Matt (mmadia) let me know tonight that the updated code for Haiku Inc.'s sponsors page is now live and kicking. With the changes implemented you can now see who the sponsors are and in which category they fall in (I'm sure Matt donated just to have his own name on that page). Speaking of it, one anonymous sponsor in the $500 to $999... wow.

This change not only recognizes who's been donating money to Haiku (of course we can't forget all the others who donate up to $49) and hopefully will motivate even more people to donate.

On a related note, a nice surprise. Matt last week hadn't updated Paypal's data when updating the piggy bank, so now that he's done it (slacker...), Haiku Inc. has now broken the 20k barrier. Congratulations to all!

On July 12th, Haiku received from the USPTO (United States Patent and Trademark Office) the good news that "Haiku" is now a registered trademark. This is very good news because it allows Haiku Inc. to better protect its work (Haiku itself of course). So now, Haiku Inc has trademarks for both "Haiku" (in operating systems) and the Haiku logo.

Also, and as mentioned over at Haiku's website, this "strengthens everyone's ability to associate "Haiku" with the computer operating system that the Haiku Project creates". Good news indeed, just another proof of the great work being done by Haiku Inc. (and those involved).

As you are well aware, this year's GSoC is ongoing and it's midterm time. Two students have updated their blogs with a status update:  jalopeura with Language Bindings for C++ API and Gabriel Hartmann with his project for the UVC driver.

Both have been going well so far, jalopeura has a good number of objects, from several kits, with at least partial bindings, like Application, Clipboard and Cursor from the Application Kit and Contro, Font and Menu from the Interface Kit.

Gabriel's work has also been paying of. Has he puts it, he's "on the cusp of actually producing images on the screen that have been captured by my camera". I for one can't wait to be able to test his driver on my laptop's webcam *wink wink nudge nudge*

Hit both of the above links and check out their full reports. Keep 'em coming guys.

Update: Yesterday two more students published their midterm update, antifinidictor with his SDL 1.3 project (which is now compiling) and scgtrp with the VirtualBox additions (which are also well underway, with shares working for example). Nicely done.

After days of waiting and waiting (and waaaaaiting), the news is finally out. Haiku was just donated a very handsome sum of money, more precisely $10.000! Yes, ten.. thousand... dollars. And who's the good samaritan? Haikuware. Awesome.

This is a huge boost for Haiku Inc.'s finances which not only 100% secures Michael Lotz's 6 month developing contract, but paves the way for the future. And who knows, with everyone's help as well, it might very well go a long way towards securing 6 more months of full-time Michael development. According to the news piece, they need/want to raise $8.000 more as the bare minimum though they're (not secretly) aiming at $10.000. Start revving up those donation engines!

Awesome news and a huge thanks to Haikuware.

Today is a good day. Today is a day which will remain in Haiku history. Today is the day Haiku Inc. announced a new developing contract and what a contract it is. Haiku Inc. and Michael Lotz (aka mmlr) have signed a 6 month contract for Michael to work full-time on Haiku. And it's not the end. There is the intention to extend the contract for another 6 months (funds allowing), which would be historical indeed.

Michael has, along the years, worked in differents bits and pieces of Haiku, most recently he did some great work on IO-APICS which allowed Haiku to boot on more hardware than ever. And the quality of his work speaks for itself. For the duration of the contract Michael will focus his attention on different parts of Haiku, for example WPA/WPA2 support (together with Axel?) and extending his work on the USB stack, to name only a couple. I for one am hoping WPA/WPA2 support will be number 1 on his list :)

As I said in the beginning, today is a day for Haiku history, let's hope others will follow. But don't forget that, for that to happen, Haiku needs our help as well.

 

Well, a guy can't go away for 3 days, Haiku releases Alpha 3 to the world. Of course they should have waited for me to come back! :D Seriously now, that day we were all waiting for arrived on Saturday the 18th when Haiku unleashed into the world it's 3rd pre-release version, Alpha 3. This new version brings a lot of improvements over the previous version including (just to name a couple): "enhancements for hardware support, such as IO-APIC, ACPI, video drivers, network drivers and USB" and "The mail daemon replacement (MDR) and parts of the Mail Kit have been rewritten. MDR crashes are fixed now". Many more improvements / enhancements are listed over at the Release Notes page for you to enjoy.

And how do you get this yummy piece of software? Two ways, either download it or buy it. So what are you waiting for if you don't have it running on your machine already? Get it, install it, enjoy it, test it and don't forget to report any bugs you find, that's what Alphas are for. Great job everyone.

Haiku Inc. just announced today a new developing contract. The contract is for 160 hours and the developer is Ingo Weinhold, aka bonefish. Ingo will be focusing on Haiku's package management (picking up on Oliver's great work so far) and some of the main items he'll work on include:

 

  • Adjust the build system and tools to build and install the Haiku core system as a package
  • Work on tools to build Haiku packages in a clean chroot environment
  • Adjust build "recipes" for HaikuPorts packages as needed and build the packages. A tool to check the package against packaging guidelines might need to be implemented
  • Extend packagefs to provide information about active packages to the tools that need it (e.g. the package solver)
  • Implement the package solver (as Oliver proposed based on libsatsolver)
His work will of course include other points of interest and we're very interested to see the results of his work.
Also, as mentioned in the post, Haiku Inc. is more than pleased to have more of proposals for developing contracts, they can only help Haiku further along, so if you're up to it, how about it?

 

Finally! This took a long time coming but it's finally here, the next BeGeistert has been announced/dated. BeGeistert 024, codename Blackbird (also the codename for my favourite airplane ever, the SR-71) will take place, as usual, in Düsseldorf and as for the date, it'll be help during the October 29th-30th weekend.

No more details have been published so far (the FAQ still mentions BG 023 for example), but just having a set date is great. Start making your travel arrangements!

Haiku Alpha 3 is coming and it's coming fast. It could be out in as soon as two weeks time. Starting yesterday the devs have switched into bugfixing mode and according to Adrien (aka pulkomandy), next Saturday the Alpha branch will be created.

So not long to go now. In any case, the wait won't be as long as the one for the PSN to come back up :)

Update: Adrien just branched Alpha 3. Tick tock tick tock...

Yesterday marked the release of the latest TuneTracker System, bringing the BeOS/Haiku-based radio system up to version 4.5. According to TT Systems, 4.5 is their biggest upgrade in years and the number of new features sure shows it. Just to name a few:

  • "Almost instant" program log generation in TuneStacker
  • Cross-day ProximityGuard protection in TuneStacker
  • New "Game" button in Command Center for inserting a special broadcast log into your main program log

And that's not even 10% of the new features/improvements according to their website which lists them all, way too many to list here. For years TT Systems have been a success story in the BeOS (and now Haiku) world, showing that with right tools, drive and ability you can make a commercial venture work and the face of the project, Dane, has been incredible throughout all these years (and to top it off he's a real nice guy).

Congratulations to TT Systems for the new release, we here at ICO wish them all the best and may this release be their most successful to date.