What i am suggesting is using a micro donation / fund raising service like Kickstarter to raise the needed funds to contract developers and get haiku up to scratch with modern day operating systems.
What we need:
A good pitch : Not one thats harking on about the technical benefits of haiku, they don’t care about that. What they care about is unique ideas, so we need a unique pitch.
A target: Someone needs to sit down and number crunch and figure out how much is needed to hire contract developers to do the various needed tasks.
This is part an idea, part a drive to get momentum behind the development of this project. I hope that we can see this take hold and followed up on.
As for funded “contract” development - Haiku, Inc. has funds to do this already - the challenge seems to be getting developers to actually commit time to a development idea and request the funding.
Kickstarter has been kicked around (ha, get it?) as a potential funding method, but so far, there seems to be a lack of actual developers rather than a lack of money.
Well i know about bounties but thats more ‘if you do this you will get this money’ rather than, ‘we give you this money and you do this’.
We from what i have seen they don’t really have enough to entice experienced developers who have not had any involvement in the project before, i think there should be a greater push for professional developers to work on this. down setting up a Haiku foundation, training courses, and paid support contracts would be a good way get a revenue stream for this project (I think most of the developers would agree, that it would be pretty great to be able to leave their job and work at Haiku inc full time).
Get more media attention, get funding, structure Haiku Inc ilke a business and the developers will come. (Maybe a more modern site which uses HTML5 might be a good idea, id happily lend my expertise )
[quote=fortheloveofhaiku]Well i know about bounties but thats more ‘if you do this you will get this money’ rather than, ‘we give you this money and you do this’.
We from what i have seen they don’t really have enough to entice experienced developers who have not had any involvement in the project before, i think there should be a greater push for professional developers to work on this. down setting up a Haiku foundation, training courses, and paid support contracts would be a good way get a revenue stream for this project (I think most of the developers would agree, that it would be pretty great to be able to leave their job and work at Haiku inc full time).
Get more media attention, get funding, structure Haiku Inc ilke a business and the developers will come. (Maybe a more modern site which uses HTML5 might be a good idea, id happily lend my expertise )
Again this is just an idea.[/quote]
I have siad many of the same things. BTW if you know how to make a really snazzy html5 site I’d love to see it.
I think one of the biggest hurdles for haiku is that the os name in and of itself kind of draws some sideways looks from folks. kind of like, really, haiku.
Yes I have noticed this. Naming is part of product presentation.
Well the one thing i don’t think we are going to get the team to change is the name, (although OpenBeOS was pretty cool, kind of like OpenBSD or something)
As for the site ill do a couple of mockup if i can find the time tonight and get back to you. Now that IE is at version 9 and FF is at 4 there is a lot more support for HTML5 then their was this time last year so using things like CSS3 letterpress font shadowing might be just what the site needs!
I think he must be doing multiple-series(es) of tutorials. Maybe I have missed it if it is somewhere else on the site, but it would be good to clearly layout links to all his(?) series/articles because they are a good way to boot-strap interest in developing with Haiku as they are quite readable. Maybe providing a link to a ZIP file of all of the “lessons” with an “index.html” (and keep the ZIP updated) may be the best way to make this material available?
Alpha-2 is mentioned prominently on the home page, but it may also be worth making the link to “nightly ISO downloads” just as prominent. The reason is that if somebody is doing development they probably want to see where things are at.
Although it would obviously be great to one day have something like “Eclipse C/C++” or “NetBeans C/C++” on Haiku, Paladin seems like the best IDE which is available now. It maybe a good idea to fairly prominently present a hyperlink to Paladin?
I wonder if it is possible to cross-compile applications for Haiku from another platform where a more sophisticated IDE is available? If this is something people are doing, maybe an outline of how to achieve this would be a good idea as well?
From several years of personal experience raising funds for bounties (at Haikuware) to further Haiku’s development, umccullough hit the nail on the head. Finding capable and knowledgeable developers is extremely difficult/the problem.
[quote=fortheloveofhaiku]Well the one thing i don’t think we are going to get the team to change is the name, (although OpenBeOS was pretty cool, kind of like OpenBSD or something)
As for the site ill do a couple of mockup if i can find the time tonight and get back to you. Now that IE is at version 9 and FF is at 4 there is a lot more support for HTML5 then their was this time last year so using things like CSS3 letterpress font shadowing might be just what the site needs![/quote]
I don’t think the name should be changed, its part of the culture now, its a matter of figuring out how to present it at this point.
I think he must be doing multiple-series(es) of tutorials. Maybe I have missed it if it is somewhere else on the site, but it would be good to clearly layout links to all his(?) series/articles because they are a good way to boot-strap interest in developing with Haiku as they are quite readable. Maybe providing a link to a ZIP file of all of the “lessons” with an “index.html” (and keep the ZIP updated) may be the best way to make this material available?
Alpha-2 is mentioned prominently on the home page, but it may also be worth making the link to “nightly ISO downloads” just as prominent. The reason is that if somebody is doing development they probably want to see where things are at.
Although it would obviously be great to one day have something like “Eclipse C/C++” or “NetBeans C/C++” on Haiku, Paladin seems like the best IDE which is available now. It maybe a good idea to fairly prominently present a hyperlink to Paladin?
I wonder if it is possible to cross-compile applications for Haiku from another platform where a more sophisticated IDE is available? If this is something people are doing, maybe an outline of how to achieve this would be a good idea as well?[/quote]
Many of the worlds best and most productive developers are interested in the financial benefit. If you want developers, attract users. The dev’s will come in droves if there is financial benefit. Problem is, nonprofit work doesn’t put shoes on teh kids and food on the table.
In reality the focus should be on desktop usability and just making sure ALL basic functionally of an A typical modern OS is implemented, at least roughly. This will attract users to the platform. It also might just be a good idea to start thinking “Hey, what if Be Inc and BeOS where still around, how would they have evolved the Be desktop” and work from that. Of course raising money to support the current developers and allow them to put more of their attention to the project and bringing in contract developers (you need to go looking. they won’t come to you, i know more than a few professional and highly skilled native developers, but they just won’t get out of bed for anything less than serious money.) Maybe also approaching a major collage with this project might be a good idea, i have no doubt there will be interest (i can also help you with that if needed)
Maybe people like the “hobby OS” tag that Haiku currently has, but if there is any one who wants to see growth they might want to consider my suggestions.
[quote=fortheloveofhaiku]In reality the focus should be on desktop usability and just making sure ALL basic functionally of an A typical modern OS is implemented, at least roughly. This will attract users to the platform. It also might just be a good idea to start thinking “Hey, what if Be Inc and BeOS where still around, how would they have evolved the Be desktop” and work from that. Of course raising money to support the current developers and allow them to put more of their attention to the project and bringing in contract developers (you need to go looking. they won’t come to you, i know more than a few professional and highly skilled native developers, but they just won’t get out of bed for anything less than serious money.) Maybe also approaching a major collage with this project might be a good idea, i have no doubt there will be interest (i can also help you with that if needed)
Maybe people like the “hobby OS” tag that Haiku currently has, but if there is any one who wants to see growth they might want to consider my suggestions.[/quote]
I wonder what the dev’s really think about haiku being more comercial in scope ? I mean sure hobbys are nice but the quality of the OS is much to good for me to belive that hobby was the original intent. My overall impression from reading back alot in haiku hisotry is that they were making the OS as a platform to sell and develope software with the Be feel and flavor.
would be nice if you could find a way to herd cats and get some focus.
I think the only people likely to be interested in haiku are developers. end users don’t get enough functionality out of the system currently. I don’t think that has as much to do with the OS as it does the sparse drivers and applications available.
Oh sure it is in no state to be used by normal end users at present. What im saying is, if the UI where developed (in typical developer manner, currently the UX has been given a very low priority while the other areas are developed) then we would gather user interest in the platform, once users are interested it in turn piques the interest of software vendors, developers and OEMs. The general rule is if you want your project to succeed, treat it like a business, even if its not.
Would the Haiku development team be willing to add their opinion on future commercialization of Haiku?
I was looking to build community momentum really, just interested to see what the developers thought of the discussion. If they don’t take an active interested in the happening of these forums then that actually be a part of the bigger problem.
Ill amend my first post for the mailing list never the less.
The project has always been largely based in the mailing lists. One of the reasons went along the lines of …
For mailing lists, some person sends an email. you get an email. you read the email, and optionally you respond to it.
For forums, someone posts, you get a email notification (or you periodically visit the website and look at all threads), you visit the website, you read the post, and optionally you respond to it.
Heck, the main motivator for me to view the forums is to monitor and delete spam
I know Haiku isn’t on the same scale as Ubuntu, but one of the things that makes Ubuntu great is its community, and the thing that makes the community great is the higher ranking developers getting involved and helping individuals who are developing software for the platform. There are a lot of really really intelligent and helpful developers here in the Haiku forum with a lot to contribute (helped me on numerous occasions i can safely say) but i am guessing they wouldn’t mind the presence of the people who are in charge from time to time, maybe I’m wrong. I should really be using the mailing list any way.
Also the extract from my last comment you quoted is a grammatical nightmare, sorry about that!
The developers/contributors/users/followers do help newcomers a good deal on the mailing lists. So please, don’t underestimate the Project, community’s willingness to help based solely on the forums (or even a lull in discussion on the mailing lists).
The developers/contributors/users/followers do help newcomers a good deal on the mailing lists. So please, don’t underestimate the Project, community’s willingness to help based solely on the forums (or even a lull in discussion on the mailing lists).[/quote]
The haiku community is one of the best around, noticeably more organized then many other OS groups to.
Thats more due to its small size and the interest its members have, if the size where to grow by any amount i don’t know if the level of focus would be maintained
the organization,focus and goals are pretty integrated into the OS. I think worst that would happen is a bunch of code branchs would get started and not finished.
the community is pretty organized and tneds to rally to stay so from my observations.
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