Maybe we could put more info on the wiki, like jt15s did on their spreadsheet ?
This is a good idea about interviews with developers. Perhaps a predetermined set of questions that would reveal what each developer is passionate about and what they are working on. Things like that, like a spotlight on a developer’s insight. Also could have an app spotlight (preferably native apps, but all app development) that showcases Haiku. I know we are in Beta and it may seem premature, but it will help all that are non-devs to see what is going on in the Haiku-verse. As an end-user, I would be willing to help you with this endevour, however I can. Let me know.
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Hey there! Thanks for offering to help! I really appreciate it since currently, it’s just me working on promotion.
I like the suggestion about the predetermined questions - it means we can quickly fire them off to different developers and this saves time and effort. Could you perhaps work on that and maybe post a first draft on here (maybe as a Google Doc or something similar)?
I also like the idea of an App Spotlight (we could even call it that). We could choose a new app or group of apps (depending on how many new apps are being developed) each month. I was thinking we could have an ongoing series of blog posts and maybe we could even update the HaikuDepot app and website to have a carousel showcasing the selected apps.
An important thing to note is that the spreadsheet is more for people who are interested in promotion to see who’s done reviews of Haiku and whether we could perhaps contact them again to ask if they wish to do an updated review.
I may write up a template to do this soon so a new message doesn’t have to be written each time.
We could all post our questions for the developers here to see where the interest goes, or ask non Haiku user what they would like to know about Haiku and what they expect from Haiku.
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Agreed - every care should be taken to mention that Haiku is beta-quality software and is prone to bugs - we can also encourage people to report any bugs they find on Trac.
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Apart from the reminder that the software is Beta-quality, we also need to mention that not all hardware is compatible, and that before trying Haiku it would be wise to consult the tested hardware list.
In fact, I wonder if it might be helpful to have a black-list of hardware that is known not to work.
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Drivers already try to not to attach to hardware that they don’t support, what more would you need?
Also tested hardware is nice if one wants to get hardware for haiku, it doesn’t have that much value if one has hardware and wants to try haiku, in that case “just boot a usb drive” would probably be the best advice imo.
You might recall a very negative review from a journalist who tried to run Haiku on a rather strange piece of hardware. Anything we can do to avoid a repetition of that would be worthwhile.
Furthermore, there is such a thing as being helpful, and not wanting to waste people’s time. Even booting from a USB drive might cause somebody to waste half a day if he thinks the cause of failure is something he has done wrong, rather than hardware incompatibility.
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If they don’t want their time wasted they shouldn’t have tried beta software, this might seem a little harsh but i think it’s quite clear that haiku won’t work everywhere.
Haiku does not have a nice list of hardware we /probably/ support, like the FreeBSD release notes, we only have anecdotal evidence. We could make such a list but that would require finding out for all our drivers where they run exactly. If we add support for usb in the freebsd compat layer we could likely copy their notes for their network drivers. Seeing as we don’t have a real list of positives i don’t see how we can make a list of negatives easily.
Although we can certainly point out some stuff that doesn’t work: Bluetooth, USB network adapters, extended media keys. etc
Trouble is that that can change rather easily on the nightlies, so would not be such a neat tool for people wanting to test the development version.
I think i know what review you mean, I doubt that such a list would prevent such reviews.
In any case, To me it seems to be a very good thing that reviews are so critical of Haiku, they treat it like an actual contender, not a toy one can put in a vm for a boring weekend.
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It’s called managing expectations. If somebody knows they are sailing in uncharted waters they won’t be so inclined to get frustrated when they hit the rocks…
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It’s already called a beta, not much more to be done on that front.
Hi all, just a little update on what’s going on now.
- I have started a draft of an information sheet about Haiku for businesses, and hopefully I can put this up sometime next week for you all to comment on.
- I am thinking of writing some blog posts for the site, one to clear up some misconceptions about the Project and another to call for new volunteers. Please don’t hesitate to suggest what roles could be filled by new volunteers. So far, I’ve come up with admin staff for the Inc., a dedicated sys-admin so the devs can concentrate on their tasks improving the OS, as well as dedicated moderators for the mailing lists and forums, again, so the devs can concentrate on working on Haiku itself.
Thanks!
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We prefer to recruit “sensitive” roles like this from the existing community rather than complete outsiders. So I’m not sure a call on the website is the bestway to go about it?
For forum moderators, it isn’t a big load of work on me at least. For the inc I think they are reviewing some applications already.
What about simply trying to get new developers to contribute? Also, shouldn’t this be done by updating the “getting involved” section of the website instead of blogposts?
What about a blogpost introducing the newly formed marketing team, to start with? We want to know who you are and what your plans for world domination are 
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That is true - I was thinking of asking for more developers, but there is always that portion of people who don’t code but are willing to help too, so it would be a good idea to “throw the doors open” (so to speak) for them too. I thought of doing a blog post because people are more likely to notice a new blog post on the homepage rather than a page in the Getting Involved section - I am planning to direct readers here too.
That’s a good idea! Might be a good opportunity to ask for more help on the “team” too. I’ll draft a post and put it on here so we can all discuss and refine it.
Just quickly going off track, who’s doing the Activity Report for November/December? I would do it, but I’m not too sure what exactly to write and what to look for.
For the activity report, I’llhave a look if no one else does. Usually I work from the git commit log and try to give some context and more in-depth details about the changes. There isn’t any fixed format however, so if you have other ideas, it’s nice to hear things from different voices.
I will also do an end-of-year report looking at the git contributions stats for the year, but I guess that’s for the december report and not the november one
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I think it might be better for you to do it since you understand the commit log better than I do 
I think the current activity report formats are good - it provides a quick rundown of what’s happened in the past month or so. Maybe it might be worth mentioning too that we are planning a documentation reorganisation in the report as well as the application for a Netlify OSS account and how this year there will be two people working on the Haiku Inc. Report. However, if that’s a bit irrelevant we could simply split that into another “announcements” post.