ok, u know, i don’t approve your way of discussing 
but this doesn’t mean i’m not going to read and discuss what you write (have u tried with some chamomile? 
)
I think the truth is almost in the middle. Haiku carries out a very strong heritage and has a very idealistic heart. This is a good thing and it must be preserved because makes cohesion among the community members. Think for example how similar projects (in essence) has failed on this and look at their status. AROS is the first coming in mind, but even ReactOS suffers this lacks of ideals (in facts, they advertise it as “nag free, open source alternative to NT”. Which is good maybe, but it’s not perfect)
(I’m not saying they’re abandonware. I’m just saying they’re cold).
But on top on it innovation could come. I’m not involved into the project so deeply to judge if binary compatibility and drop-in intended usage were good decisions. Probably they were. Shall we have proof of that? How many users in % uses closed-source binary app from the BeOS era?
The real point here: where to innovate first? I mean…innovate is much more difficult than replicate…