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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.
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
From the statement:
:) )
Pursuant to Delaware law, Be will continue to exist for three years after the dissolution becomes effective or for such longer period as the Delaware Court of Chancery shall direct, solely for the purposes of prosecuting and defending lawsuits (including but not limited to pursuing its antitrust case against Microsoft), settling and closing its business in an orderly manner, disposing of any remaining property, discharging its liabilities and distributing to its stockholders any remaining assets, but not for the purpose of continuing any business. In accordance with the plan of dissolution, after payment in full of all claims finally determined to be due, Be will make distributions of any remaining assets (including assets acquired after the record date), if any, only to stockholders of record as of the record date.
(Also, see my post above
My mother always used to tell me: If you can't find anything nice to say, say something bad about Windows.
Nope. Be was in the running to be the basis of Apple's new OS, but Gasse thought that he had them over a barrel and was asking WAY too much money. Apple turned around and bought NeXT instead. Now, Steve Jobs is back at the helm of Apple, and Gasse is out of business. Hardly the fault of Apple.
Apple turned around and bought NeXT instead.
Apple offered ~$120 million for Be. Gassee asked for $200 million. Apple wound up buying NeXT for $400 million.
Think what you will, but it's a fairly obvious "20/20 hindsight" conclusion that price was not the determining factor.
The last I heard (and sorry for not having a URL) was that Palm catagorically said that they would not open source anything from BeOS or licence it to anyone else and basically asked that people please stop bugging them about it.
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.
Number of BeOS apps on store shelves = 0
I live in the Bay area. Best Buy had BeOS and a few apps on their shelves. Fry's had a bunch of BeOS apps. So did Micro Center.