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Be Shareholders Approve Sale to Palm

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the who-got-the-better-end-of-the-bargain dept.

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."

2 of 204 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Sale of Be assets by zuccini · · Score: 5, Informative

    Unfortunately it can't be open-sourced because if the amount of licensed code in it that would be nigh-on impossible to strip out. However, there are some projects underway such as OpenBeOS to reproduce the API open source.

  2. BeUnited is wishful thinking by jeti · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.