Slashdot Mirror
Be Buyout Looms Closer
Xaroth writes "The Register is reporting that Be, Inc. has found a buyer. For those that haven't followed Be's progress lately, they also eliminated about a third of their workforce on Tuesday (28 positions), consisting mainly of their sales and marketing departments, but that number also includes some of their development staff. The Register claims that these layoffs are part of the buyout agreement. While an official statement hasn't been made by Be, Inc., the suspected "Mystery Buyer" is either Sony or Palm. Be's stock was up as much as 40% today at the news. I hope whoever buys them (if this holds true) continues development for the desktop--'twould be a shame to let such wonderful technology go to waste."
How could it not be obvious that the buyer is Sony? Aside from how obvious it is just from Sony's actions pertaining to Be over the last year or so, buying the best technology at rock-bottom prices is what Sony has been doing for 30 years. You think Sony invented Trinitron? Not, they bought it dirt cheap out of America and have been making a fortune on it, patented, ever since.
mount -t ntfs /dev/hda1 /mnt/winblows
Clicks: 0. NEVER underestimate the usefulness of the command line. GUI shells suck.
Ditto...but at least you know that WinAMP would be ported to it....
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
that your great submission was not used. Do you know that thanks to /. newbies like you the staff has to sort thru 1000's of submitted stories. They employ a 'coarse' filter the first pass (just guessing, I'm just a /. user) and some great stuff, like yours sometimes gets lost. Please try again.
1000 SlashDot sigs
eh? I get end to end latency from the input on my sound card to the output with lots of processing in between of ~1 ms on Linux 2.4 with Andrew Morton's 30 line patch. The best I ever got out of BeOS was 2.5 ms.
MediaNodes were nice, but I get better performance out of linux, and GStreamer is coming along nicely.
I place bets on these guys as the mystery buyer... everyone knows they need a new OS and Be would be an excellent OS for the nextgen doomsday devices!
Gah. Sony may hate Windows. (Or they may not... they certainly make enough money on the Vaio line to make them happy.) But if you've ever tried to use any of Sony's own user-side software (the "Media Bar", DVgate, that damn thumbwheel thing), you should be very, very afraid of the idea of their engineers getting their grubby hands on the BeOS. Basically, these guys couldn't code their way out of a high-pressure weather system, nevermind a wet paper bag -- flushing 90% of the Sony-authored crap is the only way to make a Vaio usable.
I suspect that if this happened, this would become Sony's OS/2: half-heartedly promoted by one side of the company, while slowly ground into dust by the windows-using (and thus profit-making) arm of the company.
On the other hand, at least you can still buy OS/2, sorta. I guess anything's better than Chapter 7.
News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.
You have valid points about why it's not all that likely Palm would be buyer. However, I think moderators thought it was genuinely interesting, even if not realistic or very insightful? And no, obviously I wasn't moderating it. :-)
I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization -- Oliver Wendell Holmes
I case you did not notice Microsoft had this chap from DEC develop a Bastard VMS for them which has nothing from DOS left at its core guess what they call it WindowsXP.
I would rather like to see some OSS company snap it up though I guess those don't have any $$$ left from the IPO craze.
--Ulrich
On no accounts allow a Vogon to read poetry at you
aol would most likely MAKE Beos suck... It's not that far-fetched though, if they could get FTC approval. I dont see MS buying BE, because the FTC would never allow MS to gain even MORE market share...
Shit adds up at the bottom...
I would actually buy a Sony PC using a BeOS based SonyOS (or whatever it would be called). I used BeOS 4.5 and 5, actually paying for both OS's and like them very much. It really sucks that there's not enough software for the OS. The biggest usage killer for me was no decent games. I totally agree that Sony has the clout and the cash to put a ding in M$'s armor, though. Go for it Sony!
--- Think of it as evolution in action ---
I haven't seen any mention of the possiblility that Transmeta could be buying out Be. They could use BeOS and BeIA as an embedded OS for their chips, providing for wireless computing, internet appliances, and non-M$ laptops.
A whois reveals it became registered to Be, Inc on the 25th of September 2000
I hope you're right. And if you're right, then I hope Be recovers and re-focuses on the desktop, gets bought out by someone wanting to focus on the desktop, or dies without finding a buyer.
Cross your fingers for Be.
How is this Microsoft's fault? Be could just as well provide the OEMs a boot manager if they don't already have one. In fact, I'm amazed this doesn't come as standard equipment in the BIOS. (choosing what partition to boot)
Mummy beat you this morning?
"I would rather like to see some OSS company snap it up though I guess those don't have any $$$ left from the IPO craze."
That would be best, of course, but I think the IP issues are such that more than just Be would need to be purchased in order to go open source, even if they could find the cash.
As for WindowsXP, we'll see. That's not really a proven technology like BeOS is. Point taken about Dos, however.
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
You miss the point. Be only makes $100 or whatever off those workstations. The profit is in the hardware config. Most of that market is reselling Macs or NT machines at insane margins because it removes the burden of hardware support from the user that just wants a tool.
And, yes, that approach would have sucked for desktop Be users such as yourself. But my argument is that neither Be nor Linux provide any significant infrastructural value over Windows on the average user desktop, even with the hundred bucks you save.
Whenever I hear the word 'Innovation', I reach for my pistol.
Now don't you feel stupid?
Scott.
The only reason Palm would be interested in either is for something like the Audrey, which already is known to be a colossal failure
Audrey, at least the concept, was not exactly deemed a "colossal failure". Their main problem was they were part of the massacre at 3Com, Audrey never had a chance. The concept was well received, I have several friends that have one and they mostly love them. The in the kitchen, super convenient, Palm docking station part was quite excellent.
Yeah, there were weaknesses. Mail was kind of weak, but that could have been fixed. The browser really sucked, that could have probably been eliminated. Channels were quite cool and convenient. The screen was way too small, as was the keyboard. Price was too high.
Bottom line, the concepts that Audrey introduced were actually quite well received and many considered them promising. It had quite a few issues, but it was pretty good for a first shot. My guess is if there was an Audrey part deaux, it could have been (or could be) very successful. It would not shock me at all if Palm were looking at doing something like that on their own and BeIA could be a decent choice (QNX in the original Audrey was not bad either). I personally think the Audrey concept was just a year or so ahead of its' time (the LCD and flash are just too expensive now to make a price competiive product).
The only athletic sport I ever mastered was backgammon - Douglas William Jerrold
Gain some technology and eliminate a potential competitor for 'pocket change' (Be is worth about $20 million).
...Yet [defecating on developers is] EXACTLY what they've been doing for the last 2 years...
Errr, yeah right. Where do people come up with these numbers? Oh right, you're multiplying their share value times the number of total shares of stock. You do realize this is a meaningless number, right? Be does not have to sell for that amount, since no one (but Be) would be in a position to hold all stock.
Not that BeIA poses a big threat to QNX's offering.
Well now your bitterness is just showing... BeIA certainly competes head to head with QNX in internet appliances.
Funny... I thought they were trying to survive? It's pretty selfish of you to criticize a company that re-focuses so that they can SURVIVE. It's not like they were swimming in money, and decided to give developers the shaft. They're RUNNING OUT OF MONEY. They NEED MONEY. They had to do something. The IA market shift allowed them to reduce their cash burn, and focus on a market where they could sell to OEM's instead of the public. That's probably cheaper.
I myself would rather them survive, make money, and THEN go back to BeOS development. Not focus on BeOS development until death.
"And like that
Yea my Next Station Color has a 2.88mb floppy drive.
i think the gnome folks would do well to learn a few lessons from it.
it can mount ntfs partitions with two or three clicks, which linux couldn't the last time i tried (albeit a long time ago). (mount + shell need not apply)
it would be a loss if it were to be pulled.
Well... isn't the open source version of Netscape a total rewrite? Was the source code of older versions made open source? (I'm not saying it wasn't, I'm asking)
>>We do not defecate on developers.
>Yet that's EXACTLY what they've been doing for the last 2 years...
Yeah, i never heard back from them when i signed up for details of the launch of the free version. Perhaps my order is still being processed? Oh well. There`s plenty of OS`s around. At least Windows, for all its sins, is some use for music production (cubase, cakewalk etc). BE promised all this stuff, but the software producers pulled out.
AOL users want MS software (Office etc.) and Windows games. AOL would have to invest a lot of money into supporting all the hardware out there so that a typical installation works like Win98 / ME. I don't think they really want to shift their core business that much.
Publishing unsubstantiated rumors and then blaming someone else for being wrong is a bit of an easy cop-out, don't you think?
Hardly Nokia. They're having big plans for Symbian and Java. BeOS doesn't even have Java, does it?
Meanwhile, *checks* yes, Be's own press page hasn't been updated since May 17. No help there...
It would help if you were on the right page (the press release page, not the "Be in the news" page), which was updated a few days ago with the employee news:
http://www.be.com/press/pressreleases/
Be's recent financial reports indicate that revenues are up over 600 percent. Thus proving that 600% of nothing is still, well, nothing.
In light of this recent discovery, I say we tell Sony/AOL/Palm that Be's profits soared 50,000% in the past year!
"And like that
As far as the operating system goes it did some things well, such as multimedia and still does! , but it was a pervasively single user operating system. Sure, it looked like unix but there was no concept of users.
;-)
Well it was meant to be a single user multimedia OS ( not a server os ), and right now I can only think of one kind of media you would really want to keep private and protected by file permisions....
And then unix is not really that "multiuser" either, not without real acl`s
About the lack of ports to BeOS, they are there but most of them are still waiting for Bone ( BeOS Networking Environment ) to apear wich is rumoured to have been finished a long time ago as browsers started to identify themself as "Netpositive 6.0 beta on BeOS Bone" or something like that. kernel based Bone would make the networking api a lot like bsd ( including raw sockets libpcap etc ) but a least it is supposed to be a couple of times faster then the current userland net deamon.
aol would most likely MAKE Beos suck... It's not that far-fetched though, if they could get FTC approval.
I think the FTC would approve it in seconds. The idea of AOL having an OS (added to the browser they already have) and competing with MS would be a dream for them. The US Gov't is only continuing the antitrust suit because of pressure from the states and the people. I think they would jump at the chance to have an opportunity to drop the case with a "see, they have strong competition now, AOL on the desktop front, Linux and BSD on the server front".
I do agree with you on the fact AOL would probably make BeOS suck (by geek standards of suckiness), but you have to remember the AOL client sucks in my book though seems to be quite popular with non-geeks. I am not dead sure AOL could, or would, pull it off, but I certainly can't see the US Gov't getting in the way of them trying. Same goes for the EU.
The only athletic sport I ever mastered was backgammon - Douglas William Jerrold
You may be pissed but you're thinking straight. I am compelled by your objections, which deepens the mystery. Is there a betting pool somewhere? (Oh wait I know, it's called the stock market!)
Be's problem is that they just haven't bothered to make the most of their product. I fell in love with BeOS, and the idea of BeOS, when I first saw it. A made-from-scratch OS based on the power and stability of unix, and the ease of use of MacOS. They could have MADE something from that, but they seem to have forgotton to DEVELOP IT FURTHER. We were delivered BeOS 5, and then promtly forgotten about...Be Inc. had this crazy idea about embedded and portable devices, which failed totally. We don't NEED fridges with built in internet..no-one wants them, no-one makes them, so Be were stupid to try and offer an operating system for them. The same goes for portable devices...it will be a long time yet before a large market exists for portable internet devices - for the average user it's still stupidly expensive.
So basically, Be seem to have given up on their GOOD product (BeOS) in favour of their crappy product (BeIA), and are paying the price.
-"I still believe in revolution; I just don't capitalize it anymore." - srini!
and it's still a better desktop OS than Linux.
Don't let it get out, could queer the chain for good.
I'd be impressed if Sony did this. I have no doubt that they wouldn't pull off one heck of a user interface/operating system, but I would have to wonder if they'd land in the same boat Microsoft is right now -- push sony and sony only products until the world is all sony?
I like Sony equipment and all, but...
Karnal
You're right. I obviously didn't major in math. So if there are five thousand people willing to chip in $200 each...
I thought JLG worked there when Apple was still using PPC hardware? Wasn't Mr. Steve Jobs the one who pushed apple into the overpriced (but pretty) closed hardware?
BeOS will not load on my Dell OptiPlex Gx110. All it does is continuosly reboot.
EdwardV
I've been using it since r5 PE came out and I love it. On my Athlon it boots into the GUI in about 15 seconds. It does multimedia very well (15 or so MP3s + 4 or 5 AVis/Mpegs playing, at the same time). It has very little security, but the way it was being developed, most important things first (A/V), security was probably pretty far down on the list of things to get done. I found quite a few games available for it, thanks to SDL & some really nice A/V editing pacakges. Hell, its even got a nethack port. I wonder if Neverwinter Nights will still be developed for BeOS if they are purchased by Sony or Palm?
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
It's hard to know what AOL is really after, but here's one guess: An AOL-branded "internet access" computer. They'd give it away for free if you sign up for a year or two of AOL. I can see this campaign working, too. And the timing of this announcement is interesting. If AOL really do intend to do something like this, they realized in their recent talks with Microsoft that MS would never cooperate with them on a project like this.
Palm issued a Press Release this morning stating that they purchased Be for $12M. ...anactofgod...
---anactofgod---
"Equal opportunity swindling - *that* is the true test of a sustainable democracy."
I would have liked AMD to buy BeOS, its just a fantasy on my part, but I dream about AMD coming out with an inexpensive 8 processor workstation running BeOS.
EdwardV
It could have ensured that the current situation, the exact one developers feared, would never happen. If you have access to the guts of the system, even if Be Inc. vanishes you can still carry on. People are a lot more willing to develop for a live platform than a dead one, and in the traditional sense open source platforms do not die. They may have very few users and developers, but those few are free to do what they wish. That's why Open Source attracts so many people. It was obvious that Be would not uproot Microsoft Windows, and until it did that it was not a safe platform to work on.
Oh wise one, please explain how Apple has been able to get developers for MacOS X?
They are not going to topple Microsoft any more than Be. The parts of their system that are important to most developers are not open source.
Be had a nice base of developers. What they did not have was people buying the OS. Had the playing field been level when they really got rolling about 5 years ago, then it might be a different story. Linux eroding MS on the server front, BeOS/MacOS eroding Windows on the desktop front. Instead, we all know the story, Microsoft controls the OEM's.
"And like that
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Actually you can put r5 PE in VMWare (no tools for it though). There is 2 ways to pull it off. They're both a pain in the ass, and involves installing another operating system first, but it can be done.
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
UMM, Microsoft and AOL actually have a lot of partenerships. I think pissing off Microsoft is that last thing AOL wants to do.
Sure, but if you bought the stock a few days ago, hell, a few months ago, you are an investment moron.
Apple is able to get developers because they already have an assured paying customer base for OS X, one thing Be has never had to any significant degree. In 1984, Machintosh was IT for easy to use computers. They remained so for many years. That is when they developed their core user and developer base, an extremely loyal crowd. If Be had been around back then they would have succeeded on the PC platform. Possibly even defeated the Macs. Likewise, if Mac OS X had appeared yesterday on the market WITHOUT the already loyal crowd, they would have failed. People stick with what they know, unless they are compelled to move to something new by a truly revolutionary technology. That's what Mac was in 1984. Be is not that today. Be is, as far as the mass market (home and corporate desktop users) are concerned, doing what everyone else does, but doing it correctly. Not enough.
Open Source is a solution to this chicken-egg problem, because it attracts people for different reasons than just usability. Which is necessary in the early stages of the life of an OS, where usability compared to the competition is by definition limited.
As for Mac toppling Microsoft, the fact that they won't would have killed them except for the fact they had a loyal user base. Even with that user base Apple was dying until they brought Steve Jobs back.
Your last point, however, about OEM's, is absolutely correct and the point where we are in complete agreement. That control must be broken. That's what I'm hoping the government can do.
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
This wasn't started by the register but by some broker. So The Register was just reporting what was already out there. The broker was wrong.
" All OS would do is guarantee that MUST give it away."
Excuse me. Where in the GPL licence or the BSD licence does it say you can't sell for money the software?
Oh, that's right -- nowhere does it say that.
All it means is that some of the code is out under a licence that makes it friendly for people to use it in other free software projects. It could've been a way to get the hard work of the Be people out of the sinking ship, like Netscape did with Mozilla. Oh well. Our loss because some people there were perhaps uneducated about sharing the software.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Errr, yeah right. Where do people come up with these numbers? Oh right, you're multiplying their share value times the number of total shares of stock.
:)
Be's market cap has been hovering around $20 million for ages now. I don't see anyone paying a premium price.
You do realize this is a meaningless number, right?
As meaningless as your drivel, sure
Well now your bitterness is just showing...
Please.. I couldn't care less what happens to Be at this point in time. The whole situation does have an entertainment value nonetheless.
BeIA certainly competes head to head with QNX in internet appliances.
QNX is in the embedded space, of which IA's are only a fraction. And we all know IA's are a terrible flop. Who's going to pay $500 for a crippled proprietary PC these days?!! Be management jumped on the IA bandwagon/hype without doing market research themselves. OTOH everyone was predicting the IA market to be a multi-billion dollar one by now.
? It's pretty selfish of you to criticize a company that re-focuses so that they can SURVIVE
Huh? You call this surviving??? Get real....
myself would rather them survive, make money, and THEN go back to BeOS development
Dream on. If they ever made money with BeIA do you seriously thing they'd pick up BeOS development again? That's a carrot they've been dangling in front of the remaining developers. Don't take it seriously...
-adnans
"In short: just say NO TO DRUGS, and maybe you won't end up like the Hurd people." --Linus Torvalds
Got another speculation for you...
Tascam. why? No reason in particular. But their new digital audio workstation (more like a compact pro studio) is built on BeOS. Looks to be quite an interesting product...
Pure speculation on my part, and even I am guessing it's dead off. But it's a thought, anyway...
I don't see much value in BeOS. It doesn't matter how nicely designed it is, the code itself just doesn't matter. What makes or breaks operating systems is a user community and a developer community, and BeOS has simply failed to attract enough of either. How to attract a large user and developer community is the billion dollar question, but a fairly clean C++-based OS apparently isn't sufficient.
Since you asked who Windriver are they bought BSDi's OS operations and along with it aquired the "comercial side" of FreeBSD. It might actually make some sense for them even if it was only to get their hands on BFS (be's journaling filesystem).
Though you are right it is far fetched.
--Ulrich
On no accounts allow a Vogon to read poetry at you
And please, no stupid comments from Be fanboys telling me that BeOS has all those features today; at the time Apple made the decision, they were all missing. The fact that they added them later is irrelevant. It would have been foolish beyond measure for Apple to blow $400 million (Be's rumored asking price) on that piece of vaporware.
Ive always thought that if anyone could challenge Microsoft it would be a deal between Be and Sony. Sony has already sold nearly $6 million ps2's and has a hard drive adaptor coming out very soon. Imagine adding a vga adaptor...suddenly you have an instant computer. One that is proprietary much like apple but cheap enough to be nearly disposable anyway.
> Let me guess, you probably bootlegged BeOS, right?
how can someone bootleg an OS that is Free?
(Free for non commerial use)
i really liked be. i was a registered developer back when that gave you a four-didgit number (3860). i bought a dual-133 BeBox, and love it. they did a number of things right, particularly in the areas of user interface and multimedia, and even did a reasonably good job in partnering relationships. i was quite happy with their developer support (i've twice gotten email from JLG himself). but they also did a number of things wrong. here's what i think:
first, on the technical front, Be was an improvement, but not the revolution they liked to pretend to be. they had an incrementally better UI, kernel, and networking than Mac or Win32. but they were not revolutionary, nor were their approaches to these areas truely innovative. the GUI and file sharing models were examples of existing models done better.
second, there's C++. regardless of what you think of it as an applications language, it's just not a good choice for kernels, particularly ones with real-time or low-latency requirements. and it's not a good idea to make it the only real choice for applications development, either.
third was development environment. probably because of their history at Apple, the Be folks were quite happy giving Metroworks control of their development environment. which meant no (unrestricted) free compiler (at least on PPC chips). the wouldn't help other compler efforts (like gcc) with their object format. and while Metroworks may be good, they're just not the toolset many developers are most productive (or comfortable) with.
they also wasted much of their effort on things that didn't matter. there's plenty of kernels suitable for real-time or low-latency operation. many of these are available either open source or under reasonable licensing terms. Be would have been better served taking the OS X approach - build on somebody else's work, concentrating on what you're really good at (in Be's case, the multimedia aspect).
but i think what really killed Be was the path of least resistance. i first fell in love with the company for the hardware. a reasonably inexpensive dual-proc box with great numbers, and software that could use it. wow. okay, maybe they were a bit late there, but there's always been at least a niche market for high-end workstations. then they canned the hardware to concentrate on the software. which could've been okay, if they had reason to believe Apple would be more co-operative. they didn't; it was a gamble. and they were wrong. Apple closed up just as the hardware started getting really interesting again, and Be was stuck. then they moved their focus to intel hardware - a much broader market, but with correspondingly wider demands. it's much easier to support every Mac sound card than to support every PC sound card. then, when that didn't even go as well as they'd hoped, they moved on to the IA market, with much less defined power structures and less entrenched players (read: no Micro$oft monopoly).
at each stage, Be chose to find an easier path rather than finding the path right for what they had. like it or not, an OS originally designed for media content creation is not ideally suited to IAs. nor should one expect it to be.
anyway, if anyone's got any suggestions on what to do with my BeBox, let me know (don't even talk to me about Linux PPC).
i speak for myself and those who like what i say.
BE just did not know how to market their products. They could have been big like Linux if they had only put some real money into marketing.
> I am a be fan, but i dont use it exclusively for > one reason and one reason only:
>
> Application support.
> Be never took off because the platform lacked
> developers.
There are no quality applications for Be because there are no developers. There are no developers because there is no market share. It's a well-know catch-22, and the development model appears to have no real impact. You have merely stated the obvious...the real problem with monopoly power.
Linux has applications and developers, mostly due to the GPL and Open Source, yet there is still little market share. It has had some government and corporate support, certainly more than Be, but nowhere near enough to be assured of any real future.
I don't see how my post is "Bullshit!" when Be (or OS2 for that matter) never got anywhere near the developer base and applications that Linux has.
The failure is not the model, it's the monopoly. Closed source can't compete with MS, open source might not compete with MS, and the anti-linux/anti-GPL zealots (presumably you are in that crowd) are going to have to eat crow on this one.
Bon Appetit!
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
Problems with BeOS:
1) Not multi-user. Sure you can talk about plans to become multi-user. BeOS has plans. Unix has been multi-user for what, 20 years?! Windows (NT) has been multi-user for what, 10 years?! Mac OS has been multi-user for... er... well they are now! And BeOS has plans. And yet, "Be is the best!"
2) C++ API. C++ is quickly becoming an obsolete programming language. No garbage collection, not fully OO, dangerous type casts, etc. Witness the horrible state of large-scale software products with all their memory-leaks, crashes, etc. Almost all modern programming languages now have built in garbage collection at least. Java, C#, Eiffel, all scripting languages, lisp, smalltalk, etc. Even pure C is much cleaner than C++ and paradoxically, it often results in code that is easier to maintain! There is a good reason why Linux development is focused on pure C (with the occasional C++ success story - KDE, etc.).
3) Dysfunctional API. I did do a little experimentation with the BeOS API, and it was *definitely* streamlined. However, it lacked many needed features. In particular, it's drawing canvas couldn't do everything that Xlib-based graphics can do quite easily.
4) Aboslutely horrendous apps. Due to (a) the API being new to developers (at this stage in the game POSIX, X, Win32 are well documented and stable) and (b) many [amateur] startup companies trying to create new software for it from scratch, the BeOS was plagued by buggy, featureless apps. I was not satisfied with a single donloaded trial app. Gobe was supposed to be really good, but I found its UI to be awkward (for example there was a zoom-slider, that you could slide around to make it zoom in real-time, but there was no way to type in a specific scale, so you'd wind up with 97% or 102%, but couldn't get 100%).
5) All that multi-threading stuff didn't improve performance that much. It might on a multi-processor machine, but how many people use multi-processor machines at home? Most multi-processor machines are used for network servers and such. BeOS might have been coded for performance, but the performance wasn't significantly greater than what was available on Windows and UNIX. Anybody who wanted REAL performance (music, video game, and movie studios, etc.) could probably afford 3D accelerated graphics cards for Windows or high-end silicon graphics UNIX boxes, so BeOS was a moot point.
BeOS was an important player in the fight to find alternatives to Wintel. But it is best to just leave it be and let it die. We all gave it a chance, but there is simply too much inertia for it to succeed at this stage of the game. Windows 2000 is very stable and capable (I'm quite impressed. Windoze Me OTOH is WORSE than '98 by far.) and since XP is going to be based on the NT kernel, we can probably expect pretty good OS products form MS in the future. I will be SO glad to see the DOS '95 series die off once and for all. Halellulah!
Of course I have been using Linux since RH 4.x series. Linux will continue to be my primary OS for doing cool stuff that Windows can only dream of.
I don't know if Be would feel like Be with a different kernel... The UI would still be very nice, of course, as with the api, but the most important aspect of BeOS to me is the light and nimble kernel. It is nice to have an OS that has no excess baggage from the past, it's almost all fresh. As we all know, linux has plenty of baggage that you just do not need in a desktop OS. It would be a neat thing to see though...
Shit adds up at the bottom...
:-)
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
Netscape 6 was a total rewrite. but Netscape 5 the first open source version was not. It was ditched apperently due to extreme bit rot.
Please don`t use my name when posting to Slashdot!And no I`m NOT a Sony employee. (There is a very close relationship between Sony and the Tao Group however). The Evilla with some bug fixes and broadband can be a success story.
Sincerely, Mike Bouma.
If you have encountered more troll postings under my name then please notice that I have only recently added comments for my last Amiga article. And people please stop using my name!!
100-to-1 against Sun. Although they hate the Windows monopoly, they've raised their hands there... And concentrate on server side, enterprise computing etc. They have the money, but there's probably no place for BeOS in their strategy (unfortunately...). Would have been interesting to know what-could-be - case if they had bought Commodore (meaning Amiga) way back when (which they were considering).
I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization -- Oliver Wendell Holmes
Really? Then what is a PDA? You mean to tell me that all of the people who lined up for months to get a iPaq H3650 didn't want an "Information Appliance"? Or what about WAP phones? The "Information Appliance" market is going to be the market of the future, it's just a matter of having the right product, at the right time, at the right price. A few hit, many more miss. Face the facts, the idea of having a PC is becoming more archadian by the day. Information empowers people, and the more access that people have to information the better. The manner in wich people will access information in the future is still unclear, and that's what makes this market so fikle right now. But as evidenced by PDA's and such, a good idea will go a long way. And as more good ideas surface, we will all become less dependant on PC's.
And for the record, I do a lot of traveling for work and find that checking my balance from an ATM to be quite a useful feature for tracking my transactions *grin*
MS pays more atention to it's developers and support people than any other OS company out there. They have marketing share because they do what the companies paying them the $$ ask. The real issue with MS is monopolistic abuse. They actually do not do too much that is bad for the average consumer. It's the contracts they force OEM's to sign that get me.
Nah, I think Palm is stupid for actually buying Be.
is Microsoft that is going to buy it??! :(
[alk]
I'll place bets on Palm as the mystery buyer... everyone knows they need a new OS and Be would be an excellent OS for the nextgen palm devices!
Skiers and Riders -- http://www.snowjournal.com
noooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! This may be good or bad actually..... fp?
The suspense is killing me. I hope they still release R6.
...aren't they the ones who're completely broke, doing massive layoffs, etc?
Let's just hope the buyer buys in support of the community. MS as a buyer? *shudder* Don't dwell on it..
You were expecting a sig?
So could it possibly become open-sourced?
Does that mean that the infamous BeUser, who's trolling I have not seen in a while, may be unemployed soon? Say it ain't so!
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Hadn't it been previously rumored that AOL would want to buy BeOS. So they could be more direct cometion to M$?
--- http://homepage.mac.com/gregjsmith
Yay i love slashdot, you guys rock
I loved the OS. It's too bad Microsoft's OEM agreements sqashed it. Oh, and First Post! WOot!
They're the last best hope for computing... The best OS out there.
BeOS forever!
finally somebody is putting the Be name towards something productive. I hope its sony buying them out quite frankly.
white men can't jump
Up For sale... Well that just goes to show, the computer industry is fickle. Be at the right place at the right time or you're dead. Be had a great piece of hardware, but couldn't sell it. They had a great operating system but couldn't find a platform for it. They had great visions for the information appliance market but they were there too soon.
Only 2% of all businesses in the US succeed to any great degree and here's more evidence of that fact.
The company has smart people, a great product but no one to sell to, and now they're up for sale. It's the american way... in a sad twisted sort of way...
--CTH
--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
the register also has this story on redhat buying beos.
And even more interesting, when that rumor came out be's share price jumped more then it did when the news an actual buyer had been found.
Thats 49% compared to 40% this time.
-------
Drink Coffee - Do Stupid Things Faster And With More Energy!
They are in the same space as Be is trying to penetrate and I think they have the cash and the incentive. Gain some technology and eliminate a potential competitor for 'pocket change' (Be is worth about $20 million). Not that BeIA poses a big threat to QNX's offering.
...Yet that's EXACTLY what they've been doing for the last 2 years...
In the end I think it's poor management that killed Be (think: Commodore -> Amiga). Here's a quote from the quotable JLG:
"don't compare us to NeXT. We want to be a better tool for developers, not to be tasteful. We don't cost $10,000. We have a floppy drive. We do not defecate on developers."
-adnans (ex BeOS coder/enthousiast)
"In short: just say NO TO DRUGS, and maybe you won't end up like the Hurd people." --Linus Torvalds
*sigh* Yeah, right.
Send your friends messages of love at fuck-you.org
I have used BeOS and i think is a sweet OS, its clean, good design and its rock... and only have 10 years of life.. I wish them the best luck... and thank for showing the world how to do a good OS without all the money in the world.
I have run BeOS (off and on) since some of the early developer releases. I stopped having it on any system full time around BeOS 4.5.
The idea and implementation behind Be makes me feel all warm and fuzzy. The UI is dead on and the stability (despite what others may say) isn't all that bad at all.
Where I ran into problems was with supported hardware (and to a lesser extent, software). The problem is that I have to be pretty specific and careful about what hardware I run with Be (maybe 5 is better, I haven't used it much).
This is nothing new, but instead of supporting the majority of the hardware I had, it made me purchase new hardware just for my Be machine.
I would love to see the power and ease of use of Traker implemented behind a more robust kernel like FreeBSD or Linux. Hell - just get some more developers to work on exisiting hardware support and I will once again love BeOS.
"BeOS, it's the OS...."
It will serve as the basis for the MacOS B, whose development will start in aproximatelly 5 years, as soon as Jean-Louis regains the Apple CEO post.
:))
(as a side note, I really, really wonder how much revenue have the late sales and marketing departments bougth into the company).
In other words, they fucked up every thing that mattered.
They had great visions for the information appliance market but they were there too soon.
"Information appliance" my ass. No one wants an information appliance. The only information appliance that ever succeeded was the automated teller machine. And that's only because it gives you access to cold hard cash. That you can also find out your account balance is incidental.
Edith Keeler Must Die
i was of the understanding it was our friends at RedHat --- Messenger: My Lord, news: the Swiss have invaded France. King: Excellent! (to one of the men standing) Wessex, while they're away, take ten thousand troops and pillage Geneva. Chiswick: But the Swiss are our allies, My Lord. King: Oh yes... Well, er, get them to dress up as Germans, will you? ---"The Queen of Spain's Beard" : Blackadder I
Messenger: My Lord, news: the Swiss have invaded France. King: Excellent! (to one of the men standing) Wessex, while th
Speculation on the Be-related forums is running rampant. FYI, here is a list of the companies people have speculated about:
AOL - compete for the internet w/ MS
Sony - continued support for the eVilla
Palm - compete w/ WinCE for the PDA market
IBM - no idea what IBM would want w/ BeOS
Nokia - multimedia cell phones
EPOC/Symbian - same as above
Compaq - something to run on alpha???
QNX - add more multimedia capabilities
Sun - compete for the desktop w/ MS
Microsoft - final nail in a competitor's coffin
Gobe - compete w/ MS for the office suite market
Amiga - bring AmigaOS back to life
As you can see, people are letting their imagination run away with them. Some of the above speculation is pretty interesting, though. You can check out BeNews for the latest.
... and even throwing the UI on top of OS kernels - but the tracker and deskbar, the cornerstones of the UI, are already open source ... opentracker.org.
Sure, BeOS is great, but the VPs just made a huge numbers of mistakes:
1) The BeBox: a completly new architecture. Neat for sure, but look at Apple...
2) They were planning to be "the Apple of multimedia production". Neat but maybe you should support more than 1 sound card (SB AWE32), humm?
3) For 6 month, BeOS didn't have an architecture to run on, while switching from the Apple architecture to the PC...
4) They just didn't listen to developers...
5) It was a single-user system...
6) Open Source would have been a good idea, two years ago, when they begun to run into serious troubles.
They didn't fail because of Microsoft, stupid users, the dot-com bubble burst or anything. They failed because they made stupid strategic decisions.
So long Be...
Nobox: Only simple products.
If that were my job, I'd always be nervous. :)
The quoted story is over a year and a half old. Things move rather quickly in the tech field.
Slashdot monitor for your Mozilla sidebar or Active Desktop.
Don't BE surprised. When the BE IPO was floated, Uncle Bill seemed to buy the largest part of the pot I saw. Now if the IPO was in 1996 it could have been that BE was still in the running for Amelio to use it as the next MacOS (but Uncle Steve fixed that real quick), so MS needed to bolster potential competitors (with the DOJ still breathing fire from 1995), but the IPO hit in 1999 (so why was Uncle Bill interested?). I know the tech community has been praising the BeOS for years, but I've never had the fortune to run it (my first PPC was too slow to use it, my second was a G3 and Uncle Steve wouldn't let Cousin Jean-Louis have the specs - but I did have CodeWarrior so I if I was a programmer I could have wrote code for it). Best of luck to BE here forward (almost got a Sony eVilla just to see BE in action).
Be had a great piece of hardware, but couldn't sell it
:)
Their hardware was cool, not great. My BeBox was obsolete the day I got a PII 233 box. The PII was much faster at most tasks. The BeBox was basically crippled by the MPC105 Bridge/Controller they used. This chips allows for a single PowerPC with L2 cache, or two PowerPC chips without L2 (in the case of the BeBox). The Bebox was at that time the only way to go if you wanted to code for Be. Shortly thereafter they ported it to Mac hardware, and a few years later to x86. Unfortunately the extra BeBox hardware was very underutilized. I think I wrote one of the only programs for BeOS that actually did something with the 3 built-in IR ports (remote controlled MP3 player). AFAIK there was only one company that ever released hardware for the infamous GeekPort(tm)....
But then again, Be only managed to sell a handfull of these boxes, and all of them at a loss.
-adnans (still a proud BeBox 133 owner
"In short: just say NO TO DRUGS, and maybe you won't end up like the Hurd people." --Linus Torvalds
Who ever is going to buy Be, let it be Palm, Sony, Compaq or even Microsoft, they are exactly what Be needs: a strong company in the back to continue to develop their technology. BUT, this only works if the "buyout" agreement specifically states that. The great people at Be should get the chance with enough capital in the backhand to continue to develop. But, we will see ...
Open Source and do what ?
How in the world going open source would solve their lack of income problem ?
To Be or not to Be... that is the question... BeOS would be sorely missed if the buyer closed the Desktop down. :( I have been following Be ever since they announced BeOS and BeBoxes. I had hoped they would do well and be a viable alternative to windows and the MacOS. It's a shame they never really did, because it made both windows and macos look like old grandmas.
I just could never get my SB Live working on it last time I tried.
Aliens? Magnetic Rings?! Bah! Who needs that when we have
It is after Frisday night, nso forgive the typos:, and I got it all messes up as well, oh forgive me oh great 68000 in heaven.
AOL - compete for the internet w/ MS
Ho, that woudl be funny. But unlikely.
Sony - continued support for the eVilla
Yes, I can see that defoniteluy, but they may dump the eVillage soon, no real reason for existance, see?
Palm - compete w/ WinCE for the PDA market
Palm going ARM. Be not ARM. Palm have ARM workng now, need to rewrite apps. Palm give no fuckl; about Be.
IBM - no idea what IBM would want w/ BeOS
Same here. Maybe a multimedia OS for their Power architecture (god, that was hard to spell).
Nokia - multimedia cell phones
They have SYmbian for that. Communicator 9200.
EPOC/Symbian - same as above
THey have their own OS now competely. THey don't care.
Compaq - something to run on alpha???
Alpha is dead - Intels little whore to mess with and get a bastard child from Itanium
QNX - add more multimedia capabilities
This is a possiblilty. Doubt it, but just maybe...
Sun - compete for the desktop w/ MS
Sun don't want a desktop OS. They want a platfrom.
Microsoft - final nail in a competitor's coffin
Be never threatened
Gobe - compete w/ MS for the office suite market
Ho ho ho ho
Amiga - bring AmigaOS back to life
They have plans and not much money. be is not for them.
Urgh. wine and beer fdont mix well. forgive me fellow sinners in life. coffee coming.
let me first state that i have been a consistent beos user since 1998 we in the be community, meaning some of the more ]knowledgeable and attuned of us as far as usage of the OS goes, tend to think that sony is the most likely buyer, mostly because of the recent launch of the e Villa IA and all the support sony gave to be to get it launched. we in general feel that just about any of the most likely buyers would be a boon for the future of the OS, since it would likely get further developed. in the case of sony, they would use it to support their IA, and they might even use it to launch an all-out VAIO/BeOS attack on the windows monopoly, which would guarantee that sony put effort towards continuing OS development. palm would also likely do good for the system, since running practically the same environment on both desktop and next-gen palmtops would greatly extend the usefulness of their devices and aid developers. however, in the event that the buying company decides to trash the OS, many of us in the beos community will continue to use the OS simply because we have found it to be so enjoyable to use, and though we may not have direct support in that case from the creator, we can still extend its life and usefulness through our own development, much like the amiga community has kept its own machine alive enough to be resurrected.
Just have a look at BeOS. It's neat, it's slick, it's fast and full of good. Basically every geek out there who tried it had to buy a new keyboard because they drooled over it. In is book, "At the beginning was the command-line", Stephenson compare it to a Batmobile (while Windows is a station-wagon, Mac OS a convertible and Linux a tank).
Basically, they would have attracted a huge piece of all the geeks out there, all theses people who switched to Linux during theses last two years, because it's cooler and funnier and Windows.
More marketshare == more money, just ask Microsoft.
Nobox: Only simple products.
Hopefully all those links work, if not I apologize. I'm just summarizing the various pages that I've skimmed over the course of today. If there's any truth to the Yahoo rumors, there could be confirmation of this as soon as tonight. Though it would be sad to see the company shut down or swallowed whole, a lot of people have seen this coming for a long time, and it would be nice to have some resolution of the situation. BeOS is some great consumer computing technology, and I hope very much that it has a future. Perhaps we're about to find out if that is the case...
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
Sincerely,
On a purely technical level, I'm hoping that Palm will buy out Be. Be's recent refocus on the embedded/internet appliance market really showcases the advantages of BeOS. Here, a real-time (or at the very least, low-latency) operating system can shine; moreover, since Microsoft hasn't yet conquered the embedded market, the barriers to entry aren't the same as the desktop market.
PalmOS is, IMHO, quite sufficient for the current generation of PDA's. However, as devices become more inclusive (personal organizer + mp3 player + cell phone + web browser) -- in other words, what everyone seems to think of the Star Trek "Tricorder" -- the need for a well architected OS is absolutely necessary.
I'm not one for buzzword compliance, but the fact that be is a modular, OO system will help in portability and tailoring for certain tasks. A PDA without sound hardware, for example, won't need a sound server runtime. Having the sound server be seperate and communicate via a standard API makes it really easy to excise that component without breaking any dependencies.
An area I'd like to see Palm/Be to venture into is programmable logic controllers. By marketing Be's technology, OS, SDK, etc. as a competitor to VxWorks, the move can be made into industrial and automated systems. While this isn't particularly sexy or well-rounded (something that Be strives to be), it's certainly dependable money. Hardware manufacturers such as Siemens, GE, etc. are always looking for something to replace their custom-written, more-spaghetti-than-olive-garden operating systems and applications. While most people associate Be with multimedia, DSP work, et al, the kernel proper can be slimmed down to handle simple serial input-output tasks. Once a hardware client starts to use the software, they're going to grow dependent on it, and that's a steady -- albeit not too grandiose --flow of revenue for Be (and its buyer)
Well, I can tell by the men in white coats encroaching that it's time to stop rambling.
--
Three Step Plan:
1. Take over the world.
2. Get a lot of cookies.
3. Eat the cookies.
1) The BeBox: a completly new architecture. Neat for sure, but look at Apple...
Apple: Proudly going out of business for over 25 years.
2) They were planning to be "the Apple of multimedia production". Neat but maybe you should support more than 1 sound card (SB AWE32), humm?
Sound cards supported by BeOS
3) For 6 month, BeOS didn't have an architecture to run on, while switching from the Apple architecture to the PC...
Did their PPC version magically stop working?
4) They just didn't listen to developers...
Neither does Microsoft
5) It was a single-user system...
With Mutli-user job services and plans to move to a log in screen....
6) Open Source would have been a good idea, two years ago, when they begun to run into serious troubles.
I don't see what OS could have done for them, since they had a robust, fast, OS that they could not even GIVE away. All OS would do is guarantee that MUST give it away.
They didn't fail because of Microsoft, stupid users, the dot-com bubble burst or anything. They failed because they made stupid strategic decisions.
This reasoning I fail to see. This has been addressed time and time again. It was adressed in MS's trial and agreed to by Judge Jackson and the Appealate court. The Network Effect. Not only that, but MS uses value customer licensing to keep vendors from doing things it doesn't like. The more you suck up to MS, the less you pay for Windows, this includes not shipping an alternate OS. This was all covered in the trial.
So you tell me, who was Be going to sell their desktop OS to?
Burn Hollywood Burn
So you think the demise of BE is important? What about the ABUSE of LINUX trademark?
OTHERS are already getting in for the KILL by ABUSING LINUX TRADEMARKS and the GPL license agreements, and they are RAKING IN MONEY as you speak !
One example of how those unscrupulous slimers are getting in for the kill is www.linuxmalaysia.org
Go to that place and see for yourself how "Linux" has been used to sell CHOCOLATE !
This is just the beginning, folks. There'll be others using "Linux" as the bait to do whatever they want to do, and I won't be surprised if someone come out with "Linuxsex.net" or "Linux-dildo.com".
Please help stop the abuse of Linux trademark. Please help tell others about the abuse.
Thank you !
Open source, open source. Well, there are a lot of different way to go open source.
Should they have open sourced everything, or just the kernel ?
And which license ? A look-and-the-code but don't distribute, an APSL-like, a BSD one, GPL ?
Cheers,
--fred
They would have been able to stay in the hardware business, in my analysis anyway. They were making SMP PPC machines, for god's sake! every geek's wet dream!. Then they dropped them to concentrate on the OS - if they'd just freed the OS, then hordes of OS geeks and Amigans would have flocked to buy their hardware...
Duh.
The two companies deserve each other.
Trolls throughout history:
Jonathan Swift
Yes. Jean-Louis was the real decision maker during some time after Jobs dismissal. But he never attained "CEOhood", his higher post at Apple was VP.
Just speculating: how would *AOL* like to get Be? Great OS, multimedia-uber-capable (good for all their movie libraries!). Friendly and more ready for the desktop than most Linux distros. There was talk here yesterday asking AOL to "get their own OS" if they didn't like the icon placement on XP -- well, here's their chance.
Rename the product to Be Yummy Operating Comforting Hipubub.... BE YOCH!!!!! for short.
It will soon become the operation system of choice amongst inner cities. Everyone knows that cool products sell!
"They didn't fail because of Microsoft . . ."
JLG would strongly disagree with that statement. Dual-boot systems with BeOS installed were shipping in Japan, but the presence of Be was unknown to users because of M$'s licensing terms, i.e., you can only use a microsoft boot manager to boot windows, and that boot manager won't show any other OS.
This is the only reference by JLG that I could find with a quick search, but he's addressed it in greater depth elsewhere. I believe this may have been a part of the DOJ lawsuit as well.
Be hasn't failed entirely because of Microsoft, but they did have a significant hand in it.
Does this mean we might see BeOS or BeIA on PS2? That would rock!
and what does Linux have to show for all of its greatness? Staroffice and Tuxracer?
---
and too bad, cuz I still have my "We Be Geeks" pocket protector... :-(
-- Trolled...you WILL be === Yoda
I see how AOL was glossed over (QUICK - SHORT!). Here's five contributions to a "top ten list" of why AOL is the likely acquirer:
1. They confused GEOS with BEOS and thought they had to buy it all over again.
2. What else do you do with all that cash piling up from the recent rate increases?
3. Albania wasn't for sale.
4. Case heard Gasse was from Apple and he wanted some pretty graphics for the cover of his next book.
5. It's Netscape all over again, baby!
*scoove*
Sony will probably buy Be. They need it for the evilla and imagine Playstation 2 or 3 with BeOS on it? yeah there's linux but it's not exactly easy to use. With BeOS they could make the PS2 into a friendly entertainment center. Sony sold millions of PS2's so it could be the internet appliance that makes it. ok what about Palm? Sony makes the clie and they could make a deal with Palm to incorporate Be technology into PalmOS. That would be similar to the deal Palm has with Nokia where they would use the epoc kernel running on ARM. Imagine Be technology, epoc kernel and Sony hardware in the pockets of millions
---
You are right -- they should have stayed with the custom hardware. They could have then written or partnered with someone to get some high-end video/sound editing software and sold them as super profitable multimedia workstations. They'd probably be still in business.
Instead they thought that Joe Consumer would plunk down money for this thing just because it could play 3 simultaneous quicktime videos
Whenever I hear the word 'Innovation', I reach for my pistol.
Your link isn't proper -- go to the front page of the site at be.com and get to press releases from there.
My lab can barely manage to keep his tooth away from the furniture. He doesn't even know how to turn a computer on, much less what an OS is. Having a favourite OS is beyond his wildest dreams.
Or is your pet a chimp, a dolphin or a mouse? That would certanly explain it.
READY
>
~~~
I wish these morons would get it through their slick heads that there are times that using all caps is valid but I guess there's no hope for that so I'll just type this run on sentence with lots of lowercase to get the ratio of caps to lowercase down and apologize for the introduction of so much usless text needed in order to illustrate the above.
Be have great technology, but that's not what business is about, all wishful thinking aside. A product without a market is nothing.
It takes smart people to make great technology. Contrary to popular /. opinion, it takes even smarter people to make a successful business. It's nothing to do with the American way, it's basic economics which applies even in socialist countries.
No-one, and that's exactly the point. It was a stupid strategic decision to be the alternative alternative desktop OS. If a skinny boy goes up against the school bully, sure, you admire his pluck, but you will also be thinking that he's making a bad strategic decision :-)
while I don't doubt that BeOS is neat stuff, I could never be bothered to mess with it. this is because, quite simply, after OSS what interest can compete with me having a personal stake in something? Now, by all accounts, Be is brimming with good design and technical genius. but, their market is people who already have a good-enough system which they are free to muck around in. IMHO, OSS may be their best possible business decision.
37~ of the Palm workers are old Newton workers. (32 of them quit on one friday and left for palm)
The new palms are ARM, just like the Newton.
Apple has been rumored to have a "palm" for 3 years. If Palm had negotiated a contract correctly, they woudl be free and clear of encumberence with Apple after 2 years after Apple dropped the option to use Palm. It has been 2 years from the last strong "rumors", and lo and behold, the ARM target is annouced.
(Why did JEff/donna leave palm? Well, graffitti was going to be slaughtered in favor of the Rosetta interface. Yup, Real printing nterface to the palm.)
In short, Be is not a choice, given the strong Newton background of the Palm staff. (Graffiti was a MP100 App. 1st)
If it was said on slashdot, it MUST be true!
is that it's Kodak.
Why Kodak? because they were always about bringing the ability to create to the average joe. I don't think that it's too much of a strech to imagine them extending this philosophy to multimedia as well, especially after Microsoft started screwing them.
Imagine BeOS based kiosks, digital cameras, digital videocameras... Not to mention a BeOS based set-top box that shows all those pictures and video clips...
The possibilities are interesting.
The real Webmaven is user ID 27463. I don't rate an imposter, because my ID is such a lame-ass high number.
That sig of yours looks awfully derivative.
Apple was a (doing this from memory) hermetically-sealed Eurosedan.
Rumor is that JLG has thr R6 gold master sitting on his desk. The geneeral hope is that will be released irregardless of what happens to Be, Inc from here on out.
They ditch 1/3 of the staff.
The only thing they're trying to do now is hype their stock price up ("Someone is buying us, really they are!") so that Jean Louis and his cronies can cash out as soon as possible.
In case you hadn't noticed, Microsoft is selling closed-source software. Now, explain to us again how opensourcing BeOS would have generated a revenuestream for Be, Inc. You seem to have all the answers, so what sort of businessplan do you propose?
I think his point was to show that the Register has been repeatedly wrong when it comes to Be/BeOS.
Define "standar x86 box". I tried it, many times. It worked every time. I guess your scraped-together-from-Kmart-parts machine isn't as standard as you think it is.
Guy in the Back Room Working with Bryce 4: Why am I doing this?
Goldin: Because we need to funnel some money from this program into the space station program to cover all these cost overruns.
Bryce 4 Guy: Can I have some fun like we did with that "Face on Mars" thing back in the 70's?
Goldin: Yeah, we funneled money from that into Skylab. What the Hell. Have fun.
blog |
Sound cards supported by BeOS
The guy meant, "at the time Be was hyping its OS as the Apple of multimedia, they only supported the one card". In that context he's right.
Higher Logics: where programming meets science.
.. as its not M$. I used BeOS a few times, unfortnally, it doesn't run in vmware or I would have it installed. Plus, there trial version doesn't install on its own partion. They actually belive that people will install Windows just to check it out.
until (succeed) try { again(); }
Be's stock was up as much as 40% today at the news.
Yeah, and it closed up 16% to FIFTY CENTS American, an increase of SEVEN CENTS. I could throw the change in my wallet at Be headquarters and their stock would rise 16%.
The only reason I point this out is because I actually own stock in Be, Inc. I am not proud to say this.
For more information, click here.
I realize this is probably just them squatting, but still, makes you wonder.
I really love the BeOS. It is still the best damned user interface ever (and it was unique in many respects). The user experience was great.
I'd probably still be using it if it weren't for the fact that none of my new hardware is supported.
I know that BeOS is dead and gone. I used to love OS/2 also. And if the BSD trolls are right, my current OS (FreeBSD, I do love thee) is doomed!
-Peter
I knew I should have learned to like Microsoft.
. Penguins Surely Ca
Why does amy one give a damn? They died _years_ ago - why should any of this matter? Best thing that can be done is to take every one of them, yanke their heads back, and slash that knife across that baren bit of fleash. Kill the rest... William
You better watch out what you wish for; It better be worth it So much to die for. Courtney Love
I overheard Bill at the local SuperCuts and he mumbled something like "This XP thing really sucks, I think I'll go back to my roots and just by my next OS". I think it was him...maybe it was Steve...
I have a copy of R5 on my shelf that I have successfully installed on my PC before. It is standard x86 box. Or is your idea of standardized something like an old Packard Bell?
"I don't see what OS could have done for them, since they had a robust, fast, OS that they could not even GIVE away. All OS would do is guarantee that MUST give it away."
It could have ensured that the current situation, the exact one developers feared, would never happen. If you have access to the guts of the system, even if Be Inc. vanishes you can still carry on. People are a lot more willing to develop for a live platform than a dead one, and in the traditional sense open source platforms do not die. They may have very few users and developers, but those few are free to do what they wish. That's why Open Source attracts so many people. It was obvious that Be would not uproot Microsoft Windows, and until it did that it was not a safe platform to work on. Open Source platforms are safe by definition, since they aren't tied to the fate of any one company. Even if one project totally dies it's code can be fertile ground for another project - check out the dillo web browser for an example. This is what free software developers want, and what Be can never be.
Frankly, I myself wish that Microsoft would buy Be, scrap the Dos based crap they currently use, build a compatibility API to allow Be to run older apps, and use BeOS as the next generation of Windows. At least then we might not have such stability problems with Windows releases. I know people think Microsoft buying Be is silly, but frankly if done right the thought is actually very attractive.
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
The person buying be might not be interested in releasing the BeOS as a full-fledged OS. Though this is certainly possible, especially with someone like Sony (or Kodak ;) it's just as likely the buyer will be getting for some of the cool intellectual property the BeOS has intact. Apple has a history of doing this multiple times in the last 3 years. The basis of Final Cut from Macromedia, the beginnings of iDVD and DVD Pro and recent buyout of another DVD company for DVD technology. I'm not saying it's Apple, but considering all the cool technology Be has, and from what you guys are saying, not much of a recent update in place-- the buyer may very well be looking to scavenge all the great technology it can, to add to it's own.
What happened to all the trolls who claim Linux, GPL and Open source are the cause of companies going down the toilet? That closed source is a clearly superior model, after all, it worked for MS and Apple.
Kind of hard to say that with a straight face after all the economic fallout of the last 6 months, and now the dwindling fortunes of the BeOS camp.
BeOS is closed source, runs on i386, costs little, has decent reviews and Be still can't compete against MacroSoft -- no big corporations have adopted BeOS, no governments, no schools.
I think the GPL and closed source are what is barely keeping Linux viable in the face of an egregious monopoly...the slide of BeOS shows it is MS, not IP issues or anything else, that is destroying the compute marketplace.
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4) They just didn't listen to developers...
Neither does Microsoft
Oh aren't you just full of analytic wisdom with your point-for-point repartee. Microsoft, see, they're bad guys, right? I mean, they must not listen to developers because well that would be bad if they didn't and they have to be bad guys so that you can say how bad they are, and they're big and mean and bad and oh wow hey I could go on and on but I'll let the rest of slashdot do that for me until the fucking cows come home, have calves, and i'm grilling their fucking hindquarters on my hibachi.
Hundred bucks and I can get enough developer documentation and SDK's bigger than a stack of encyclopedias if i printed 'em out. It's called MSDN. Most of it's even online for free. Clue check, there's a reason people develop for Microsoft SDK's.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
All these mysteries. No one can say for sure- because it's another rumour. Facts are: there is hope that it doesn't become another Linux(not that I dislike linux), or another Windows part(as if they really needed the residing code). Notice that Be. Inc. is more interested in potiential buyers that will help the Be total plan. They have been working on IA for quite some time, and it's would most likely perhaps in their best intrests to accept an offer from someone like QNX, who definatly has IA and networking aced in the same package, has X and GTK compatibilities aced. There is speculation, then there's this anylasis. I'd think someone wouldn't just be speculative and tell you how awesome "the community" would benefit from RedHat(tm) obtaining Be. After all, it's "Be in your senses"
Here are some things of interest about Be Inc. in recent months. #1 is that Apple very nearly did purchase Be back in March. They actually funded Be while they mulled over the decision. Either Be or Apple decided it was not a good marriage. That is why the buyer, if one exists, is not likely Apple as Be is not being funded and runs out of dough in about a week or so (and that is item #2). #3 Intel and AMD are definitely suitors as well as Be is not really being bought so much as its intellectual property will be purchased. This means that your stock is worthless and you should sell it while you can. AMD and Intel may like to have what Be has as both companies make chips for small devices and may want a complete solution. #4 Whoever buys Be cares squat about BeOS. Who would go against MS??? My personal hope is Apple buys them as they gain great software engineers and would eventually incorporate what is cool about Be into their own OS including pervasive multithreading, file attributes, journalling file system, proper mime handling, and perhaps some cool media capabilities. Newton II (if there is one) would run BeIA. Be would live on the most in Apple but as I said, they are unlikely at this point. Cheers.
Dispite all the hype, I thought it sucked (for lack of a better word). Its performance was not even as good as Windows 95 on the same computer, the gui design was plain daft, infact, the only good thing I can think of to say about it was that it started up damn fast. I wish other OSs would startup that quickly!