August, 2007

We are excited to announce that having reached the 18th of August, 2007, the Haiku project is now six years old!
Read on for some more details...

When the decision to start Haiku these six years ago was made (then still called OpenBeOS), the motivation to reach the goal of creating a functioning BeOS clone was very high. Over time this motivation has seen many ups and downs, and there have been times where development was really stagnant, but there were always the other times in which you could really feel how the system got forward. These rushes of development have also motivated me personally a number of times to follow my todo list and to eventually achieve my development goals. We are pleased to look back and see that we have managed to make this vision become reality to a great extent.

The past few weeks have been very productive. Many critical problems were solved, and stability increased on a daily basis. We can say that we take big steps towards our first alpha release which is set to happen when we can officially self-host. This means that we anticipate to get to a state where a current revision of the Haiku tree can be checked out and built successfully, including all necessary tools - completely from within Haiku. There are still some bigger steps to take until this becomes a reality, but we find it important to have a concrete target to reach.

We'd also like to take this opportunity to thank all the people that helped us get where we are now. The continued effort of the various developers have made the system bootable, and the great support from the community helped us not to lose our faith during the process. We are grateful for both, and we hope that we can fulfill the hopes and expectations set into Haiku.

As a small "present" there is an exclusive birthday T-Shirt design available from Cafepress. Get it while it's hot!

Thank you all!

As another avenue to spread awareness of the Haiku project, the Haiku project has opened a store for official Haiku merchandise at CafePress. Find T-shirts, mousepads, coffee mugs, and more! Most items are sold at Haiku's cost and any proceeds go directly to Haiku. Read more for how you can contribute designs for the store. What's more is that this is a community-driven effort. Got a great idea for Haiku stuff? Here are the guidelines:

After the cancelation of WalterCon 2007 in San Francisco, the few that already registered for the event took their already bought airplane tickets as an opportunity to organise a community driven replacement for that event.

They called their gathering FalterCon 2007 - with the obvious pun intended. It's held on Saturday, August 11, from 11:00 AM to 4:00 PM in the Sunnyvale Baylands Park at the Linux 16th Anniversary Picnic. You're welcome to join them if you live in the area, but of course also if you don't :-)

For more information, see the website they've put up for the event. The Haiku project wants to thank those that made this alternative gathering possible!