From my experience, the main reason why people choose alternative OSes (from Windows) is safer internet browsing. Fast and stable Firefox port, with Java and Flash plugins would draw many current Linux users to Haiku. I persuaded several of my friends to use R5 for safe browsing but they started bitching about lack of Java and Flash support, as well as buggy Firefox. And they chose Linux instead despite of its user-unfriendliness.
They don’t need 10 browsers. Only one (ok, maybe two) but stable and fully functional.
There will be a stable and modern Firefox on BeOS shortly. Unfortunately, Flash is yet another story; one which only Macromedia can assist with.
Maybe BeOS users should apply some pressure on Macromedia, a petition or something like that. I’m not a programmer, but it seems to me that porting Mozilla Flash plug-in from Linux to BeOS wouldn’t be so complicated. Perhaps I’m wrong?
lezo wrote:
Maybe BeOS users should apply some pressure on Macromedia, a petition or something like that. I'm not a programmer, but it seems to me that porting Mozilla Flash plug-in from Linux to BeOS wouldn't be so complicated. Perhaps I'm wrong?
We did. It would be hard - BeOS’s GUI and X are totally different. Macromedia were unresponsive.
MYOB wrote:
lezo wrote:Maybe BeOS users should apply some pressure on Macromedia, a petition or something like that. I'm not a programmer, but it seems to me that porting Mozilla Flash plug-in from Linux to BeOS wouldn't be so complicated. Perhaps I'm wrong?We did. It would be hard - BeOS’s GUI and X are totally different. Macromedia were unresponsive.
See the SkyOS news post from Jan 10th?:
“HEY MACROMEDIA, HOOK US UP!!”
- Haiku/BeOS isn’t the only one with this problem
I’ll be curious to see if SkyOS has any success as they have a somewhat different development approach and community… But I suspect Macromedia could care less…
Linux had the same problem. Now it hasn’t. I suppose Macromedia only responds to pressure, not appeals. They will probably respond only if Haiku takes significant market share.
So is looncraz still working on his flash player project?. OK, I know you’re not very optimistic in this case, MYOB 
Another question for people in-the-know: What’s the difference between Flash and Shockwave? Since you seem to have to install two different plugins for Firefox on Windows…
SkyOS won’t get Flash before BeOS does, reason being that BeOS still has more users
Looncraz’s player is a joke. It is no better than what we already have, it is in fact worse than our current Flash player. The player he’s porting from has a wonderful habit of crashing my Mozilla on Linux/PPC; and I doubt he has the coding knowledge to fix those bugs, let alone avoid introducing more as he ports it.
Oh, and BeOS Mozilla ports use a different plugin API to other platforms, so porting plugins like Flash, VLC, etc is not easy.
Shockwave is for interactive games. ATM, only Windows and the Mac have Shockwave; Linux etc are even ignored.
Flash is one of those things that is not impossible with a bit of money. Macromedia do have a program where you can license the code from them and do a port; that’s what general coffee company did to give us our current flash player, and why they had to charge for it.
I see it as a good candidate for incusion on a “Haiku Pro” CD, where you charge a bit of money for it, and include some paid-for technology such as Apple’s freetype patents and Flash. Whatever’s left would just go into the Haiku donation pot. I’d be willing to bet we could sell tens of thousands of copies, if it was an “official” release from haiku-os.org.
Java is on the way, should be out this year.
Simon
tb100 wrote:
Flash is one of those things that is not impossible with a bit of money. Macromedia do have a program where you can license the code from them and do a port; that's what general coffee company did to give us our current flash player, and why they had to charge for it.I see it as a good candidate for incusion on a “Haiku Pro” CD, where you charge a bit of money for it, and include some paid-for technology such as Apple’s freetype patents and Flash. Whatever’s left would just go into the Haiku donation pot. I’d be willing to bet we could sell tens of thousands of copies, if it was an “official” release from haiku-os.org.
Java is on the way, should be out this year.
Simon
Maybe I missed the point, but isn’t Haiku supposed to be completely open-source and free of charge? Besides that, Haiku.org is a non-profit organization, and they could lose that status if they start selling distros. I’m sure there will be others to sell distros with Haiku components included (isn’t Yellowtab doing just that?). Haiku going commercial would lead BeOS to oblivion, IMHO.
You completely miss my point.
This would not be about Haiku going commercial. This would be about recognising that there are some things in the world made by other companies that may be worth paying for and licensing to include in a paid-for distribution.
I think what would kill BeOS is turning into a linux-like landscape with hundreds of different distributions. I’d be happy with the choice of the free downloadable haiku one, all the source code for it, or a paid for version that contains some key 3rd party things such as flash support.
Also an official CD release could generate a lot more income for the Haiku non-profit, which could go on hiring devs or whatever. Being non-profit does not mean they are not allowed to sell things or handle money in any way - the average head of a non-profit organisation in the us has a salary around $200k according to some report I read. It’s more that the centre of their business cannot be about making money, which should be enough reassurance that Haiku would not be “going commercial”.
The other good point as far as I can see is that it would show other companies that we as a community are not adverse to paying for things. Maybe that might interest some of the companies who had ports to BeOS in progress, or people such as Gobe, that there is a viable market here.
lezo wrote:
Maybe I missed the point, but isn't Haiku supposed to be completely open-source and free of charge? Besides that, Haiku.org is a non-profit organization, and they could lose that status if they start selling distros. I'm sure there will be others to sell distros with Haiku components included (isn't Yellowtab doing just that?). Haiku going commercial would lead BeOS to oblivion, IMHO.
You can have a completely open-source, free of charge OS, but not with official Macromedia flash support. Macromedia owns the “flash player” code, and therefore, even the Linux version is not open-source (although, it is free to use).
In any case, there are open-source flash-player projects out there, but they’re somewhat rudimentary and certainly not 100% functional.
At tb100 stated, Macromedia does have a licensing program for “embedded players and OS-porting” - I dunno what the cost is, but I did visit their licensing page to take a look. They apparently also only give out licenses if they feel you are worthy of one, so you can’t necessarily be some shmuck with a bunch of money (although i’m sure that helps), you must have a legitimate reason to get a macromedia flash-player code license.
Regarding your “completely open-source and free of charge” statement - there is NOTHING preventing someone from building a Haiku distro and selling it… that’s kind of what the MIT/BSD license is all about. AFAIK, the only thing they cannot do is claim that they wrote the code, copyrights remain intact.
It is partially the intention of the Haiku-admins that the Haiku codebase be embraced and re-used by commercial organizations just as such - and there is no obligation to re-release any modified code as open-source if an organization chooses to do so.
In that case, I only hope that Haiku.org would still have their focus on developing open-source software. Take a look at Red Hat, for example. After RH went commercial, new versions of their “community releases” (Fedora, maybe you guessed) aren’t as good as we would expect them to be.
Covering expenses of non-profit organization is ok, but if Haiku becomes popular maybe its founders would start seeing Bill Gates as their rolemodel. I never underestimate temptation of the profit.
lezo wrote:
In that case, I only hope that Haiku.org would still have their focus on developing open-source software. Take a look at Red Hat, for example. After RH went commercial, new versions of their "community releases" (Fedora, maybe you guessed) aren't as good as we would expect them to be.Covering expenses of non-profit organization is ok, but if Haiku becomes popular maybe its founders would start seeing Bill Gates as their rolemodel. I never underestimate temptation of the profit.
You seem to be getting a bit mixed up with the whole ‘free’ and ‘commercial’ aspects of an operating system. From my perspective - Haiku, like Linux, will always be free and always be open-source. However, as several people have pointed out, you have to be realistic in that there are many applications that end users will want to have access to that are neither open source nor free (in the monetary sense). Consequently, you could have a free-to-download-and-install Hakiu distro (consider this maybe the ‘base’ distro) that - like Fedora is to Red Hat - contains only free software. You could then either have a totally separate distro or, better yet, a separate ‘layer’ that contains commercial closed-source applications. This layer could still be downloaded (maybe as an ISO, maybe as a PACkage?) but you’d need to be a licence (or licences) in order to do so.
A nice, easy, solution. The whole world can download a free o/s; those of us who want commercial software as well can pay for what we want and download that as well.
You should also bear in mind that certain cryptographic libraries are classed as munitions by the United States so the export (i.e. allowing people to download them) in banned countries would be illegal (or, taken to the extreme, seen as arms dealing).
As far as the Macromedia side of things goes, Haiku would probably need to prove itself as a popular o/s - once Macromedia start getting bombarded by end users asking why there’s no support for Haiku, then they’ll do something about it. Makes good business sense really.
Lastly, if I were a Haiku developer I’d possibly find your final comment quite insulting. I’m sure by now that the development team (Axel in particular) must have had several enticing offers from software manufacturers. Given that he’s still heavily involved in this project, that surely is testament to the fact that he doesn’t see Bill Gates as his role model?
chris.k23 wrote:
lezo wrote:In that case, I only hope that Haiku.org would still have their focus on developing open-source software. Take a look at Red Hat, for example. After RH went commercial, new versions of their "community releases" (Fedora, maybe you guessed) aren't as good as we would expect them to be.Covering expenses of non-profit organization is ok, but if Haiku becomes popular maybe its founders would start seeing Bill Gates as their rolemodel. I never underestimate temptation of the profit.
You seem to be getting a bit mixed up with the whole ‘free’ and ‘commercial’ aspects of an operating system. From my perspective - Haiku, like Linux, will always be free and always be open-source. However, as several people have pointed out, you have to be realistic in that there are many applications that end users will want to have access to that are neither open source nor free (in the monetary sense). Consequently, you could have a free-to-download-and-install Hakiu distro (consider this maybe the ‘base’ distro) that - like Fedora is to Red Hat - contains only free software. You could then either have a totally separate distro or, better yet, a separate ‘layer’ that contains commercial closed-source applications. This layer could still be downloaded (maybe as an ISO, maybe as a PACkage?) but you’d need to be a licence (or licences) in order to do so.
A nice, easy, solution. The whole world can download a free o/s; those of us who want commercial software as well can pay for what we want and download that as well.
You should also bear in mind that certain cryptographic libraries are classed as munitions by the United States so the export (i.e. allowing people to download them) in banned countries would be illegal (or, taken to the extreme, seen as arms dealing).
As far as the Macromedia side of things goes, Haiku would probably need to prove itself as a popular o/s - once Macromedia start getting bombarded by end users asking why there’s no support for Haiku, then they’ll do something about it. Makes good business sense really.
Lastly, if I were a Haiku developer I’d possibly find your final comment quite insulting. I’m sure by now that the development team (Axel in particular) must have had several enticing offers from software manufacturers. Given that he’s still heavily involved in this project, that surely is testament to the fact that he doesn’t see Bill Gates as his role model?
I am well aware of the fact that there are closed-source, non-free apps, that are needed, like the Flash player. After all, this discussion started mostly because of it. Way of integration into distro is another question. IMHO, “Separate non-free layer and base distro” would be the best solution, as you mentioned above. Whoever wants it would pay for it. Rest of us would have nice base distro, and Fedora/RHEL situation could be avoided.
About “Bill Gates as rolemodel”, I certeinly didn’t mean to offend anyone. If I did, then I appologise. Only reason I mentioned it is because I DO care about Haiku project.
lezo wrote:
I am well aware of the fact that there are closed-source, non-free apps, that are needed, like the Flash player. After all, this discussion started mostly because of it. Way of integration into distro is another question. IMHO, "Separate non-free layer and base distro" would be the best solution, as you mentioned above. Whoever wants it would pay for it. Rest of us would have nice base distro, and Fedora/RHEL situation could be avoided.…
Or, if you wanted, you could build your own free distro, and nobody can stop you 
- the code is free to do as you please, afterall…
I suspect Haiku will remain free - but maybe the creators will spin off a for-profit organization to do as chris.k23 suggests and produce a less-than-free distro packaged with commercial closed-source applications.
There are other ways to profit from open-source software - take a close look at Mozilla and you’ll see that several of the key-devs working on that project also have side-projects to produce commercial software based on the mozilla core.
umccullough wrote:
I suspect Haiku will remain free - but maybe the creators will spin off a for-profit organization to do as chris.k23 suggests and produce a less-than-free distro packaged with commercial closed-source applications.
Personally I’d like Haiku to stay for non-profit, but still release a paid for distro. That way you know 100% of the money goes to a “good cause”. It would act as more of an incentive to donate than actually be bought (donate $35, get a CD copy of Haiku free! or something)