Isn’t there anyone on the inside of the circle of programmers that can shed some light on where the project stands currently? What kind of funding is left for our 1 resident programmer? Who is still active in the developement and who has left?
Sure would be nice to have the Official Website give at least that much on even a weekly basis, verses reading through cryptic fan sites for rumors and stories as to how far along we are till we get some sort of finished product. I think if there were some sort of progress shown on its Official website Haiku might get more attention and donations.
Well, for more information, you indeed have to browse some other sites, read the mailing lists, the commits archives etc. Axel D only was employed up to Dec 31st, AFAIK.
I think the sentiment behind being quiet and not intending to attract too much attention for the moment is simply that public awareness of Haiku should only commence after it is in a much more polished state (because the first impression is generally what influences people’s opinions the most).
I beleive ChrisK is right - Haiku needs more time to stabilize before any major public announcements should be made.
The netstack needs some work, an installer/LiveCD maybe needs to be put together, the build tools should be polished up so it can be compiled under Linux with no problems, etc. Partitioning software would be nice, for example.
There are also still a few unimplemented features that need to be finished so that more R5 apps will run properly.
If you know where to look, you can get a very good idea of what’s going on. There are a few blogs around, the mailing lists are teeming with activity still, etc.