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Palm To Purchase Be's IP
There's been a lot of rumours swirling around an imminent buyout of Be's IP given their current cash situation. But I wouldn't have thought of Palm as a potential suitor - but a story in the subscription only area of today's WSJ indicates it to be true. Hopefully a non-pay service will get the story soon - but looks like Palm is trying to beef up its software side, and wants to get some Be's engineers.Update: 08/16 02:16 PM by H :Looks like C|Net has the details - 11 million USD in Palm stock for the purchase of Be.
"acquiring the assets and intellectual property of software "
That means that they are not buying the company, just IP and assets. That means that Palm will not be accepting liabilities, like support contracts, employment agreements, etc.
In scenarios like this, victim company is quickly closed and some employees are fired and some are given options to join new company.
This is not such a good deal as ouright purchase. I hope I am wrong.
I nearly LOL'ed, myself... product placement is getting sneakier every year.
enjoy here
"Science will win because it works." - Stephen Hawking
Not really. Although BeOS is not based on Unix despite other claims, the drivers work somehow similar. A Be engineer once stated on the dev mailing list that it'd be possible to port XFree86 drivers in a couple of hours. As for sound and network drivers, just like in Unix they are mapped to device files with regular open(), read(), write() etc functions.
The Register has the story at www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/21080.html. Palm will pay $11 million in stock. Be's shareholders still have to approve the deal.
No. Be asked for about $250 million. Apple chose instead to purchase NeXT for some $400 million. (And then made a snarky comment to the press along the lines of, "We went with Plan A instead of Plan Be.")
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
Secondly, Palm doesn't defecate on developers. Be did, despite JLG's comments. Let's hope this turns out better for us developers.
Thirdly, Be does have existing BeIA contracts, and it's possible that Palm would consider continuing to market BeIA to IA developers as a means of bringing in more money (but with the Palm name attached). What is the development platform for BeIA? Why, it's BeOS. They either need to port their development platform over to another OS (unlikely) or continue BeOS at least for developers of that.
Lastly, this isn't a buyout. Palm bought Be's *assets*. Be as a company is still around, and a note in their press release said they retain the right to bring suits, *including under antitrust law*. You can all speculate as to the target, esp. considering what they did with Compaq.
I based my XINU comment on my well-worn copy of the BeOS Bible.
In an interview with one of the BeOS developers, he stated that one of the other guys (Be employee #3 or so) "... cracked open the XINU book" and began coding.
I didn't mean to imply that BeOS was derived from XINU, only inspired by it.
Good to see that someone out there knows what XINU is, most people just give me a blank stare.
When I submitted the news this morning, Be stock was at 46, now it is at 19, well...
"Science will win because it works." - Stephen Hawking
Note that this deal is going for something like NEGATIVE 50% premium over market price (stock fell 50%). Also that Be had something like 5 million in cash (as of last quarter). So the Be management/owner must have been really pessimistic. Palm bought it really cheap.