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Be, Inc. Says Cash Can't Last Past Q2
psyklohps writes: "Excite News has this story about Be Inc. and how it is quickly going down the toilet. It's a shame when a company creates a really good product and then lets it die by lack of advertising and not making any commercial applications to run on their own OS. Who knows? Maybe it will be released as open source? (wink, wink, nudge, nudge, know what I mean?)"
A wonderful company is going down and all you can think about is "when are they going to make their software open source?"
If you can't help them, and least show some respect.
It's just a shame it was impossible to find software for it.
The company I worked for a couple of years ago filled out a Be developer app, wanting to evaluate using Be for the next generation of the company's retail kiosk systems. Stuff had been built on DOS initially and migrated to Win3.1, and even in 1997-8, thousands of DOS systems were still out there in dire need of upgrade.
So what was Be's response to the application - which would have put Be systems in retail stores nationwide?
"Not interested, but you can buy a copy of BeOS on our website."
$49.00 smart... chapter-11 stupid.
As much as you may want to rag on them, companies like Microsoft and Oracle understand the developer market. Be didn't, ended up with essentially no apps, and is functionally dead.
*scoove*
As much as this would be interesting, I'd have to doubt any such open source "divestiture of the company's assets" would ever sneak past bankruptcy court, let alone the shark pool of shareholder class action attorneys.
Instead, watch BeOS get sold off to Oracle in a sweetheart deal and Gassee get some crazy title like "chief desktop imagineer." This would give Oracle the missing ingredient in its ambition of conquering Microsoft and allow them to mold their offering into a "Oracle-knowledge server + BeOS network appliance" package.
Interestingly, BeOS may be worth more dead and resurrected than in its current form. A functional desktop solves the puzzled for more than a few companies. If I were Redhat's CEO, I'd be on a plane yesterday working the deal on acquiring BeOS, releasing it to the open source world and having (finally) a complete client and server package.
Now there's a challenge for Microsoft...
*scoove*
Many people didn't like it because it "felt" too much like MacOS. I would say, however, that BeOS successfully united a strong backend with a strong user interface, which is the unattainable ideal of seemingly every other operating system.
It's just a shame it was impossible to find software for it. The basic utilities existed, as well as some fun stuff, but the hardcore apps that even Linux has did not exist for BeOS.
I sincerely hope that if Be, Inc. dies, they will at least scatter their ashes among us so that we can take advantage of what existed so far.
And for those of you who have never actually used it, clear off a partition and toss it on there. Get your hands dirty with it, so that you'll understand what we're losing.
Got Rhinos?
Slashdot runs basically no Be articles until there are doomsday predictions.
1. Be has been out of the desktop market for a year now. They are focused on BeIA and the emerging IA market. (And no, iOpener, Audrey, et. al. are not REAL IA's -- show me a broadband, wireless internet device, and I'll show you an IA.)
2. The Excite article is based on their SEC filing. They could have written the article a year ago, because that's about the time Be said they'd run out of money at the end of Q2 2001. However, they always fail to leave out the very large "UNLESS..." clause, which points out they're only going to run out of money unless they get funding. Be will get funding. Hell, if Qubit can get funding two months ago for an IA device, Be can get funding for a kick ass IA OS.
3. Sony has been working with Be for one year on a key part of their (Sony's) IA venture. They had to know Be's situation, there's no way in hell they'd bank on BeIA without knowing Be is going to last.
4. Gassee has kept Be alive on virtually NO PROFIT for eleven years. Do you honestly think he's going to let Be die now that they are standing on the brink of a vast ocean of a market? And you PC chauvinists who can't see the possibilities for IA's are no different than the IBM execs who couldn't see the PC market right in front of their noses, before they made the "deal with the devils at a little known company called Microsoft. You know, back when "computer" was synonymous with "mainframe."
Yes, sadly Be is on the brink of death. Funny thing is, they've been there for eleven years. And they've survived. Come back to me in a year, and we'll see where they stand then.
-thomas
"And like that
Be recently registered openbeos.com (as well as .net and .org)
see this article for more info. I have a good feeling it will go open source, which will be a really good thing for the OSS community.
Linux: Because a PC is a terrible thing to waste.
James Brents