We spoke with Michael Phipps during the holidays and asked to give us his view from the top, as he heads the Haiku project from his home in Rochester, N.Y. Michael is not big on words, as you will see from his concise answers to our questions about the Haiku-OS.org server, project status, the future, and more.
  
Ok, why are your answers so short tonite?
Nothing I can think of. The issues are more simple than they used to be. When I had 15 kits to talk about, I could talk a lot more. Now, really, there is a lot less to talk about.

How do you feel about the project these days?
So much stuff is at that mythical 95% state - game kit, input kit, media kit (except for encoding), print kit, device kit, etc. I feel majorly neglecting. I don't spend ANYWHERE near as much time on it as I would like. Working to pay the bills is taking a lot more of my time than it use to.

I don't get to code. I only can read my email on weekends. Pretty much, I can possibly only dedicate Saturday to Haiku. But these past months, I have been doing real life work on Saturday, too. That's a lot of the reason that there haven't been newsletters. I still have tons of stuff that I want to do and a strong desire to do it. But I just don't have time anymore.

How do you feel, emotionally?
Frustrated, weary, sad. Not because of anything anyone in the community has done, but because of my circumstances.

Mystical reality time... Picture a man, walking up to your door and handing you a plain white envelope that holds the key to make your circumstances better. What's in the envelope, and how can we, as a community, help make more of it happen?
Nuclear warhead?

No, really.
Seriously - enough money that I could hire myself and the dozen or so developers that we need for the next year or so.

At this point, looking at the murky future, are you like Johnny Nash, "I can see clearly now", or are you like CCR, "I see, a bad moon a-rising."?
If anything, this project has NEVER been predictable. When I think that everything is going well, bad things happen. When I am depressed, good things happen. I guess I should just stay depressed. :-)\

A few months ago, the SkyOS project announced they were going to use OpenBFS. What was your reaction to that, and do you foresee, or have you heard, of other projects using similar technology from Haiku?
Cool. Yes. :-)

Seriously - I am very cool with what SkyOS did/is doing. They have found a couple bugs for us. The *whole point* of an MIT license is to allow stuff like this. Not even allow - encourage. As far as other projects - Cosmoe comes to mind. A number of commercial ventures (who want to remain quiet) have also approached me.

When are the newsletters coming back? If not by you, perhaps there could be a call-to-arms for some talented individuals in the community who could help?
I want to shoot for 1/1/05. We have some articles (waiting on my editorials). Could definately use more.

What am I missing? Is it -really- that far between milestones? Surely media kit.. networking.
Networking is tough for milestones. It works or it doesn't. The media kit hasn't really moved a whole lot; some new codec work was done, but the major contribs had crazy stuff going on in r/l.

So basically... a LOT of our developers are tied up in RL?
Umm - yeah. To a pretty good degree. That's why putting a few people on salary would make a majorly huge difference.
Don't be too negative, though. This happens every so often. In other projects, you don't notice it because there are more developers.

For example, mikew from the translation kit is helping out with the interface kit stuff. So there is an example of a finished kit donating devs to an unfinished kit. Also, the splitting of the community. You have some very good devs off on other projects (java, bezilla, zeta, etc).

How many active developers (devs who contribute at least once every 2 weeks) does Haiku have at this point?
Even every 2 weeks is tough. Some people submit rarely but in big chunks. (darkwyrm, for example) The number of devs hasn't really changed. No one has quit or anything. It's just that real life has interferred with a number of them. One dev is a teacher; he only really codes on school breaks, but then he codes like 12 hours a day...

Can you give us an idea of how much financial aid has been donated to the project, and where the money has been allocated?
We will publish this when the final report is together. I can give you a rough idea from memory - around $5000 came in. Most of that went to Waltercon (and was given for that reason). We have several hundred dollars in the bank.

Let's fast-forward a few years... I imagine by this time Haiku R1 is out, and making some people turn heads. Have you considered the marketing responsibilities, and how they will be handled?
Yes. :-)

Honestly, I don't think that R1 is the release that we want to *really* market. Because, to some degree, many of the things that the anti-haiku folks say are true. R5/R1 is 5 years dated. There are many things that need updating/fixing. R1 is not the release that I want people who have never seen BeOS to try out.

I really want R1 to be something that BeOS/zeta users use, enjoy, debug, test and bask in. I want R2 (or maybe R3) to be something that you show to people to make their mouths hang open. We have always said that R1 is a stepping stone.

What is your most pressing responsiblity in real life now?
Feeding my family. Well, that is a euphemism - making enough money to pay the bills, etc.

How are you feeding your family?
I am selling durable medical equipment. (wheelchairs, walkers, etc)