An Interview with Haiku
BGA: Bruno G. Albuquerque
Kokito: Jorge Mare
Gareth: Gareth Greenaway, SCALE Community Relations Chair
Gareth: So first off, please explain what your roles in the Haiku community are.
BGA: I have been a part of the Haiku community since it started, I guess…
Gareth: When did it start?
Kokito: Aug 18, 2001.
BGA: First, just working as a developer from the outside but eventually I joined the project officially around 6 months after it started more or less.
Gareth: Was that before or after the name switch from OpenBeOS to Haiku?
Kokito: The project started as OpenBeos. The change to Haiku was in 2004.
BGA: I am still a developer in the project (although with real life taking most of my time).
Kokito: I have been involved in the Haiku project since 2006, mainly in the area of marketing. communications. I worked mainly on the (new) website, and organizing events like the Google Tech Talk last year, SCALE (of course!), Kansai Open Source in Japan, etc. The new name was officially announced at the first WalterCon (the Haiku conference), held in Ohio, sometime in August of that year
Gareth: What was the reasoning behind the name change?
BGA: Basically we did that because there could be potential legal problems concerning the use of BeOS as part of our name.
Gareth: Did Palm ever pursue anything regarding the name? Or was the change a precautionary measure?
Kokito: The latter, as far as I know.
BGA: Yes. Palm never really said anything about it.
Kokito: In the end, it was a positive thing, as it helped Haiku develop its own image and identity.
BGA: Sometime ago someone from Access said Haiku was OK, as we were recreating BeOS from scratch. Access currently owns all BeOS trademarks.
Gareth: Has Access done anything with the BeOS trademarks?
Kokito: Not that we are aware of. I mean, other than claim that they own them. 
David “Lefty” Schlesinger was the person from Access I had contact with. Lefty is the Director of Open Source Technologies at Access. He was always very supportive of our project.
Gareth: That seems to be what most company that buy up trademarks do with them So what is the goal of the Haiku project? Where does its future lead?
BGA: The primary goal was, and still is, recreate BeOS (R5) from scratch and improve upon it. But the truth is that we already deviated a bit from it as we are already improving over it even before reaching our R1 milestone.
Gareth: In what ways?
BGA: In general terms the objective is to have a low latency desktop OS with usability in mind and with every single part of the system being integrated with everything else, in a way that everything just works. Note that although components have interdependencies, the OS is fully modular so you can simply replace one component for a better one (as long as you keep the same basic interface. You can, of course, improve on it. Right now, we have a better VM with integrated disk cache, we support more memory, we are more POSIX compliant, we have a kernel based modular tcp/ip stack, we have a better desktop interface. And the list goes on.
Gareth: Would a good example of that be the “Tracker”?
BGA: Yes. Tracker is a great example of one of those modular parts. BeOS had the original Tracker. Zeta had its own Tracker with several extra features. And Haiku also has its own Tracker with extra features. But, basically, they are all the same.
Gareth: And mostly interchangeable?
BGA: Yes, to a point. BeOS Tracker would probably run on Haiku and certainly runs in Zeta. But the Haiku one and the Zeta one would probably not run under BeOS R5 due to other library dependencies.
Gareth: What is the status of Haiku? Is it usable for day to day use? Do you use is as your primary desktop OS?
BGA: Haiku is in pre-alpha status, but we are working to get it to a point (which we call alpha version) where we think that although it is not feature-complete, it is stable enough to be used. It is not my main OS yet, mainly due to lack of some key applications that do not run very well on it yet. Firefox is one, for example. But two days ago I fixed a bug that allowed the email subsystem to work as expected and now I read my email from Haiku from time to time. I also can access IRC and of course, develop on it (although there are still bugs in this area). Our next objective is to be self-hosted. And based on the amount of work being done by the engineers in Germany (Axel, Ingo, Stephan and others), this will be sooner than later.
Gareth: Roughly how long before a first beta release of Haiku is available for the community to use?
BGA: Well, I would guess at latest the end of this year, but this is wishful thinking. Haiku is a spare-time project for most developers working on it.
Gareth: That’s a good lead in for the next questions. Roughly how many developers are currently involved in Haiku development?
BGA: There is a small core of *REALLY* active developers. Around 10 I guess… But there is probably another 10 or so developers that contribute from time to time. Some of the core engineers (the guys from Germany) actually work for a company that has interest in Haiku so they have more time to work on it and, in a way, are funded to do that.
Gareth: That’s always good to see.
BGA: But I really don’t know much about this company, before you ask.
Gareth: I was just going to ask the name.
BGA: I don’t even know the name. Maybe Koki does, but I doubt it. It is not a big company anyway.
Kokito: It’s called MindWorks
Gareth: So you’re working for Google now, correct?
BGA: Yes. I have been working for Google since September 2006. Which is pretty cool as lots of ex-Be engineers work there too.
Gareth: It seems like a lot of open source developers are gravitating to Google…the next VA Linux But hopefully with a happier ending!
BGA: Let’s keep our fingers crossed.
Gareth: Exactly! Is your “20% Free Project Time” spent mainly on Haiku?
Kokito: If I may add: Bruno not only codes, but he has also been a great advocate of our project, and has has given a lot of Haiku presentations, even going back to 2004, when he gave an OpenBFS presentation at Kansai Open Source Forum conference in Osaka, Japan.
Gareth: Good point. Advocacy is a really important part of getting *all* open source software known to the public.
BGA: Actually I work on Haiku on my own time outside Google. My Haiku work inside Google is mostly getting other engineers interested on it. Yeah, I guess I have too much time on my hands. 
Gareth: Are there any other open source operating systems that either of you use regularly as a desktop OS? besides Haiku?
BGA: Yeah. I use Ubuntu to compile Haiku. Also use Linux in general at work. And I’ve probably played with every free OS under the sun…
Kokito: I use Ubuntu from time to time.
Gareth: Are there any others that you’ve found particular interesting?
BGA: And even some non-free ones, like SkyOS (got a license as they are using a modified version of OpenBFS and I was the OpenBFS Team Lead when they decided to use it). Well, if it is an OS, I find it interesting. I played with ReactOS and found it to be an interesting concept for those who really like Windows for one reason or another (although it is not very far yet it seems). I also used Plan9, which is really cool but not very practical to be used as a Desktop OS.
Gareth: Plan9 definitely had some very interesting ideas.
BGA: And Syllable, which shares a lot of our vision.
Gareth: what OS do you both primarily use for your day to day use?
BGA: I Use Zeta. Which is a different BeOS clone (closed-source). I worked as a kernel engineer for the company that developed it before joining Google. That’s what I am using right now.
Gareth: Kokito: how about you?
Kokito: On my laptop, which is mainly for hobby purposes, I multiboot Haiku, Zeta and Ubuntu. On my desktop, which is for work, I use Windows XP on my desktop, as I need apps like Illustrator and Photoshop. My laptop runs Haiku natively quite nicely, and it feels much faster/snappier than when I am using Ubuntu on the same hardware.
Gareth: While we’ve mentioned Zeta…what are your thoughts on Zeta and Yellowtab in general? I believe you both were former employees of YellowTab. How does that affect your involvement in the Haiku project?
BGA: Well, I don’t have much to say about yellowTab except that it was really fun working there. Too bad they had all kinds of problems (legal and otherwise).
Kokito: I was not an employee, but rather worked for YT as a consultant. For me, Zeta was fun at the beginning, but quite a disillusionment in the end. I always advocated for Haiku, even during my days at YT.
BGA: But having worked there does not affect my work at Haiku at all. I was explicitly allowed to work on it. I just need to be very carefull to not use any direct code form it (which is easy by now as I forgot everything) on Haiku.
Kokito: since I am not a developer, I don’t have that problem.
Gareth: Do you think Haiku will have a commercial side to it? Or will it remain completely open source and freely available?
BGA: The “official” Haiku distribution will always exist and will always be free. Of course we opted to use the BSD license, so someone could pack it up as a closed source OS and sell it.
Kokito: Agreed. that does not mean that a business could come along and create a commercial product from it, be it in the form of a distro, or as an OS for their hardware.
BGA: We just base it on the principle that anyone that decides to do that will have interest on us working on it so they will help us instead of only taking our stuff.
Gareth: That’s a really good point.
BGA: Yep.
Kokito: Haiku would rock on the small form factor devices and laptops that are start to come into the market lately
BGA: Yes, it would..
Gareth: I look forward to that day. I’ve always wanted a Beish OS powered Laptop, just because! Along the lines of licensing…how much existing Open Source source codes goes into Haiku? Do you borrow code from any other projects or is it all completely rewritten from scratch?
BGA: We use lots of code form other projects.
BGA: GCC, our shell is Bash; and Freetype is our font engine. We use existing stuff whenever it makes sense.
Kokito: Canna (an open source Japanese input method)
BGA: As long as it fits the OS design and it fullfills our needs, we use it. Oh, and has to have a compatible license too, of course).
Gareth: How much code is contributed back to those projects from Haiku development?
Kokito: that’s a good question, and I am not sure what the answer is.
BGA: We provide patches for all changes we do but it is not easy to get them merged with the main repositories of those projects. When we are stable enough, we will go over everything and make sure it is integrated, so maintaining it is easier than it is now.
Gareth: What are your thoughts on GPLv3? If Haiku had been released under the GPL instead of a BSD license, would you have made the move to v3 or stayed with v2?
BGA: I think there are good advances in V3 when compared to V2 so if we used the GPL, in my opinion we would migrate.
BGA: But, as we can all see, there are lots of strong opinions in both sides about this subject and I don’t intend to open that can of worms here.
Gareth: fair enough
Gareth: Kokito: any thoughts on that?
Kokito: I was not around when Haiku chose its (MIT) license, but I would have been comfortable if GPL would have been the choice. In that case, I think it would have been OK too to migrate to GPL3 if it was practical.
Gareth: So what are some of the exciting features we can expect to see in Haiku? Is anything major being planned?
BGA: Yes. As a result of Google Summer of Code (we have several projects accepted), one of the students worked on a new O(1) scheduler. We are still waiting to see this work integrated. We also recently saw signs of Rudolf Cornelissen coming back. He created what I think is the first open-source nvidia driver with 3D acceleration up to the GEForce 4. So we may see more on that (even support to newer cards).
Gareth: Excellent.
Kokito: Numerous pieces are falling into place: the devs are now focused on getting the first installable, self-hosted alpha release out, so that more people can test/debug/develop in Haiku.
BGA: Also, as I mentioned when we started this interview, we are very close to be self-hosted (compile Haiku under Haiku), which will be a major milestone.
Kokito: Just reaching that milestone alone is quite exciting
Gareth: Maybe the first beta release can take place at SCALE 7x
Gareth: What do you like most & like least about Open Source software?
Kokito: Its chaotic dynamics, which are both its strength and its weakness.
BGA: What I like most is something that only applies to developers (or at least make more sense to developers): The freedom to go there and change whatever you think is not right. In practice this is not that easy with projects that you are not directly involved with (at least to get your change used by the general public), but it is easy when you have a project, like Haiku. The worse thing, in my opinion, is the fact that some people in some projects tend to not care much about what the end user will think and instead of thinking about usability, theythink about the cool factor. Instead of making a common operation takes only one click instead of 5, they keep the five clicks and then put 3D transitions from one click to the other.
Gareth: What other open source projects are you excited about, besides Haiku?
Kokito: The OpenJDK port to Haiku
BGA: Linux, because it started all of this. OpenOffice because it makes open-source OSes viable for lots of people that would not use it otherwise, Firefox because we all need that and, last, the recent OpenJDK project, specially because the Haiku port was the first project officially accepted on it.
Gareth: Tell us a bit about yourself: some personal info. And how did you get involved with Open Source software?
Kokito: I am 49 years old, born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. I lived in Japan for 20 some years and then moved to the US in 1997. I currently reside in Northern California, and work as a marcom consultant. My involvement with open source began with Haiku; until then, I was more of a lurker.
BGA: I am 32 years old (33 on February, 6, and I will be in a plane to attend Scale 
). Live in Belo Horizonte, MG, Brazil. Work as a software engineer for Google and I am an OS freak. I have been involved with open-source for a long time. It started with small programs for BeOS R5 and then I started helping with ports of other OSS projects to it (Apache, PostgreSQL). Eventually I joined Haiku to help make open-source OSs the right way (IMHO). You can tell that when you learn that I used Amiga when everyone used DOS and OS/2 when everyone used Windows 3.11/95 and BeOS/Zeta/Haiku after that.
Gareth: Are either of you married? Kids? What other hobbies do you have?
BGA: I am single (Although I do have a girlfriend). No kids.
Kokito: I’m married, with two kids and two grandchildren
Gareth: Okay. any last comments you would like to make?
BGA: I had a great time attending SCALE last year and I am sure this year will be even better. I am very much looking forward to it.
Kokito: I enjoy conferences in general, even when it is part of what I do to make a living; but SCaLE has a great atmosphere, and I can’t wait to get to LA.
Gareth: Thanks We’re glad you’re both able to come back again.
BGA: You’re welcome. I hope this time I can visit Holywood. I *AM* a tourist, after all.
Gareth: Thanks to both of you!
Kokito: Thanks to you!
BGA: Thank you.
Gareth: we’ll see you at SCALE!