After reading this article over at OSViews.com, I feel I must responsd to several points.

**update 14:41 ** It seems like their editorial has been retracted due to "too many factual errors". Does anyone have a cached copy for reference?

Zeta

ZETA is not based directly on BeOS R5 nor was there ever a release of something called BeOS R6. ZETA has nothing to do with bringing BeOS R5 forward, as the article tries to point out. It is a separate codebase, something yellowTAB has stated repeatedly as being not based on BeOS R5. The curious will have to contact yellowTAB directly to know more about what they mean, I will not go into details here.

Regarding FireWire support. I can personally vouch for this working well in ZETA, for at least 2 years, as I used a digicam at CeBIT 2003, which had FireWire, and it worked flawlessly. From what I hear through my sources at yellowTAB, FireWire support has improved significantly since then.

ZETA is multi-lingual, and not german-only. I feel that "efforts to port the interface" is a misnomer, as the ZETA system includes a locale kit that has incorporated over a dozen languages for well over 2 years now, including Japanese. ZETA has also reached 1.0 status, and has been shipping to many waiting hands since last week.


Haiku

"... mostly desperate refugees ..."

The word refugee is a little harsh. I would challenge anyone to look at any alternative operating system and not see so-called refugees in their respective communities. What I think the author is trying to say is that there are many people who have left the mainstream in search of a better solution to their computing needs. The OS landscape is not as war-torn as the article makes it out to be; it is just that there are a great many people who desire something more from their computing experience.

While it is true that the Haiku Project is re-creating a five year old system it should be noted that the Haiku project is not five years old! In fact, this coming August the project will reach its four year anniversary, during which time a great many things have been developed, some people stated would not be possible in so short a time.

On August 18th, 2001, Marcus Overhagen essentially got the ball rolling with his post "Ok, Lets start"', which you can view in the OpenBeOS mailing list archives. The mailing list has housed quite a number of topics of discussion, ranging from binary compatibility issues to future-looking ideas for Haiku R2. For reference there is also the Glass Elevator project/mailing list, which aims at working on post-R1 ideas while waiting for normal development to take place. In addition to these two resources there is beunited.org which offers RFC-style Standards Documents; I will quote from their mission statement:



Regarding hardware compatibility and so forth. The article is erroneous in painting an image that Haiku is only capable of running on hardware as high-end as a Pentium 233 MHZ. In fact, what is likely the case is that one or more singular developers use such a machine setup, but that does not preclude Haiku from running on much more modern setups such as an AMD 3000+, a Pentium P4 2800, or similar. In fact I know personally this to be the case.

Regarding hardware drivers and development. There is work being done to handle the latest nVidia graphics cards. There are drivers for gigabit network cards. There has been great progress in getting PCI support which paves the way for SATA (Serial ATA) later. There is USB work being done which shows great promise. OpenGL support. And much more is constantly being worked on. What I would suggest is to visit the various Haiku websites such as Haiku News, IsComputerOn, OSNews.com, the Haiku OS Project, beunited.org, BeBits.com, and/or use Google to find more. Many developers also have their own blogs that detail their progress on a regular basis.

As the article states, there are many community channels, however it would be nice to give them credit where credit is due.

I would also counter that BeOS/Haiku is a great platform for specialist applications such as TuneTracker 2, professional-quality radio automation software that is very inexpensive when compared to other solutions. The Haiku/BeOS platform is well designed, stable, fits into many different vertical markets, and is a joy to use. It may not yet be an ideal desktop for all things, but to all things it does a competant job, despite its "age".

It should also be noted that the concepts being developed in BeOS/Haiku draw upon the decades-old history of UNIX, such as a BASH shell, posix compliance, modular design, and system stability. Does the same ill treatment that the article spews forth deserve to be slinged at Linux or Mac OSX (who notably thought of using BeOS at one point) as well just because design principles are older than the OS that uses them?


Benix

Despite working with BeOS for well over 6 years, I have to say I have never heard of the Benix project. Doing a little Googlin' I come up with an old forum post (long live TBJ! :) from a user named Benix, a slashdot comment, and someone's speculative wish.

Where does the article find information on Benix? For that matter, why are there no links to any of the respective websites or information sources? This is the world wide web, and as such, should take advantage of linking to additional and insightful sources of information for the sake of the readership.

Conclusion

I welcome any feedback to this response, in the form of an email from you, dear reader. I've been a part of this great community for some time, and would be remiss if I didn't address these oversights directly. By no means do I wish to personally injure or attack the article author in question, other than to say that there needs to be some fact-checking before such tripe smears the fine work many developers have contributed to Zeta, BeOS, and Haiku.