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Be Throws in the Towel
darrad writes: "ZDNet is reporting that 'Be, the failed maker of a computer operating system once considered a rival to Microsoft's Windows, said Monday it would dissolve itself on March 15 and delist from the Nasdaq stock market.'" The Be front page says the same, and explains that this is the natural conclusion of the company's sale of most of its property to Palm.
and thanks for all the non-GPL'ed code...
Is this really newsworthy? The dissolution is really just a formality after everything went to Palm.
There should be a moratorium on the use of the apostrophe.
Max V.
NeXTMail/MIME Mail welcome
At least they still get to spend the next three years trying to tie up some of those MS lawyers!
My mother always used to tell me: If you can't find anything nice to say, say something bad about Windows.
Was
Well, the question has been answered. Sadly. Good luck, people.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
Clever writers.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
I guess it's the latter of the two.
be be bye bye boo hoo.
or perhaps, that's the way the be bounces.
Seriously tho, tis a pity to lose another OS. Some say this was partially Apple's fault?
--hongpong.com
What will Palm do with it? Does it fit in to their plans? Any chance of releasing some stuff open source?
There's 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
I was hoping for the lawsuit...oh well.
JoeLinux
Subject says it all.
Is the lawsuit vs. MSFT still on? The PR is still on the front page, but can the suit be continued after Be is dissolved?
A _slightly_ more obscure shakespeare joke.
Thoughts on tech, Software Engineering, and stuff
...Be no longer Is?
--------
Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...
Here's a link for those who still want to try it ;)
e
http://ftp.pcworld.com/pub/system/other/beospe.ex
Life sucks.
From the latest press release:
... solely for the purposes of prosecuting and defending lawsuits (including but not limited to pursuing its antitrust case against Microsoft)..."
"Be will continue to exist for three years after the dissolution becomes effective
http://blueos.free.fr/
Nice technology, clever stuff, but c'mon, that's like saying.. oh, wait, this is /., never mind.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
Isn't a requiem for Be a little late?
What are the chances of Palm releasing the code to this. I suspect the open source community could make this thing HUGE if ALL the code was open sources, GPL'd.
Hey I can wish can't I!
I am a BeOS supporter, as I love the OS. However, I have not run the OS on a primary machine for over 2 years. BeOS users need to recognize that the only hope for Be is a Free Be, and that is not going to happen. YellowTab, as far as I know, does not have the source to the licensed code. So therefore, any changes they make are going to be cosmetic and not core changes.
The way I see it, if you really like the BeOS, head over to the Open-Source Be like projects like openbeos and pledge your support with money or code.
-= Xafloc =-
alinuxbox.com
N
Considering the current state of the Be, they should probably change their name to Was.
There simply wasn't enough venture capital to keep something like this alive. To be honest, I'm surprised MS didn't buy them out 3 days after they announced they planned on making an OS to compete.
BeOS is dying.
I would have titled this story, "To Be or not to Be?"
--
Mod up a post Rob doesn't like and you'll never mod again
they were a worthy competitor, microsoft will be picking itself up, dusting off the scratches and bruises, and moving on to try and win the desktop. it's a tough business and only stronger competitors lay in its future. apple, i guess, is next, or next is apple!??
More like a rival to Amiga. Except with less software.
Well, I guess they failed to live up to their name. Perhapy they should name their next company Might Be.
I think, grammatically, "Have Been" would be a better fit, though "Has Been" has a certain ring, too.
But then I wanted to find software for it... and all I was told was "BeWare"!
Karma whorin' since 1999
Wasn't the Atari ST the rival to Amiga?
They've been grasping for air for months...someone should have put them down a long time ago, just like a lame horse.
(I used BeOS once, it was OK, but no apps to do anything on it)
Beer, now there's a temporary solution -- Homer Jay S.
I guess this would be offtopic, but consider that March 15 is the Ides of March, if my memory blocks are not faulty. I never got a decent change to try out BeOS, but I always heard good things. Sad to see them go.
.... ... }
int main (void) {
Remind me of a sort of corny Brian Adums song:
"... When you breath I want to be the air for you.
I'll be there for you..."
Anybody know the full lyrics?
I know I'm going to hell, I'm just trying to get good seats.
the towel is really a database and you can set user-defined attributes on the towel. The towel is also built from the ground-up to support SMP, has very low latency, and a well thought-through user interface.
(the sound of Be's second CPU being unchecked)
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
BEOS stock went down -16.58% today and it's current worth is about 0.10 (opened at 12) with bids still out for 0.9 or so. It's amazing that people actually bought BEOS stock today lol
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
If they had have stayed the hardware+OS route they would have fared much better.
let it be... let it be, let it be, ooh let it be, teaching words of wisdom... let it be...
(any moderator who cant figure this out is a simpering moron)
anyway, I never got to use Be, but any competition to microsoft lost is a shame, thanks for the good times guys.
a bit more about me http://www.advogato.org/person/trelane/ or my private page http://trelane.net
I used Be on a few occasions and really enjoyed it. I found the UI to be refreshing and the speed of the system great. I really think they had something that could have been the proprietary (sp?) ia32 Windows rival, unfortunatly Microsoft wouldn't have it.
Dead
Those boxen looked cool, had blinkenlights on the front, and most importantly, the GeekPort! I'll miss them.
Farewell, Be!
"There are already a million monkeys on a million typewriters, and Usenet is NOTHING like Shakespeare." - Blair Houghton
I heard the news on the radio today. The Be Operating System was found dead in it's Riverdale, CA residence. Even if you never heard of Be its contribution to American OS's is monumental. Truly a sad loss.
But I am still trying to come up with Be users and advocates I know who I can laugh at.
Remember when Be was going take over the world yet us "free software zealots" who wanted the source code kept saying "but...what if Be goes under or becomes some kind of tyrant?"
Hopefully they learned that freedom means giving control of the software as well as its power to its users. Power contained in the hands of the few is little power at all.
If they're going to go ahead with their lawsuit (which may well result in a large settlement down the road), but they're dissolving and distributing now, what happens to any monies collected from the lawsuit?
Any lawyers want to fill us in? Do the shareholders (potentially) get some of it down the road, or does it go to some other mysterious land (assuming all debts are paid off)?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I always thought they would have been more successful if they changed their name to "Beer".
Programming can be fun again. Film at 11.
Now we can call it "Been".
They've been dead ever since they decided to "change focus" from multimedia to networking. They had steinberg lined up, high-end sound card makers were starting to announce driver support plans, then they "change focus." As if the networking niche wasn't completely saturated already. Too bad, they could've given mac a run for their money in the multimedia market . . .
"The crows seemed to be calling his name, thought Caw."
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Microsoft has shown it has been able to stall cases in a court of law for quite a long time.
Hopefully 3 years is enough.
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
It's almost funny that they are going to stay around a few more years *just* to spend those twilight years in court. Since the company has dissolved and sold most of its IP to Palm there isn't much chance that Be will come back, but it will be interesting to see what happens to the money they may win in any legal proceedings against Microsoft.
To that end, I'd like to start the rumor now that Be, Amiga and IBM are teaming up to make AmBeOS/2, which will feature a telepathic user interface, 128 bit memory access, and an AI module that actually does your thinking for you.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
At the bottom of the page annoucing the disolution of Be, Inc. you find this funny bit of legal boilerplate:
Safe Harbor Statement
This web page contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results or outcomes to differ materially from those contemplated by the forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause or contribute to such differences include, but are not limited to, risks relating to unknown or contingent liabilities, and the statutory process of dissolution.
Reminds me of a Mr Boffo cartoon I saw once depicting someone waiting in line to put his head on the chopping block. In the first frame, he's writing a list entitled "Long Term Goals". In the second frame he's adds his first goal: Don't trip on the stairs (of the platform with the chopping block).
good-Bye... :)
--pi
It was really kinda neat and worked well in the limited cpacity it could...
But it had gotten right in architecture design, they more than made up for in terms of application and hardware support.
I know, the software is chicken and egg syndrome for a proprietary operating system, but they needed something to appeal. They at least had a focus, multimedia applications, but they didn't even have a decent MPEG-1 decoder, only a really slower, really low quality decoder, and that was, unfortunately, perhaps the best Be ever got with a widespread media format/codec. If they had given away the platform from the start with the Development tools, they might have garnered enough application support to carry them further. It seems to me after free.be.com started doing its thing, that BeBits started to pick up in development efforts. If they had been around before Linux had gotten a lot of decent multimedia and desktop support, they might have stood a better chance.
As far as hardware, for a multimedia OS, the video card drivers were always crap. Rarely did they support stuff like YUV overlays, and they expected to be a good multimedia OS? Sorry, but I don't think so.
The reality is now you have MS for most all desktop users, Mac for the anti-establishment, but non-techincal people with money to throw at overpriced hardware, and Linux for geeks like me, which now has decent multimedia playback and desktop software. Not good for content creation or gaming (but could be with the right applications..), but quite suitable for so much else...
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
This is indeed very sad news, but I think everyone saw the writing on the wall.
:(
Since it was written as a media OS it handled sound and video recording much better than Windows.
Latency to video and audio hardware was often as much as 90% less than same hardware running Windows or even Linux and a lot of people that used proprietary recording software on BeOS would be the first to tell you how awesome this OS was.
RIP BeOS
--Jon
Does this mean my Be(en)Box is worth some money?
-adnans
"In short: just say NO TO DRUGS, and maybe you won't end up like the Hurd people." --Linus Torvalds
Tonight I will fire up the ole PC Server 704 in salute to their wonderful work.
Yes it is installed, yes it does boot, yes it is quite bad ass (: (yes I leave it off due to emense power consumption)
IBM PC Server 704 (image) - I'll make some webcam shots of the bad boy tonight too.
~LoudMusic
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
The inertia in things like operating systems and programming languages continues to frustrate me. If you aren't a mere extension to the dominant technology, you may as well not bother. If you're something significantly different, but only a few hundred percent better, you may as well not bother. The inertia is just too great for really good ideas to be adopted quickly.
Be will be a lesson to those who hadn't already learned from NeXT, Amiga, etc. When Be first started, I remember commenting to a friend that "there's a group that just doesn't get it." I've hoped ever since that I would turn out to be wrong. I wasn't talking about their technology, which I always admired. It was the insurmountable market barriers that they would face.
If you're not 10x better, the only approach that seems to work is to find a whole new market niche to go for.
(Sorry, this next part is going to sound like a troll, but...) Even Linux is a bit depressing. So much talent out there, and the best we can come up with is the amazing innovation of cloning a 30 yr old OS? Free and open source aren't technical innovations, they're marketing innovations.
There's so much research in OS theory, in programming languages, in user interfaces and human-computer interaction -- so many great ideas from the 80s and 90s that will take another generation to reach the daily lives of most of us professional developers.
"Those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded."
Well this is also a problem... immediately when it became apparent that Be was in big trouble, there opened at least three different open source Be clone-projects. Now at best we'll get a bunch of uncompleted Be-clones and maybe one or two usable systems. At worst we'll get a whole lot of Be-clones, each one with it's own quirks and problems, and developers for Be will have to code around quirks right and left to make anything work on all the Be-like systems. To make things worse, at least BlueOS have already started thinking about extending the API, so that in the end nothing will be compatible with anything, but everything will be "almost" compatible.
Tomorrow will be cancelled due to lack of interest
Be wanted to create an OS that was superior to Windows and Mac OS. That was EASY TO DO. Back then, MS and Apple operating systems SUCKED ROYALLY and ANYONE could make something better. Some companies actually did make something better (OS/2). Even Apple and MS could have made something better if they started from scratch, however they both realized (correctly) that application support is far more important than kernel threading, so they stuck with their crappy backwards-compatible OSes.
Everyone was, at that time, aware of the "chicken and egg" problem: a new platform has no software, so no users will migrate to it, so nobody will write software, etc. This problem had doomed every new platform. Everyone was aware of it. Be decided to forge ahead anyway, while offering no solution to this problem whatsoever.
The result, predictably, was that BeOS had no applications. Running that nifty teapot demo got a little old, and nobody felt compelled to pay for it.
If you're going to make a new commercial desktop OS, forge an alliance with Adobe etc and have app makers lined up BEFOREHAND. The game console makers know this.
tom
Are there any other free BeOS-like OS's?
QNX is pretty cool but until they implement real swapfiles it's not very useful.
We were not expecting this?
I thought they already sold the towel to Palm.
Has Palm said anything about what they're going to do with the IP they bought from Be? They paid millions for it (millions worth of stock), so I assume they're gonna do something other than just sit on it. $11M is a big chunk of change just to get a few developers out of their noncompetes...
Build stuff. Stuff that walks, stuff that rolls, whatever.
I still have Beos installed on my machines and boot into it occasionally to see if BeAcid has suddenly appeared. It hasn't. I will definately look into OpenBeos when it gets more fleshed out, and look forward to the day I can stop using something I hate (windows) to make something I love (music)
I prefer narrow pages, why is why I'm happy that your post did not widen my pages. The goatse.cx link makes up for that minor shortcoming, though.
IBM would have launched the last installation of CD into outer space 5 years ago if they could figure out how to get all the banks that insist on using it to move to Windows. It's a pain in the ass when the customers base makes support of an OS you'd rather be forgotten a requirement for future contracts with you.
Nonetheless inside IBM itself, the OS is all but dead and that is the most telling sign that it's gone the way of the dodo. It's not on my desktop now, but it was mandated to be for all IBMers at one point. The once active discussion forums rarely see any traffic and when they do, it's some bitter OS/2 advocate bitching about how the company fucked the OS/2 community over. All development now takes place in India, Latvia and Austin Texas, although from what I understand of the arrangements, Austin just directs the overseas shops and doesn't do a lot of hands on itself.
OS/2 IS dead. It may remain in use damn near forever in niche markets where solutions already exist and developing new ones isn't a priority, but so will MS DOS 5.0. They will never fix any of the problems that prevented the OS from completely owning the desktop environment (And they easily COULD have owned the desktop with SO little work.) They will never add a new feature that isn't demanded by some large bank backed by the threat of several multi-million dollar contracts that they could take elsewhere. And you will never again be able to walk into CompUSA and go "I Wanna buy me some OS/2" and have anyone there know what the hell you are talking about.
Do I necessarily like that? No! I was a staunch advocate. I did the team OS/2 thing. I still have the letters of appreciation from IBM corporate thanking me for working the '95 COMDEX. I was the first IBM OS/2 Certified engineer working the phones at IBM Boca. I know how close IBM was to taking the desktop market away from Microsoft. But there comes a time when you just have to let go. IBM screwed the pooch and Microsoft won again. Just accept it.
By the way, Solaris isn't dead, but it's starting to smell a little.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
To BE or Not to BE?
... Not to BE.
NeXT failed but Apple seems to be energized
with the same ideas.
Santa Cruz operation dwindled but Linux is
finding commercial support.
Novell... well... To Be or Not to Be?
What was the question?
public class Be throws inTowel
( );
{
public void businessModel()
{
try
{
boolean works = toCoexistPeacefullyWithMicrosoft();
if(!works)
{
throw inTowel;
}
}
catch(FlakFromUsers e)
{
open.BeOS();
}
finally
{
BeEmulatedOnOtherOsesRunningBeVMsFiveYearsFromNow
}
}
}
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
In any case, why would Palm have bought Be in the first place if they didn't have any plans for it?
Because they wanted Be's engineers. Yah, they'll probably use some of Be's BeIA code in the next PalmOS, which would be great, but from what I remember their main motivation was a bunch of kick-ass engineers for a pittance. And some decent code too.
1. In business for 10 years
2. Number of BeOS apps on store shelves = 0
3. The end.
Enough stupid comments from people... BEOS tried and did not succeed.. thats all there is... somebody else will come along and try to do what they started....... "Hello there Mr. Linus".....
As I said, if you want success, you have to target a new niche. That doesn't guarantee success, but not doing so virtually guarantees failure, given the inertia I'm talking about.
;-)
Steve didn't kill Be. He just didn't save it. Nobody else saved it, either, but I don't know if anyone could have. Yes, he bought NeXT, and where is NeXT OS now? Is it saved? Yes, well probably on some archive tape somewhere.
"Those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded."
It is to me. The news tells me "you have 11 days to get in on the settlement." Of course it's a long shot, but ... Microsoft has already been declared guilty.
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
The question was if they(meaning palm not Be) were going to release any(meaning a part or portions) of the code. Palm could release some of the code, because they now own it, if they have no use for it. Think of all the good press they would get, I'm sure if palm did release some code, it would be on the front page of /.
This sig is a virus, take it and use it.
LinuxWorx
Spelling errors are intentional as are gramatical error
Can we stop making lame ass jokes about the name "be"
Sorry. Had to say it.
-Baka!
The folks over at RADAR produce a very slick piece of recording gear based on BeOS. I wonder if they were licensed the source code to make updates for their OS?
BeOS is NOT dead.
it's on my PC and hundreds of thousands of other peoples' PCs.
BeOS will not go away.
It has a few new guises now and for fucks sake OpenBeOS has ALREADY released a point release....i mean how quick was that?
Head on over to http://www.openbeos.org/ and join up to code or participate in the new revolution.....Open Source software that people can easily use without "patching the kernel" or recompiling drivers.....man Joe Public can not do that. In BeOS/OpenBeOS you just download your driver and run up the installation package. Easy peezy, lemon Squeezy.
Reboot? i looked that up in my PC glossary (i had to look that up too) and there were photos of various Windows releases and Linux as well.
Welcome to the real world.
Welcome to OpenBeos.
cheers
peter
"Be will be a lesson to those who hadn't already learned from NeXT, Amiga, etc."
:)
Amiga had a chance, and failed because Commodore mis-managed and under-promoted it. The fan base was there, the tech was there (at the time), and there were probably more apps then BeOS ever had.
NeXT failed because the hardware was dumb. It started with a 4bit grey-scale display when EGA, VGA, and Amiga graphics were not only better, but cheaper. NeXT boxes only had CD-ROMs for removable media. The only way they could share data was on a network, and only the far more expensive machines were online. Worst of all, they cost $5k with an academic discount, or $10k without. A fully loaded PC or Amiga was $4k or less and had apps, a floppy drive, and could talk to anything.
Be failed because it has no reason to exist anymore. It would have been great before DirectX 7 or accelerated XFree86. The one thing they tried to do better than anyone else was being done well enough for free by Linux and *BSD.
Amiga was a lesson in marketing. NeXT was a lesson in timing (we weren't ready). BeOS was a lesson in timing too (we already had it). Three very different lessons that I'm glad _I_ didn't directly pay for.
http://ftp.sunet.se/pub/os/BeOS/
:(
Contrary to popular belief, I don't actually make my website for other people to look at.
Potential buyers include the army for be all you can be and bumble be tuna...
Inquire within
Gone but not... ummm
Actaully, I remember reading about it at the time. I read that Be wanted $400 million. It has always stuck in my mind that Be wanted the same as it cost to get NeXT.
U think grammatically? must be tough to do with a dick between your ears.
Get that dick called Be Inc. outa your mouth and get a life.
I've got little remorse about the loss of BeOS. A good operating system, to be sure. But nothing revolutionary. I saw it first at a tradeshow, and watched hoardes of people ooh and aah over demonstrations of things which I could have done on my 3-year old NeXT box at the time. Be boiled my blood the way Microsoft did when they demonstrated Windows 1.0... making Mac users like myself fume at the nose, and the rest of the world act amazed and giddy. Now I'm in the Linux and OS X camp... waiting for the next revolution.
Kind of like how BSD was in Big Trouble with AT&T? Then 386BSD split up into NetBSD and FreeBSD? Really, OpnBSD and BlueOS are both distinct projects, but they both will share the BeOS APIs. Eventually FreeBSD and NetBSD had to expand and improve their respective projects, because 386BSD wasn't perfect. As long as BlueOS keeps to the order posted in your link, there won't be a problem, as BeOS functionality will be implemented before they try to expand upon the APIs. Just like OpenBeOS will reimplement BeOS before contiuing along the path of their "Glass elevator" BeOS API expansion project. As long as they stay faithful to the core common APIs, there is no problem with thinking about the future. After all, innovation shouldn't always be sacrificed for the sake of backwards compatibility, even Apple has advanced with their Carbon API, while still maintaining reasonable compatibility with classic Mac OS APIs. BeOS classic emulation is even an option, if you can use VMWare, WINE or even BOCHS to host the still available FreeBeOS download. Or you could host Yellowtab, which seems to be nothuing more than a slightly maintained "classic" BeOS.
The irony of these projects, is that the original goal of BeOS was to defiantly break backwards compaibility to free up future pursuits. Well, despite that, I still think Both BlueOS and OpenBeOS are useful projects.
No, Next comes Ce. After that, an improved version should be called Ceplusplus
This will cause much discussion over whether the next iteration should be called Pe or De.
Oh, damn. None of this applies, Because Be is BNU.
Yeah, Palm won. Be engineers are prolific, and fully unrestricted with the Be IP acuisition as well.
Anyway, much of BeOS was Open Source and being a microkernel, the APIs were of most importance, and most of the APIs were open. That is all that could have helped anything anyway... Linux couldn't use the code used in the core of the BeOS as Linux can only use C code, not C++. BlueOS would not be maing more progress if the BeOS had been Open sourced. OpenBeOS OTOH, could have used more fre BeOS kits. They are progressing at a pretty good clip now anyway, and will be under a less restrictive license than the GPL which Be tended to use.
If they were smart, they'd open source a version of BeOS (Maybe FreeBeOS?) to the public before going under?
In fact, they still crank out the AmigaOS and Amiga systems over in Germany.
If I was a multi-billionare I'd buy out Be, Amiga, and Palm and make one heck of a new system using technology from all three of them.