The OS uses the MIT License; a lot of open source operating systems, particularly Linux-based ones, primarily use the more familiar GNU General Public License. Aßmus wasn't around when the decision around licensing was made, but assumes it was because the MIT License was considered more business friendly (the MIT License doesn't restrict combining reusing code with software that has a proprietary license). ("These days, I think the GPL can be just as or more business friendly, since a business making an open source contribution knows that all other businesses are required to play by the same rules," Aßmus says.)

The project's members are currently working towards Haiku R1/Alpha 4, with the next release currently a topic of discussion on the Haiku development mailing list. "We don't call our releases 'beta', since we don't consider them feature complete," Aßmus says.

The "one big missing feature" is package management: "A lot of interesting and visionary work has been done for package management already, but it changes many fundamental aspects of Haiku. Like the system folder layout and some important things like the system folder itself becoming read-only.

"That's why it is not yet in the master branch. It needs a lot more work before it can be integrated. The people having worked on it most are currently too busy with their jobs, so the progress on that front has stalled for the time being."