Should we really fork?

Kevin · 2026-08-20T13:42:59+00:00

I think it is beneficial to have some structured conversation around the topic of forking since there have been multiple people talking about this, and infact some already have (i.e. Tabby for PPC). Note: I don't want this thread to develop into a flamewar about AI or the current Haiku developers, that's not practical or beneficial. Over 25 years the Haiku devs have built something truly special, and I am very appreciative of that. If it's time to part ways then let's do it in a respectful manner. I want to talk through what it would take to make a serious fork of Haiku, not just a one person maintained repo on GitHub, but an actual fork maintained by a team of people with the goal of distributing a usable operating system. My big question is would there be enough commonality among the community to make it worthwhile to fork? Or is everyone's vision so separate that it would result in more endless debates? Saying "oh just fork it!" is probably a lot easier than it sounds, so what would it really take? Here are my thoughts, I am curious what everyone else thinks. Goals Build a fast, fun, and reliable operating system based on Haiku Have rich cross-platform support. We already have pretty good x86 and x86_64 support from Haiku, maybe bring in PPC from Tabby (if the developer wants to), I am working on a SPARC port, others have made good progress on RISC-V and ARM Accept LLM contributions, but have a reasonable policy (i.e. must adhere to coding guidelines, must only copy license compliant code if sourcing from other OSes, must update documentation on what change and why, must be tested physically if possible, etc) Have rich branding and a good name. We want to attract more users and developers. Have open and transparent communication about the development and goals of the OS - not just comments buried in commits or chat on an IRC channel. Continue to support "obsolete" hardware (i.e. x86 and PPC) as long as practical or as long as their is interest from users and developers Maintain a high level of code quality through code reviews and testing Questions Would we maintain BeOS application compatibility? (I strongly vote for no) Would we maintain Haiku application compatibility? Do we add multi-user support? Even if it breaks BeOS and Haiku compatibility? (I vote yes) Are we forking and running away? Or do we want to bring in upstream changes from Haiku? What is our release structure? I am a fan of moving to a set schedule of 2 or 4 releases per year and abandoning the "one day we might make it to R1" approach. I think more frequent releases builds momentum. Just call the version based on year and month i.e. 26.8 for an 2026 August release, 27.2 for a 2027 Feb release. What would we need GitHub / source control Website hosting Forum hosting Build servers Devops tooling - how can we get automated builds and ISOs? Non-profit organization (eventually?) for donations and to fund paid developers (or at least pay for server costs) and handle trademarks What does everyone else think? What are we missing? This post is meant to start a conversation, I am no way trying to dictate the future.

clasqm

Atomozero Clasqm's WalterOS Bible is an absolute must-have

I'm not the world's greatest programmer. I can write, though. But a book?

Printed books are a bit passé. Even e-books present a static frozen picture that can't be rapidly updated. And while I am not myself a Christian, I've never felt comfortable with the use of the word "Bible". That word means something to a lot of people. I enjoy breathing, so I'm not going to name it the RenkuOS Quran. The RenkuOS Veda is probably too obscure. A Pity: Veda literally means knowledge.

So I've decided to go another way:

https://wayofrenkuos.miraheze.org/

The Taoists and Buddhists won't object to us using the term "Way" Trust me on that, I used to do this for a living.

Be warned: If you write something really good here it may end up in the wiki. I'll always ask first, though.

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