Does Haiku discriminate based on political assumptions?

Marketing
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After some conversations, I am left with the understanding that Haiku has a policy of not working with journalists who have non-Left-Leaning personal political stances (even when the publications are non-political).

Being as this (the Marketing Forum) is the only official press contact option for Haiku, I am asking for an official answer to the following questions here:

  1. Does Haiku have a policy against speaking with journalists with specific political ideals?

  2. If so, what are the details of that policy?

  3. Does that policy extend to users, developers, financial supporters, or others involved or interacting with Haiku?

  4. Who created that policy and how can they be reached for comment?

I ask these questions as a long-time supporter and public advocate for Haiku.

I would have asked this question privately but, again, this is the only option Haiku provides for press inquiries.

-Lunduke

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Dunno. But if you can put it out there that all the trendy, urbanite, woke, vegan avocado-on-toast scoffing masses are giving away their MacBook Airs to switch to Haiku, we will be forever in your debt!

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Hi. Please use a different outlet for politics. Thx.

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No.
We do not have any policy on who may or may not communicate with specific journalists. Why would you need such a thing? And if you did have it how would you even enforce it?

The rest of your questions are not applicable since you are asking from an incorrect premise.

That beeing said this is not a political forum and members here generally prefer not to discuss politics.

This is obviously not an “offical” answer since I do not speak for the project as a whole, but then other developers do not either, Haiku is not a legal entity ypu could ask.

(Haiku Inc is, but it exists only for donations.)

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I am not discussing politics, nor have I proposed to discuss politics with Haiku members or employees.

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I have been told that such a policy exists – and some Haiku members/ employees clearly think it does.

Who can speak to this in an official way?

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Again, nobody can. As I’ve written above: Haiku, the project, is NOT a legal entity, and as such does not have members or employees.
There are no contracts in place that could bind me or any other contributer to anything.

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Are there any roles, formal or informal, within the project?

Examples:

During a release, who writes and issues a press release?

When a journalist reaches out, who do they reach out to?

When a server bill needs to be paid… who pays thay bill?

Surely someone within Haiku has some role or responsibility. In some way.

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Whichever developer has time and wants to do it?

Depends, usually someone sacrifices themselves as a press contact for a release.

Whoever rented it does.

Haiku has a very very flat hierarcy, we simply don’t have an overboss, people perform different tasks in different areas depending on their expertise and what they want to do. But nobody signed a contract to be here, and nobody signed a “don’t talk to journalists” waiver either.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but there simply is no conspiracy here.

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Doesn’t Haiku have a full time paid developer? Who pays that person? Who hired that person and decides when to not pay that person?

Surely there must be some structure to facilitate that. Looking for those contacts.

Again: I am told (in very certain terms) that there is a policy. Looking for verification for or against that. Perhaps you are simply not part of – or aware of --that portion of the Haiku organization?

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No, Haiku does not, Haiku Inc employs waddlesplash… which you could very easily find out, the pay comes from donations… Which I’m sure you already know since you claimed to want to donate in relation to that NFT fiasco 2 years ago.

Haiku Inc does not hold any power over Haiku as a project or any developer. it merely manages some donations.

If all you wanted to do was contact Haiku Inc it wouldn’t have been tooo far fetched to search it up in a search engine and click the “Contact” link on the page? Contact the Organization - Haiku, Inc.

In any case, you will just find out that it’s managed, as time allows, by the same developers (that have the time and will to do this) that are in the project too…

Not sure where you live but here witholding pay is illegal.

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There we go. Making some progress.

Who are these individuals?

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I’ve linked the page for you above, surely you can navigate a website on your own?

Here is a direct URL: About Haiku, Inc. - Haiku, Inc.

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What is your relationship with the Haiku project or Corporation?

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I contribute code?

There is no Haiku corporation. If you mean Haiku INC that is a non-profit organization.

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What is this inquiry in reference to specifically? By long time observation, I’d say politics are avoided in this user group. There have been comments over time about not agreeing with other projects stances outside of Haiku. What is troubling you to have to ask this?

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We have this page as community forum guidance:

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Hi Bryan,

I responded to your mailing list post but there is no such policy. I’d like to know what prompted this belief, or who said that.

We have had various people over the years in the mailing lists or forums who have gotten belligerent and we tend to ban them, I suppose they have grudges. Some of the messages they post are were related to calling out one of our developers for their left-leaning political beliefs but the banning is generally related to the annoyance and bad behavior not calling out politics.

I am a member of Haiku, Inc. and the treasurer and I pay waddlesplash when he sends invoices. I also do the financial reports each year. Hopefully the Haiku, Inc. website has enough information to explain things.

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I am not sure who you have been talking to but I don’t think there is much formal policy at all and certainly no stance on anything political. I’m sorry to hear that you or anyone else has this impression about the project.

I know there was the thing about NFTs that did not get much support but I think that was more about issues with NFTs than anything else, I for one really appreciated the sentiment of the idea even if I didn’t think NFTs were the right solution for haiku due to the environmental impact.

I think if you are struggling to find who you can talk to for an interview the most likely explanation is that the developers are busy and a bit shy and no one particularly wanted to volunteer to be interviewed.

I think the press/marketing side of haiku is basically just some people on the forum/community with relevant skills/interests who said they could help out writing material/images and doing some other bits and pieces. This just means that the devs dont have to do it and they have more time for developing. The marketing team aren’t formally associated with the project in an organisational way. Similar for e.g. the forum mods.

The only formal structure/legal entity is haiku inc that mostly deals with donations and how to use them, pay server bills etc, and copyright/trademark/IP issues. Haiku inc doesn’t have any control over how the project is managed or directed, or any involvement with development or anything like that, at all.

The developers have control over who can commit code and have a voting system to decide when someone should be granted commit access. Code goes through peer review in any case, and there are some rules around how many approvals from people with commit access are needed before something can be merged. So basically the only “power” in the system is having commit access or not.

The decisions about how the project moves forward are basically when someone wants to work on something they do it. They discuss it with other devs as necessary, and the code goes through review. There is a list of ideas and other resources on the website too. But there’s no formally laid out plan or assigning of tasks. And literally anyone can write code and submit it on gerrit.

So everything is really informal, basically.

And my relationship with haiku is none, I am just a user and, very irregularly, a code porter. So take everything I’ve said as non-official and possibly wrong. But I’ve been closely following haiku since the start so hopefully I’m not too far from the mark.

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I’ll respond over there and take this off the forum. When I posted the question here I was unaware of other options for this discussion to occur.

And I have no interest in causing any sort of conflict within Haiku over this.

-Lunduke