New people often join the Haiku mailing lists, which house discussions on new features. "When someone proposes a feature on the mailing list, often people try to envision how it could be implemented in a more generic and more elegant way, so that it doesn't solve only one particular use-case, but many similar ones.

"And that sometimes means the feature is not implemented for the time being, since it became clear that it's harder and more work to do it right. I believe that can sometimes feel frustrating, especially to aspiring contributors, since the original proposal looked like an easy change. At the same time, I think it's good for the eventual quality of Haiku."

The small size of the Haiku team can be a benefit because "everyone sort of knows everyone. And for new people it's easy to get to know and interact with everyone. The team is pretty welcoming and friendly; it's an ideal playground and every contribution is automatically important."

Haiku remains mostly a hobbyist OS, although "it has a lot of potential, especially since Haiku can be rather useful by hobbyist operating system standards". There is still plenty of room for adding features and polish.

"Haiku needs to realise more of its own potential, by integrating already existing features more to the benefit of users," Aßmus says. "And obviously Haiku needs more powerful applications to get actual work done. It depends on more capable developers to recognize the potential and share the overall vision of Haiku and to start contributing."