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Be Shareholders Approve Sale to Palm
moooooooo writes: "Well it's official. Be shareholders have approved the sale of Be Assets to Palm.
Hopefully Palm will announce something about either a new BeOS version or licensing the source to the BeUnited crew."
I just hope Be doesn't prove to be the same kind of unlucky charm the Amiga was. You would have thought Gould and Ali had found the Boing ball in a pyramid or something.
Money for nothing, pix for free
I would still like to give Be a try someday. Looks like a good little OS. Maybe if it were open sourced, it could be taken somewhere. I doubt Palm could really care though. They didn't buy it to give it away, and they already have their own OS, so they aren't likely to continue Be as a separate OS either. I imagine all of you Be fans will be out of luck.
I want it here, at work, at IBM, on atleast one of my boxes... from yesterday, on forth. thanks.
||| I still can't believe Parkay's not butter.
Home of consultants, worthless management, and lots of expensive trips to no where - to show off a product that won't sell.
Well, thats what killed Be anyway.
a first post, a plug for your site, and an intelligent troll.. thats awesome..
Perhaps the reason Palm has lagged behind their competitors for a while is because they're directing their efforts toward The Next Big Thing — perhaps the BeOS will be running on our palmtops after all. It's a gorgeous, elegant, and terribly resource-efficient OS; given sufficient horsepower (from an ARM processor, for example), it might be quite impressive at 320x320 resolutions.
Anyone out there with behind-the-scenes knowledge willing to provide some insight?
...BeOS is dead. What on earth would Palm want to continue it for? There are pretty much no users and they add no value to Palm's core business. Palm wanted the assets: developer expertise, a useful codebase, a bunch of good ideas (and likely patents).
You can also forget about them open-sourcing the codebase - it's one of the assets they just bought. Presumably they see some kind of competitive advantage in having it (I'm not sure I do) - they're unlikely to give that away now.
in addition to the codebase, patents, etc., palm will be able to sue microsoft on beos' behalf, for the unlawful licensing tactics that kept beos off the desktop... microsoft's o.e.m. licenses prohibited dual-booting, which was definitely a contributing factor to beos' demise (one of the few concessions that the d.o.j. "won" in the recent settlement was a prohibition on those types of licensing agreements)
given that microsoft is now a proven monopolist, and treble damages apply, palm stands to make considerably more money from microsoft than they spent for be
i thought, therefore i was...
Don't forget there's MacOS X...
I got BE 4.5 some years ago. Never got it installed, there were always some more fun things to do or more important stuff to explore. I think one of the things was the fact it wasn't open source. I really like the Be style. But the fact that it was a small close group didn't give me the push to go. I think it was my fault but also the Be Inc. for not do the same support as e.g. Borland do for their products, that I really like and used and still like.
Now that Be has another change I hope they open it and open the window for fresh air to get in.
------I can please only one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow isn't looking good either.------
Palm has only bought assets, not the entire company, and I'm pretty sure Be itself retained the right to sue.
The plan of BeUnited is more or less to license BeOS, release a new version, and use the sales profit to pay for the license. The OS would then be improved with the help of NDAed enthusiasts and possibly some pros. An open source release is not planned.
As much as I'd like this plan to succeed, I consider it purely wishful thinking:
1. No money.
BeUnited doesn't have a sponsor (I asked), and in the current situation I think it's unlikely that they'll get a high enough credit.
2. No product
While it's true that BeInc has been doing work on a new network stack (BONE) and a nice OpenGL implementation, this stuff is still in late beta. Other parts like Java and Opera4 would have to be ported from BeIA.
3. The numbers aren't right.
Have a look at the 'Save BeOS' petition: Around 4000 entries. So how many versions could you sell? For what price? What's your margin? Even if you would get a credit and if you wouldn't need to do dev work: You wouldn't make enough money to make Palm an attractive offer.
Sad but true.
I always thought that Palm was on Palm OS. If the are changing will the change it for Be OS or GNU/Linux?
IMHO if the competition is focusing on GNU/Linux theiy will also provably, or they want stand on the crow with the BE OS. What do you think?
------I can please only one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow isn't looking good either.------
You seem to forget that Sun went off and bought StarOffice and did open source it.
Might not be pure GPL, but they still might opensource it if it adds value to their business model, although I honestly cannot figure out how this acquisition does.
Live today. Tomorrow will cost a lot more!
Now if Apple bought Palm, Steve would have an awesome product-development team from Be, people that know how to optimize PPC media streams and squeeze incredible media through apple hardware.
Right now Apple's core market won't jump to OS X because it's not as good at multimedia (IMO) as the cooperative-multitasking and close-to-hardware Classic Mac OS. This would be just what the doctor ordered for Apple.
I think Palm is prettying themselves up for a buyout.
I would be VERY pleased if such things happened.
I'd pay to see Jobs and Gasse competing for "most warped psyche" on Apple campus!
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
I hate to say this, but the way things are going, Microsoft will win the PDA war.
Most users out there like the safety (or feel good) that a familiar environment provides. Most will buy a PDA not because it has the best OS, but because the migration from their PC to the PDA is not difficult.... ie it is still fairly intuitive.
Palm forking and introducing another OS would just muddy the waters, and at best I think would win market share from the other minor OSes, instead of Microsoft.
Incorporate some the good bits of BeOS into PalmOS if you must, but please do not introduce yet another PDA OS.
For what it's worth, I think Palm should bequeth BeOS to the GNU/Linux crew, and slowly migrate PalmOS to Linux. The result would be more critical mass, and a concerted and coordinated challenge to Windows on the desktop, on the servers, and on the PDA.
Live today. Tomorrow will cost a lot more!
I doubt it. The article says that the shareholders will also be asked to approve a dissolution of Be.
That means no more Be. No Be means noone to sue microsoft as Be, unless Be has transferred those rights to another body corporate before it is dissolved.
I doubt therefore, that they would retain the rights to sue Microsoft if they are planning on not being around very soon.
Live today. Tomorrow will cost a lot more!
You seem to forget that Sun went off and bought StarOffice and did open source it.
Of course Sun had the resources to do this. Be didn't. In fact if this deal didn't went trough the next step would have been bankruptcy.
-adnans
"In short: just say NO TO DRUGS, and maybe you won't end up like the Hurd people." --Linus Torvalds
IMHO, Palm will stop the development of BeOS.
There's maybe a chance that one day, the OpenBeOS project succeeds.
OpenBeOS is an opensource project which wants to recreate the BeOS.
I don't believe it's possible. It seems to be a too difficult work but the people behind this project looks serious. So good luck to OpenBEOS!
The About-Box of BeOS hints at some of the licensed code:
RSA encryption for Net+
(Hasn't the RSA license changed anyway?)
Real Player and maybe codecs
(Simply leave them out)
USB drivers from Intel
Tough - but you can live without them
Optimized graphics routines from Intel
The biggest problem. Graphics card drivers
and maybe OpenGL seem to depend on it.
On the other hand, BeOS 4.5 seems to have
worked without that code. And maybe it's
encapsulated in the libbitflinger.
Well - if you know what you're doing, it
should not be too hard to get the code out.
But who should do it?
I've tried BeOS, and it IS a splendid little OS. But I really don't know why they thought they could break into the commercial OS market.
There are Be shareholders?!
I don't know that I dare to ask the price on that one.
I remember, back in the days of BeOS R3 and 4.5, to have visited a site called the Artillion, put up by William Bull, the graphic artist who made the icons for the BeOS and much of its widgets. The last thing I know is he went to QNX, and presumably has done work on Photon's graphics there. Any slashdotter at QNX who can shed some light?
I for one liked very much the graphics...
Last thing I heard was the the CEO of Palm resigned and the company wasn't going so strong as a whole. So what good is it for Be to be bought by them?
Fight hunger. Filet a politician and send him to a 3rd world country of your choice.
I can give you the numbers anyway:
Currently it's $0.095 per share.
At the IPO it was $6 per share. The highest
price has been around $40 per share when
there were speculations about RedHat buying
BeInc.
The active community of BeOS is small yet productive but in an inefficient way. You have BeUnited, OpenBE, BlueOS, someone else ? We are facing branches without a good trunk.
If BeOS is still not dead, and can't see how those divisions could save it.
Some people mention the fact Palm won't want to let their new catch loose at all, and I unfortunately tend to agree. The thing is, how long do you honestly expect Palm to survive? They're betting a lot on this, and may just get swallowed up by another company before they can get a truly new line of PDAs off the ground.
What about BeOS then? You can bet a purchaser of Palm will be primarily interested in their core business, not something as peripheral as BeOS. The way I see it, such a buyer could be quite a bit more receptive to releasing the BeOS in some way, unless said buyer is MS or Apple. Then the OS would be *dead*.
± 29 dB
I can't agree with you as, as a RiscOS user, I may claim that my desktop is even fluider.
Even BeOS for which I developped wasn't as responsive.
(And BTW, RiscOS boots in 4 seconds)
Trolling using another account since 2005.
What BeOS had was amazing performance in the low-latency area of computing, namely audio and video.There is a huge market for audio and video processing. People in that sector goes with what runs best, they're even running MacOS 9 (gasp!), because Cubase and other applications just plain works better under MacOS compared to Windows. Some are still running Atari!
Be had their chance when Steinberg announced a port of Nuendo, their successor to Cubase, to BeOS. At that point, the entire music business was raving, "No more suffering from Wndows/MacOS!!"
Guess what happened? Be made the decision to drop BeOS personal edition, and instead pursue the BeOS Internet Appliance(!?!). This failed in a spectacular way, with Sony delivering the only shipping units with BeIA. Sony have since discontinued that product.
They had their chance, a niche OS that would dominate a small percentage of the market, but blew it big time.
Mikael
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
could they be put open-source? could the open-source world absorbe such drivers, which are described to be extremely well-written?
I don't know exactly which license issues are blocking it, but since the product have been sold to Palm - and Palm has no interest in further developing some chunks of BE, would it be possible for the Open-source community to "buy" the licenses and outsource everything?
-- There are two kind of sysadmins: Paranoids and Losers. (adapted from D. Bach)
However,
1) Since OSX is based on Mach, it had a 30-yr strong Unix heritage, plus a GUI interface more enticing than BeOS.
2) BeIA is the biggest waste on earth : 64-bit journalling file system and preemptive multitasking for a wireless webpad??!! If done correctly, BeIA might be as powerful as Linux or FreeBSD on a workstation or a small server!
3) Like many ironic stories out there, products that are "successful" are usually those promoted by marketing genuises, not those that have technical excellence. Thus why people go WindowsME/XP or Pentium4....Be Inc. just didn't have enough marketing to convey the message that it's a superior alternative to MacOS (or to an extent, Windows).
Imagine a Titanium PowerBook G4 tri-booting BeOS, MacOS X, and LinuxPPC! Damn I want one of those babies!
It's good that palm can now buy themselves some time to create an OS that is competitive to PocketPC platform. On the other hand, BeOS users would probably get screwed over this time, I doubt Palm would care to do much to the desktop OS.
kawai
IMO Sun did that because StarOffice is a great demo for Java and its attendant technologies. They wanted to show that, "everything MS tools can do, we can do".
Palm does need a new OS, but i think that the purchase of Be Inc. is not cost effective and is actually the worst decision carl has made as ceo, for 12 million, it is way overpriced, and their desperate to get something new out after they stock price went from $165 to a $1.98. The time to port and market the new BeOS will probably be at least a year. Dont get me wrong i like BeOS, and i like my palmpilot, ive had several over the years, but i think they could have hired some programmers and had a OS ready in the same time it will take to port BeOS. Just my 2 cents.
I will bend your mind with my spoon
This will be good to keep Be around for at least 5, and maybe 8, years. By then, there will be such a supply of Be stories, that Be can live again by reusing the stories with the next failed platform (and Amiga will continue to live thorugh those . .
hawk
Beos is *not* going to be open sourced. FFS, this seems to be the standard response to anything software related now. Never gonna happen, stop dreaming. Besides, Linux w/KDE will fast provide anything you could have got from BEOS.
Actually i think it not *becoming* the MacOS that killed BeOS. BeOS was killed by NeXT long before OSX came out. If Gil Amelio had known how long that would be and who would be doing it BeOS would be alive today as MacOSB or some such.
Gasse left Apple knowing that Apples next major OS project had what he described to his successor as "cancer" and would be a spectacular failure. Low and behold he goes out and starts a little company to make a great PowerPC (the chip used by Apple) based multi-media (Apple's core market) OS (Apple's soon-to-be desparate need) that even had "classic" MacOS compatiblity. I think it's pretty obvious what the business plan was - wait for Apple to fall flat on it's face and then sell BeOS to them for a pile of money made enormous by sick desperation. And it was a good plan and should have worked. But Gasse thought he had the ONLY potential successor to MacOS and he didn't count on the infamous Jobs Personal Reality Distortion Field(TM) Gasse was blindsided and botched the next meeting with a suddenly less desperate Apple. the result was Apple bought NeXT instead of Be and hired Jobs instead of Gasse. Really the end of the story with a long decline as they thrashed about spiralling down through different business plans to their eventual cratering at the feet of Palm.
The OS of the best PDAs ever, the Psion 5 & later, & the OS of choice for Motorola, Nokia & Ericson, etc, for the future
Check these links here on cellphone/PDA crossover devices
"I killed BeOS" t-shirt ?
I've always kinda liked the "I killed Laura Palmer" ones.
You're missing a few facts. BeOS was really developed to run on their cool new hardware, the BeBox. And what powered the BeBox? Not the PowerPC but the Hobbit. AT&T dropped the Hobbit so Be was forced to change to PowerPC. I believe at this time they kinda got out of the hardware side of things and moved into software (OS) development.
At that point in time JLG could have figured he'd wait for Jobs to fail, but Be, Inc. was not started with that in mind.
I aquired the developmental version of BeOS used for building BeIA software. This is the version of BeOS that was supposed to be 6.0.
After trying it, I have to say that I was NOT impressed. Sure, it had a new networking module, and other things, but existing apps that use the networking wouldn't run. Hell, even the version of NetPositive that came with it didn't work.
There was an optional new theme and some new widget designs. They are very ugly, in my opinion.
OpenGL acceleration didn't seem to be included in the package I had.
However, this WHOLE thing was in a zip file of only 55 MEGS. There was nothing left out, except for som demos, etc.
So anyway, I deleted that partition, and put 5.0 back on. At least it works...
You are 100% incorrect. In fact, Apple attempted to purchase Be several times, the last time for an amount of money much higher than Palm paid.
Steve was attempting to crush Be, and Jean-Louis refused to allow him on grounds of principle.
What a pity. From my limited hands-on time with one of the later Be releases, it showed a lot of promise. It was clearly the work of people with the right mindset to reach the mainstream computer users, something the Linux camp could definitely use more of.
Remember BeOs version 4, I think it was, the so called "Windows Trojan'ish" version.
Consider some of the previous posters complaint that the palm desktop software/palm os does not scale.
What if the purpose of buying the Be IP et al is to make a Palm Trojan of sorts.
Complaints from Win/Mac couterparts about Palm's software not doing *whatever* because Windows/Mac OS's get in the way. Well, if you boot into the "PalmBeOs" you do not have these integration problems because it is built to (ahem) Be the OS to access your Palm device. I suppose *as* the os or running *in* the os a la a vmware sort of scheme.
That is what I think is a distinct possibility.
GISboy
If it is not on fire, it is a software problem.
Palm will pay $11 for BeOS
Then they are being ripped off.
--saint
Take a look at the initial Palm press release of the buyout here. BeOS and BeIA are never mentioned. Probably the most succinct quote is from now former CEO "you are the weakest link, goodbye" Carl Yankowski:
- The technology and people from Be are highly regarded," said Carl Yankowski, Palm chief executive officer. "We look forward to them joining forces with our own outstanding engineers on future versions of the Palm OS. This move will help us expand the PalmOS platform into broader markets using their multimedia media and Internet expertise.
Again, the engineering team is the focus for Palm; BeOS isn't mentioned.I admit I'm a bit sad to see BeOS go, as it was an amazing desktop operating system that deserved better than the market gave it. But I don't think the public should hold out hope that Palm will continue to develop BeOS. Palm is in a fight for its life. It bought Be because it needed engineers with expertise in multimedia and Internet applications to fill in Palm OS's large gaps. Palm did not buy Be to expand into an unrelated market segment.
--Mythos
Wow, I can't believe I did that.
Long live SB16!
this is i_am_nitrogen's old nick that got trashed by unfair moderation
Um, I think you're wrong. The BeBox never shipped with a hobbit processor. They did begin with the Hobbit, but it had been discontinued by the time they actually shipped anything. So the first BeBoxes were PowerPC.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
When I see the remaining BeOS fanatics hoping that their just-bought OS will be reborn, I'm reminded of my old Amiga days. But Amiga (as it was) is dead. BeFans, don't hold your breath. Move on.
I never said Be shipped the BeBox with the hobbit - I was replying to someone insinuating that Be, Inc. started up with the intentions of creating an alternative OS to sell back to Apple. I was pointing out that their original product (whether it shipped or not it was still their product) wasn't even based on the same platform as Macs were running on.
Just because a product never shipped means it didn't exist.
Would *love* to see this, no matter what the condition is ...
Anyone know what software those RADAR multitrack recording systems are running atop BeOS?
Ok. That's right. I misunderstood. The original poster's point is still not too misinformed. BeOS might not have been originally designed as a replacement for MacOS, but by the time they were in talks with Apple for a $400 million buyout, Gassee might very well have been thinking just like the poster was suggesting.
So yeah. My post was wrong. But yours was more wronger! (Joking. Lighten up, moderators.)
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
I could be wrong but the earliest BeBox I remember had dual PowerPC 603 processors in it.
...didn't vote for it.
As a shareholder, it's a crock of shit...the 'sale' is a bailout for a select few Be backers...
I figure if my stock ends up going down the tubes, (which it does) and I'm left holding nothing, than Be should pay the penalty and go into bankruptcy, not profit as the house of cards collapses.
Even I am not deluded enough that think that BeOS might yet stage a comeback. (I'd be ecstatic if it did, but it won't.) Yet, the passing of BeOS has left a hole in the OS world. There is, at the moment, no lightweight, powerful, fast desktop GUI OS. Windows is bloated and buggier than the rest (though XP is remarkably stable for a Windows OS), Linux (specifically the GNOME and KDE desktop environments) still have major speed and bloat issues, and MacOS-X can't even be considered because the majority of the world runs x86 (and will continue to do so for the forseeable future). There are several projects that are attempting to recreate BeOS and fill its niche (desktop OS, one hell of a niche!)
1) BeUnited. Trying to get Palm to license the BeOS source code. Probably won't work, but if they can do it, might be nice. Still, it won't be Open Source, and thus probably will not have the longevity to compete with Linux and Windows.
2) OpenBeOS. Trying to reimplement BeOS from scratch. Never going to happen, what kind of crack are they on? Good luck to them anyway.
3) BlueOS: A replacement for BeOS using X and the Linux kernel. So far, this seems to be the most promising. After all, Linux is a very nice kernel (after XFS and the low-latency patches are applied) and X is reasonably fast and has good 3D support. The main problem on Linux are the fragmented, slow as molases desktop environments, and that's the part they're concentrating on. If they are successful, it would be useful for all Linux (and beyond!) users, not just BeOS users.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
This is like handing a stale piece of bread to a corpse that died of starvation.
Be was promising at one point, but that promise waned. Palm was strong and powerful at one time, but that power has waned.
might be offtopic but it is true..