Events

Google assigned Haiku five student slots for the Google Summer of Code 2008, so we had to narrow down our final choice from the many high quality student applications. This was tough: many good applications had to be left out, and we really hate leaving people out, particularly those who had shown an interest in Haiku. So we started entertaining the idea of sponsoring a few of these students ourselves. Today we introduce you to the Haiku Code Drive 2008, a program designed to raise funds from the community in order to sponsor students to produce code for Haiku. This is how it's going to work.

We contacted all the GSoC students that applied for Haiku but did not make it, and asked them if they were interested in carrying out their proposed project for a $2,500 stipend each. From their response, we have created this list of students and their projects; these are the candidates for the Haiku Code Drive 2008 program. Now we are asking you, the Haiku community, to fund the program by making donations. We will then hold a public poll so that the community can influence which candidates/projects they want to sponsor. At the end of the poll/donation period, we will determine how many and which of the students will be sponsored based on the donated funds and the results of the poll. Check out all the details of the program here, including a timeline with tentative dates.

After a quite intensive and challenging review and selection process, we are pleased to announce that Haiku has been assigned five (5) student slots for the Google Summer of Code 2008. This year, Google accepted many more mentor organizations than ever before, which made the allotment of students slots a lot more competitive. We also received applications of very high quality, which is definitely a blessing, but also made the Haiku mentor's task of narrowing down to a final selection much tougher. After thorough review of all the applications, and carefully taking into consideration factors such as immediate benefits for our project, the likelihood of getting long-term contributors, and the availability of an appropriate mentor for any given project, we have come up with the final list of students that will be coding for Haiku during the GSoC 2008 program. Here it is:

We are very pleased to announce that, for the second straight year, Haiku has been accepted as a mentor organization for the Google Summer of Code. The student application period will start soon, so if you are a student who would like to work on a Haiku project for the GSoC 2008, please check out our List of GSoC Ideas and Students: How to Apply pages for detailed information on how to apply. If you still have any questions specific to GSoC after reading these pages, please contact the Haiku GSoC administrator (Bruno Albuquerque). If you have any general questions about Haiku and want to start familiarizing yourself with our community, which we encourage you to, please join the Haiku development mailing list and also feel free to stop by the #haiku IRC channel on irc.freenode.net. Our friendly community members will be glad to help you out in pursuing a Haiku project for the GSoC 2008 and beyond.

The good news following our recent presence at the SCaLE conference and the great exposure that it resulted in continues to pour in. Haiku has now been invited to have a booth at the LugRadio Live USA 2008, the first LugRadio live event to be held in the US. Needless to say, we could not refuse the irresistible offer. The event will take place in San Francisco on the weekend of April 12 and 13, at the The Metreon entertainment center located at the heart of the city (map).

LugRadio is an event that covers a range of topics about free software, Open Source, digital rights, technology and more. Combined with a compelling list of speakers, exhibitors and birds of a feather sessions, this event is said to offer what feels like a combination of a rock concert and a computer conference. To bring this unique atmosphere to San Francisco, LugRadio Live USA 2008 USA will have around 30 speakers including Miguel de Icaza and Ian Murdock, over 20 exhibitors, an eclectic range of BOF and other sessions, and the live recording of LugRadio in front of an audience.

SCaLE 5x, Haiku Tech Talks at Google, Picn*x XVI, CNSL 3 in Venezuela, FISL 8.0 in Brazil, NUMERICA in France, T-DOSE in the Netherlands, Kansai Open Source Forum in Japan. The list of 2007 events where Haiku had a presence is very long. In fact, never in the past has Haiku had so much public exposure as it did during 2007. And as the project keeps making progress towards its first release, this trend of increased exposure before the eyes of the open source and computing world in general is expected — and desired — to continue. In the first two months of 2008 alone, Haiku will be at BeGeistert 018, SCaLE 6x and FOSDEM 2008, not to mention the Haiku hacking event that is taking place this very same week. With very few exceptions, these events are all the result of initiatives by one or more community members.

In an attempt to assist the effort of these community members who drive such initiatives and to lure more of them to follow suit, we have added to the Haiku website the ability to easily publish information about conferences and events, as a means to increase their exposure and as a tool to further engage the participation of the community in this events.

Many Haiku fans have been eagerly waiting for the next BeGeistert, and the official word is out now: BeGeistert 018 -- Phoenix is coming back to Düsseldorf, where it will be held on January 12 and 13, 2008. But the good news does not end here: as a prelude to BeGeistert, a coding asylum event with the expected presence of many Haiku core developers has been organized on the same week and at the sample place.

We were pleased to hear that Haiku community member Axzel Marín Graü is scheduled to give a presentation about Haiku at the National Open Source Software Congress (CNSL 3) to be held in Sucre, Venezuela, this coming May 18th and 19th. During his presentation titled "Open Source is not only GNU/Linux. Introduction to the Haiku Operating System," Axzel will give an overview of the project, talk about the progress made so far in development, and conduct a brief demo to show Haiku in action.