Here is our interview with Ma Jie, the GSoC student who will be working on Zeroconf support for Haiku.

1. Tell us about yourself

I'm a 23-year-old senior college student from east China. I major in Industrial Engineering which has no relations with Computer Science. It's my hobby to programming the computers.

Well, I came across GSoC program when I was hanging around on the web sites of some open source projects. But I can't remember which project it is.
I'll answer these three questions in reverse order. :-)

Yes, I used BeOS as my secondary OS on my old Pentium III desktop PC. Now I'm using a laptop which I bought 2 years ago. Slackware and XP are installed on it. I'm running Haiku in VirtualBox, because I worried about the support of new hardware.

So since I was a BeOS user, it is naturally I would hear about Haiku. IIRC, I first saw the term "Haiku" when I search an audio driver for my desktop. The Haiku driver works perfectly on BeOS. I didn't know the development of BeOS had ceased until then.

When asked why Haiku is worth working on, I think I should answer why I am fond of BeOS. I think BeOS is more user-friendly than Linux.
My project title is "Implementing ZeroConf support for Haiku with mDNSResponder". ZeroConf is a series of technologies that make the use of computer network easier for non-expert users. ZeroConf-enabled devices in your LAN - like some models of printers - can be discovered and configured automatically.

This is not so attractive to most Haiku users, but I think it is necessary for a user friendly OS like Haiku.

No. I think everything is fine.

No. Just enjoy it.

No, Only one application was submitted.

I think it is cool that controlling the computer to do what I want it to do. I can use C/C++, Java and Bash to program. But I prefer C++.