In the Haiku FAQ, under “What is the Haiku project?”, it says:
“The goal of Haiku R1 is to be source- and binary-compatible with BeOS R5. Improvements to Haiku will follow only after R1 is completed.”
I think these statements may be doing a disservice to what I believe Haiku’s actual goal is, by implying that R5’s limitations will still be there.
I know this may sound picky, but that is the way I think it would come across to someone not familiar with the project, and it could certainly prove to be a tunoff for people that may have the initial intent of contributing to the project.
My understanding is that Haiku R1 will have certain improvements over R5, such as a BONE-style network stack, JAVA, 2GB memory limitation (instead of the current 1GB), and maybe even others, and I think this should be clearly stated in both the FAQ and the “Our Goals” page. Something like the following would be a lot better.
“The goal for the initial 1.0 realease of Haiku is to create in principle an operating system that is source- and binary-compatible with BeOS R5, but without some of its limitations. When compared to BeOS 5.0, Haiku 1.0 will have a faster and more robust network stack, will overcome BeOS 1GB memory limitation, and will include JAVA (add here any other improvement that you know/think/expect will make it into Haiku R1). Further improvements to Haiku will follow after R1 is completed.”
Yeh I agree with you Koki, it probably does need a little updating.
Actually, what I am pointing out may sound of not great importance, but how your project is percieved by potential contributors can actually have a great impact on whether they feel compelled to contributing their time and skills or not to the project.
I agree. Your replacement text is still short and to-the-point enough to fit into both those pages easily, without the inaccuracy of the current text. I hope it gets changed soon too.
I’ve mentioned this so many times I’m beginning to get tired of saying it. As well, I feel R1 should have a new look for the controls and everything so people glimpsing a screenshot don’t simply think “I used that in 1999 and it didn’t support my hardware”. But I did that argument to death on the mailing list.