Daniel Reinhold, member of the Kernel Kit Team and also the original OBOS webmaster, has announced on a mail to the OpenBeOS Kernel Development Mailing List, that he was leaving OpenBeOS. The cause is a disagreement with how the Kernel is shaping up.

In the mail he stated:

"I'm sorry to say this, but you guys are going to COMPLETELY DESTROY the
beautiful kernel that Travis wrote. The direction in which the kernel code is moving is becoming totally horrifying. Simplicity and clarity are *far* more important than all this "coolness" and "power" and bags of syntactical tricks."

He goes on to say:

"Don't get me wrong -- Axel, Ingo, et al. -- you guys are great programmers. I'm sure that you will write stuff that works. But this is not stuff that I have any interest in working on. The philosphical distance between how I think code should be written and organized and what is happing to the kernel source tree is becoming too great for me to ignore."

Another relevant member leaves OpenBeOS in disagreement with the path it is taking. Reactions are starting to surface as was to be expected. Whatever may happen, work in the project will continue.

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Update: Daniel wanted to clarify some points of his first e-mail, so he wrote to the mailing list again to do so. Here's some parts of what he wrote:

"I don't want to give the impression of any acrimony. I'm not mad at anyone and I'm not storming off in a huff. Axel, Ingo, and the others on the project have all been extremely friendly to me, have always answered emails promptly, been generous with their comments and explanations, and so on. I have nothing but the highest praise for these folks -- they are great people to work with.

I am not saying (or trying to imply) that the direction of the kernel is disasterous and won't work. I'm sure it will work. Axel, Ingo, et al will make it work. They believe in their design ideas and they have the programming skills to back it up."

He continues...

"My departure will not have any noticeable effect on the progress of the kernel. Good heavens, I've barely committed anything to the tree. I spend most of my time studying code and books and trying to get up to snuff on kernel issues. I've only contributed a few command line apps and a few modifications to some Posix headers. I don't say that with any pride -- it's just the truth."

And ends up with...

"I still think OBOS can succeed. I sure hope it does -- the notion that
Windows/Linux/Mac are my only choices for a desktop OS leaves me terribly depressed. I will still watch the project and root for it. Just like I will continue to watch NewOS -- both are awesome projects."

Daniel Reinhold wanted to set some things straight and I believe he did, always a noble effort. We'll bring you more developments as/if they happen.