Haiku is going to succeed.
Free software is great, but there is no such thing as no-cost software. Somewhere and somehow, money has to be found to run what, if Haiku is successful, will be a much bigger operation than it is currently. And all that is going to need people and structure and admin and marketing and IT etc., etc…
So let’s stop talking about the Inc, and concentrate on finding a simple, transparent, structure, under the ultimate control of the developers, which can provide the basis for building an operation with the tools that a modern business needs.
I’ve been looking at what other free software organisations do, especially the successful ones. In some cases the set-up is (in my view) unnecessarily complicated, perhaps reflecting the fears of developers that they could lose control to men in suits. It’s a valid fear, but it can be taken too far (as, I think it has, at LibreOffice).
It would be interesting to hear of similar operations with a simpler but effective structure. Because we have to do something.
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You have misread or missed something that I said earlier. The “development team” or “haiku project” is not constituted only and exclusively of developers. We had marketing members in that team in the past (Koki and later mmadia) and will happily have the new marketing team included there as well.
We also have users who spend a lot of time testing, reporting bugs, finding reproducible test cases for existing bugs. We have people doing UI mockups and suggesting improvements to Haiku.
The software developers know nothing (or not enough) about marketing, UI/UX design, and all other needed tasks. We know this to be a problem, for example see our attempts to have design tasks in Google Code-In, that faield because we are unable to mentor such tasks. When we asked GCI contestants, for example, to design a new flyer or poster to promote Haiku at conferences, the results were not good enough to use. The cause for that is a badly defined task (we don’t know what we want to put in the flyer in the first place) and lack of people able to mentor the task effectively, and give useful feedback on what needs to be improved.
This is one example where I think the marketing team can help. They should be the ones able to design a new flyer and poster. Probably they could be the one handling the logistics of manufacturing and shipping DVDs of each release (I did it for beta1 because no one else did). If they need money to press DVDs, print flyers, or something like that, they can ask the inc and I think there should be no problem.
So, in summary, the “development” in “Haiku development team” is to take in a broad sense, not just “software development”. I know the use of this broad sense in a software-oriented context is unusual and perhaps confusing. But when we last discussed this we did not find a better wording. Calling that team “the Haiku project” I think doesn’t really help in identifying who we’re talking about exactly.
There is a paragraph trying to expain this at Governance | Haiku Project but it is open for improvement.
It’s hard to be simpler than what we have
In the past I had said that not writing down our rules allowed us more flexibility to change thing as we needed. But I now think I was wrong about this. When no one knows the rules, it is impossible to discuss them efficiently and decide what should be improved about them. So I think we should work on that first: better document what we have. Then we can review it and see what changes are needed.
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Just putting in my two-cents:
Thank you for the offer! I myself (and I’m pretty sure my fellow promotion team members) would love to join.
We’re working on flyers and posters, but unfortunately our members are quite busy, so there may be some time before we see any new promotional material. Apart from DVDs, we have discussed USBs as well as items like t-shirts, but we’ll have to work out how to get that set up and talk to the Inc - DVDs and USBs are harder since we have to figure out how to get Haiku burned onto the media and whether the company we order with will be willing to do that for us.
I agree that this term is confusing - we should use another term like the “Strategic Team” or “Leadership Team” (this needs work). However, it would be good to define what the Haiku Project is too - is it everyone in the Haiku community?
Good point - then we might have better discussions on how we can improve rather than having to explain how Haiku works over and over again 