Current Owner of BeOS Code Claims Zeta is Illegal

Hank Powers writes "The legal status of the Zeta operating system that was derived from the source code Be Inc. left shortly before going bankrupt has been unclear for several years. Now, the current owner of the source code, ACCESS, claims "if Herr Korz feels that he holds a legitimate license to the BeOS code he's been using, we're completely unaware of it, and I'd be fascinated to see him produce any substantiation for that claim". The sales of Zeta have been suspended and so has the development been halted as well. OSNews has an article about the recent developments."

Comments

Nothing to see here, yadda yadda...

[pla]

Now, the current owner of the source code, ACCESS, claims "if Herr Korz feels that he holds a legitimate license to the BeOS code he's been using, we're completely unaware of it, and I'd be fascinated to see him produce any substantiation for that claim".

Perhaps some insider can make this issue more clear (yes, I R'd TFA), but this seems like a non-issue. As I understand it...

This company ACCESS legitimately owns the rights to BeOS. Korz/YellowTAB never had any right to continue work on it as Zeta, and may even have started the project based on leaked source code. But PalmSource never cared, and YellowTAB never bothered doing more than sending nastygrams every few months, probably because they saw no possible financial incentive to do so.

So overall, this sounds an awfully lot like ACCESS has zero interest in BeOS/Zeta(/Haiku?), but their lawyers have advised them to send a periodic reminder of "oh, BTW, we own this", just so they can eat the whole thing on the off chance it ever becomes commercially viable.



So... Why does this count as news? It seems like just the status quo for the past six years, nothing new here.

Re:Nothing to see here, yadda yadda...

[tverbeek]

The fact that sales of Zeta have been suspended because of this makes it news.

This is definitely bad news for fans of BeOS. If there's a silver lining, hopefully it will spur more support for Haiku, which as an open-source project is immune from a company deciding to sit on a useful OS instead of letting others maintain and improve on it.

Re:Nothing to see here, yadda yadda...

[pla]

All that's happened is that finally you've been chosen for shipment to Cuba

Yeah, but that represents a real threat, since we have more people in Guantanimo than BeOS/Zeta has users. ;-)



/ joking, for the humor impaired.
// I think...

Re:Nothing to see here, yadda yadda...

[aussie_a]

If this truly was happening periodically for the past 6 years, why is development and sales being halted now? Does this also happen periodically?

Re:Nothing to see here, yadda yadda...

[malsdavis]

For info: the Haiku website is http://haiku-os.org/

Re:Nothing to see here, yadda yadda...

[iminplaya]

If we're going to treat IP as real property, then we need laws against speculation. "Use it or lose it" is what we should be demanding. Same goes for the Alpha chip. When the question of why we still use x86 was asked a while ago, the answer should have been clear right away. "It's the law."

Re:Nothing to see here, yadda yadda...

[DRobson]

The reason ACCESS have gone slightly more public with this right now is due to Bernd's comments regarding open sourcing parts of Zeta. Previously ACCESS did not believe it was worthwhile spending time and money going after a project which probably didnt make that much money in the first place and was based on a property they clearly have no interest in. Magnussoft appear to have only just heard this public statement and decided it wasn't worth the risk to distribute something they might not have rights over. The key is that Magnussoft wasn't the distributor until halfway through last year when Bernd's company 'yellowTab' became insolvent.

Re:Nothing to see here, yadda yadda...

[couchslug]

"If there's a silver lining, hopefully it will spur more support for Haiku,"

The sooner non-OSS BeOS dies the better.
We should not want it, should not support it, and should support Haiku out of good old-fashioned self-interest if nothing else.

Instead of hoping commercial entities do the right thing, how about supporting people who do the right thing because they value doing it??

Access Microsoft

[Doc Ruby]

Access, the company now stifling innovation with the dormant BeOS code, is also the Japanese mobile phone corporate giant that bought out PalmOS, lying about offering a smartphone running Linux with a PalmOS GUI/compatibility layer.

Funny how they keep spending money on OS'es that they never profit from. Their mission seems to be to kill OS'es that have a chance to innovate around Microsoft's monopoly. I wonder whether their license to deploy Windows phones in Japan was contingent on doing that kind of Microsoft dirty work, perhaps even secretly funded (or subsidized) by Microsoft.

Re:Access Microsoft

[digitig]

Access, the company now stifling innovation with the dormant BeOS code, is also the Japanese mobile phone corporate giant that bought out PalmOS, lying about offering a smartphone running Linux with a PalmOS GUI/compatibility layer. Well, they at least appear to have released an SDK for one (http://www.access-company.com/news/press/ACCESS/2 007/20070212d_alp_pdk.html), which AFAICS is as close as they were ever going to get because they don't seem to be in the hardware business.

Re:Access Microsoft

[kurt555gs]

Great observation, and that makes perfect sense. This would be typical M$ behavior. Another reason that breaking up M$ should be a prime focus of the US government.

It should have happened before.

Cheers

Re:Access Microsoft

[Rob the Bold]

Access, the company now stifling innovation with the dormant BeOS code, is also the Japanese mobile phone corporate giant that bought out PalmOS, lying about offering a smartphone running Linux with a PalmOS GUI/compatibility layer.

This is a good example of why we need a way to pry IP out of the hands of organizations that buy it just to stifle it. One could argue that Intellectual Property is just like any property and an owner can make use of it or not to its own pleasure. However, IP is different. IP not really something you own: it is a license (or privilege) to exclusive production. The term "Intellectual Property" itself is misleading, and cooked up to create the illusion that it is something to be owned like a tool, or a piece of land.

In fact, the U.S. Constitution (e.g.) clearly states the purpose for granting such privileges:

The Congress shall have Power . . .

To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;

This clearly illustrates the purpose of patents, trademarks and copyrights, which is to encourage publication or production of works and products for the benefit of all by giving the creator the ability to exclusively profit from their publication or production. It's a mutually beneficial deal, an agreement between the general public and creators of useful works. If the creator decides not to produce the protected work, then the public gains nothing. One doesn't get exclusive license just to sit on their discoveries. At some point of non-production, the protection should expire early.

Re:Access Microsoft

[hacker]

Access, the company now stifling innovation with the dormant BeOS code, is also the Japanese mobile phone corporate giant that bought out PalmOS, lying about offering a smartphone running Linux with a PalmOS GUI/compatibility layer.

Obviously you are very mistaken.

Re:Access Microsoft

[Doc Ruby]

lying about offering a smartphone running Linux with a PalmOS GUI/compatibility layer.

Obviously you didn't read the article to which you linked:

Access says ALP 1.0's task-oriented user interface builds on the "legendary" usability of the original Palm OS user interface.
[...]
Also planned for later release is a "Garnet VM Compatibility Kit" which appears to represent the final frontier for Palm OS. Together, the SDK and Garnet VM will provide an upgrade path for hundreds of thousands of Palm OS application developers, Access says.

In other words, no PalmOS on their Linux phone. They've been "planning" it for years. They announced they'd be releasing it in 2006. 2007 will be at least half over, and they'll still be "planning" it. Liars.

Wishing doesn't make it so, for you either.

Re:Access Microsoft

[mcbridematt]

PalmSource (who ACCESS bought) wasn't really involved directly with the BeOS purchase, it was purchased before Handspring was acquired and the company was split IIRC.

And when PalmSource did release their new Palm OS (Cobalt), despite a subsequent revision, supposedly at the request of Palm OS licensees, it died because PalmOne (current day "Palm Inc.") weren't interested in the OS they paid for in the first place. No one else wanted to launch an OS clearly superior to PalmOS 5, WinCE and probably the Linux mobile offerings of the day and Cobalt died a silent death.
All the licenses bar Palm Inc, and GSPDA didn't launch any further devices, only one has joined (Jaina) and launched since, leading to M$ dominating, not by monopoly, but because they actually have a clue how to co-operate with licensees - not to mention a programming environment which doesn't niche market industry programmers running.
PalmSource, realizing this, bought China MobileSoft to concentrate on Linux phones, then was bought by ACCESS, *after Palm lost the bidding race for the IP it use to own*, who, presumably, believes the future is high-end mass-market phones.

Now we have a situation where Palm Inc is selling Windows Mobile based devices as a sheer result on stupidity by Ed Colligan and Co after Handspring and Palm merged.

For those who didn't read: ACCESS doesn't have that much to do with the lack of a legal, original BeOS based environment. Palm Inc. paid for it, split, killed it by proxy, ACCESS doesn't want anything to do with it other than any concrete IP.

Re:Access Microsoft

[Doc Ruby]

Patent owners should indeed have to prove they are using their "temporary" synthetic monopoly to promote the progress of science or the useful arts by producing the invention, not just sitting on it. That is in fact a parallel to the more sensible trademark rules, which require use of the mark, and active confrontation with diluters. Because trademark's governing "Lanham Act" is designed to protect the consumer from confusion, to protect commerce, not just profitmaking.

Further, patents should register their costs in development of the patent, not just the product after the patent, and expire the patent once either the time or a multiple ROI is reached. The ROI should be a maximum of 10x (probably even just 2x, but actual research and ongoing parameters should establish the precise ROI that promotes). And the time should be per-industry, with software/IT times governed more by Moore's Law and software obsolescence studies. Software itself is obviously (to anyone but greedheads) copyright, not patent, material.

The whole system is rotten. But if it were tweaked a little, pared back to its justifiable framework, it could form the basis for a system that actually promotes the progress that justifies the monopoly in conflict with expression freedom.

Re:Access Microsoft

[Doc Ruby]

The other big case the Clinton Department of Justice won against a monopoly/cartel was against Big Tobacco. It's now coming to light that Bush's Justice Department interfered with the followthru. As part of their now obvious process of coporatizing the Justice Department to serve monopolies like Microsoft. I expect it's only a matter of time before we learn how Bush deliberately ditched the MS monopoly judgement. His favorite lobbyist, Jack Abramoff, got his lobbyist career started at Preston, Gates, Bill Gates III's father's law firm. I expect there's a lot more to the story, all bad.

Re:Access Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

"The ROI should be a maximum of 10x (probably even just 2x, but actual research and ongoing parameters should establish the precise ROI that promotes)."

So because I am a better marketer than you, I lose my patent in 2 months while you retains yours for 5 years? That seems pretty arbitrary. You give no compelling reason that patent expiration should move to a ROI model versus a time-based model. Do you have one? You're also complicating the expiration process which will lead to a need for more funding of the patent office and larger government. That's another reason not to use your idea.

Re:Access Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you feel the same way when someone violates the GPL? Be developed the BeOS, which was later bought by palm, now Access. Zeta (apparently) snagged a leaked copy of the source code, claimed it as their own, and sold it as their own.

IP is different than real property; Zeta could have re-written BeOS themselves (as Haiku did, or GNU did with Unix command line tools, Linux did with Unix, GNUStep did with OpenStep, etc.).

Re:Access Microsoft

[Doc Ruby]

Yeah, because the only reason you get the artificial monopoly that conflicts with other people's free expression is because totally free expression arguably conflicts with commercial competitiveness. The ROI argument is the only basis for patent monopolies. Once you've made 10x ROI, you've satisfied the commercial concession.

Expiring these after some time without exploitation doesnt' complicate the patent process. It makes it a lot easier for courts to recognize a challenge, when the patentholder fails to produce sufficient evidence. And the reasonably shortened time means all the extra complexity, including extensions and submarine patents, gets cut way down.

In other words, reduce this commercial concession back to its actual justification on a real commercial basis. That will take a lot of the strain off the entire system.

Re:Access Microsoft

[Doc Ruby]

AFAICR, Access bought China MobileSoft after it bought PalmOS, not Palm buying CMS before Access bought them. How do you come by your chronology?

Re:Access Microsoft

[adrianmonk]

In other words, no PalmOS on their Linux phone. They've been "planning" it for years. They announced they'd be releasing it in 2006. 2007 will be at least half over, and they'll still be "planning" it. Liars.

Yeah, lying is the only possible explanation why it isn't out yet. Because, as we all know, major rewrites of operating systems are always delivered on time. :-)

My personal guess is that they fully intend to release a Linux-based operating system with a Palm OS compatibility layer, but this simply takes a lot of time, and they probably aren't paying very many people to work on it, which makes it take even more time.

Re:Access Microsoft

[samkass]

Software itself is obviously (to anyone but greedheads) copyright, not patent, material.

Please open your mind a little bit. Software *is* copyrighted, but there is also an argument that the mechanism encoded into the software is itself a virtual device that is patentable. I happen to agree with that decision, and think the biggest problem with software patents is that the bar for "obviousness" is set far too low. But in the end, patents should be enough to allow companies to feel comfortable in investing in R&D without the risk that some open source group will say "I don't want to pay for that-- someone please write a GPL version of that software that the company spent a lot of time and money inventing and give it away for free." Since it's a lot cheaper to copy than to invent, that type of thing can be destructive to innovation.

Re:Access Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay - so how does your system handle this: let's suppose Microsoft patents something and sells it for mere pennies through a store that can only produce 1 widget a day. They can sit on that patent for decades because they'll never reach the ROI.

I think shortening the periods is a much better idea than what you are proposing.

Re:Access Microsoft

[iminplaya]

I expect it's only a matter of time before we learn how Bush deliberately ditched the MS monopoly judgement.

Won't happen. Unlike Mr. Nixon, Bush will have "properly disposed"(deliberately ditched?) all evidence of any wrongdoing, as that is the only lesson learned from the Watergate incident.

Re:Access Microsoft

[Doc Ruby]

That's why I propose expiring on either, whichever comes first. If they can make a profit in the time carved out for protection, OK. Otherwise, let someone else take a crack at it. The Constitutional rule compromising our expression freedom is justified only for that single purpose. Other than that, there's no excuse.

Re:Access Microsoft

[Doc Ruby]

Except that it's not a virtual device. It's a description of the actions of the physical device. That description is copyrightable, which copyright also covers trivial changes. The procedure that a physical device operates is not patented, at least not in unbastardized patent systems.

Copyrights create the protection for R&D investment while competitors must wait to compete without that expense. Patents offer unnecessary extra protections, and unnecessary registration and examination cycles that copyrights can more easily forgo.

Progress in science and the useful arts includes using the invention to make the next invention. Current patent systems completely confound that progress.

Since it's a lot faster to make profits and watch inventions go obsolete, their protection should be much shorter. And the protection should not encourage inventors to merely invent and not produce a product that serves people while waiting for a licensee, or the submarine patent version. These simple reforms would make the protection also motivate to produce.

Re:Access Microsoft

[grand1971]

In other words, no PalmOS on their Linux phone. They've been "planning" it for years. They announced they'd be releasing it in 2006. 2007 will be at least half over, and they'll still be "planning" it. Liars.

Actually, I had the chance to see a working prototype of APL + Garnett VM and SDK during last 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona. Not ready to ship, but not too far away, imho

Re:Access Microsoft

[Doc Ruby]

Probably just by using Windows "Recycler", so it'll be trivial for investigators to undelete. What goes around comes around, faster with every (re)cycle.

Re:Access Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

Applying copyright law to software algorithms is a gross bastardization of the original intent of copyright. You abandon your ideological high ground (complaining about bastardization of patent law) by doing that. (To say nothing of promoting the apeshit crazy notion that software should be protected for terms now easily surpasing a century!) Your argument against software patents further assumes a black/white difference between hardware and software, but in theory, anything that can be done in software can also be implemented in hardware: a device.

In other words, both of your arguments are reverse-engineered, starting with their intended conclusions and making up some premises that will lead to them. Unfortunately, those premises are incorrect so the whole house of cards falls down. Nice waste of time and effort. If you actually want to reform copyright and patent law to work better in the field of computer science (and the gods knows it needs that), you should try pragmatism and appeals to common sense instead of this intellectually dishonest bullshit.

Re:Access Microsoft

[iminplaya]

Probably in his case, he'll just smash it with a hammer. He doesn't have a very positive attitude about recycling.

Re:Access Microsoft

[mcbridematt]

CMS was bought by PalmSource well before they were acquired last year (or was it late 2005?) See PalmCenter

Re:Access Microsoft

[Doc Ruby]

What a load of crap. Software is indeed different from hardware - and I've been an FPGA programmer. The instructions, whether a series of hardcoded ones or parallel configurations, or just data, is clearly different from stuff made of molecules. Even when we're using spintronics, even the dimmest engineer will be able to distinguish the software from the hardware. Just because it can be implemented in HW or SW, doesn't mean it is implemented in both - whatever it's implemented in is what gets protected.

Meanwhile, copyrights should last a maximum of 17 years, a human generation. For primarily human readable content. For primarily machine readable content, it should be a "software generation" these days about 3-5 years.

You are arguing from pure theory - impure theory, really. Tainted with pure bullshit. Fuck your "intellectually dishonest" weasel words. You're straight up full of shit, and only posing as "intellectual". Your pragmatism is a word you don't practice. What a waste of time to straighten you out, Anonymous fraud Coward - you'll certainly gain nothing from this, judging from the patent nonsense you're pushing in your comment.

Re:Access Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay. I'm on board. You convinced me. It's an interesting idea and I think at this point we need both patent and copyright reform.

You actually remained somewhat civil throughout this. Color me surprised.

Re:Access Microsoft

[Doc Ruby]

Well, you've been perfectly civil. I attack people only as counterattack. And I treat ACs with pure contempt only when they hide behind the AC to make uncivil posts themselves. All too common, but I never start the dirty fighting - I just finish it.

I have these discussions and arguments online to sharpen them. The dirty fighting I do for fun, but I prefer the clean debate, if it's available. Just not enough to enforce cleanliness when it goes dirty.

I'm glad we had the chance to compare notes.

Re:Access Microsoft

[Duve]

Well correct me if I am wrong here, but isn't Garnet the re-named PalmOS (due to the fact that PalmSource/ACCESS Inc. where in a contact for use of the name from PalmOne/Palm Inc. which dissolved sometime last year?) which they can't really go about developing due to license issues with PalmOne/Palm Inc.?

Re:Access Microsoft

[Doc Ruby]

Garnet was the 5.4.9 version of PalmOS. Palm Inc was developing the next version, "Cobalt", supposedly multitasking etc, for years, until it sold the whole OS to Access. Access claimed it was finishing Cobalt as the GUI/compatibility layer atop Linux. Last December Palm Inc bought Garnet back from Access. Now Access is reporting that it's finally releasing something like that, but the PalmOS component is Garnet, not Cobalt - and not out yet, and the whole setup is totally chaotic. If I were a PalmOS developer, every twist in this road would make me flee further and faster for some other platform, like Windows Mobile.

Re:Access Microsoft

[Duve]

No, it sounds like ACCESS is betting that the Garnet VM will be a temporary fix till people port into GTK+ and Hiker. Cobalt was being developed at the time that Palm and PalmSource was one company, at the time named Palm Inc. In the mist of that development, the company know as Palm Inc. was split, sold, re-named again back into Palm Inc., now mainly a hardware distributor. Meanwhile, the cruft left at PalmSource was dropped into the hands of ACCESS this included the 'development' of the next Gen to Palm OS. If I remember one of the major changes in "Cobalt" was to be the massive kernel change into Linux as well as it's own custom kernel. ALP it merely the extent of that change forgoing the custom backend, tying into more native frameworks like X, and Gnome's GTK+ while continuing to build there own with the Hiker framework.
That is my understanding of it anyway. This is by no meant the facts of what happened.

Why Palm bought the rights to Garnet do have me mifted, but from the way Palm as been acting... my guess is to keep Garnet alive till they can port into another system, be it Window Moblie or ALP. The question is for Palm, where would they go? Which would be better for them... I can't say that it's Microsoft nor ACCESS in this case neither has begun the courting dance.

Re:Access Microsoft

[Doc Ruby]

I just don't see why it takes Access, a giant mobile phone developer and vendor, over 2 years to put out Linux + Cobalt (or a replacement), or even Linux + Garnet. They started with Linux and Garnet over 2 years ago, with China MobileSoft and experience devloping apps like their Web browser. Now they don't even have Linux + Garnet.

It all seems like they've got the marketing buzzword compatibility locked down, so they're not serious about the product. Though the intervening 2 years has seen PalmOS nearly die on the vine in their hands.

Re:Access Microsoft

[Mr. Slippery]

there is also an argument that the mechanism encoded into the software is itself a virtual device that is patentable.

No more so than mathematical equations "encode" a virtual device. Software is mathematics, and allowing mathematical formulas to be patented violates centuries of prcedent as well as good sense.

Re:Access Microsoft

[hacker]

Obviously you didn't read the article to which you linked:

Wishing doesn't make it so, for you either.

Wrong again...

Re:Access Microsoft

[Doc Ruby]

No, I am still right:

April 10, 2007 6:24:15 AM

Today at Palm Inc's Analyst Day, Palm CEO Ed Colligan officially announced that Palm will deliver a new Linux and open source based mobile computing platform combined with Palm OS Garnet technology on new products later this year .

First, that announcement didn't even exist when I posted. Will you be replying to this message in a few years when maybe someone does actually do what Access said it would have done already, last year.

Second, I said Access lied about that delivery. This announcement is by Palm Inc.

Third, it's just an announcement. By Palm, which has been extremely late or vapor with all kinds of announcements, which is why it turned the natural winner OS for PDA phones into an also-ran. They announced we'd have Cobalt phones by now, too.

So you are wrong yet again, 3 times yet again. Because yet again you didn't even read the article to which you linked. How many times do you want to be wrong about this? Have you noticed that you don't have a Linux/PalmOS smartphone in your hand?

Re:Access Microsoft

[samkass]

Software is mathematics

No. Software can be described using mathematics, just like radio, an internal combustion engine, and a host of other inventions can. But software is a set of instructions that form a virtual mechanism, not a set of equations. Abstract mathematical equations are not patentable because they are not a device with a purpose, while software is.

I saw this happen once in my neighborhood

[jpellino]

Well, not exactly, it was actually two terriers fighting over a dry chicken bone.

Re:I saw this happen once in my neighborhood

[Anonymous Coward]

Mitt Romney wonders if the country is ready for a president who's a Mormon. I say, what's one letter? --JP, Jan. 07

I don't get it--what does that mean?

Re:I saw this happen once in my neighborhood

[pushing-robot]

It means our current president is one letter shy of being a Mormon.

Re:Offtopic

[Anonymous Coward]

watch out, something fishy about this link

Access Microsoft-It's conspiracy time.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Funny how they keep spending money on OS'es that they never profit from. Their mission seems to be to kill OS'es that have a chance to innovate around Microsoft's monopoly. I wonder whether their license to deploy Windows phones in Japan was contingent on doing that kind of Microsoft dirty work, perhaps even secretly funded (or subsidized) by Microsoft."

You'd never be able to prove it, and making a public accussation will get you in "libal" trouble.

Re:Access Microsoft-It's conspiracy time.

[Doc Ruby]

Wondering whether it's true on the evidence so far is perfectly free speech. And researching its facts is even further protected from libel charges. Maybe if you knew more about libel, Anonymous scaredy Coward, you'd be able to spell it.

Re:Access Microsoft-It's conspiracy time.

[MightyYar]

It depends where you live - you'd be surprised what passes for free speech in some places outside of the US.

Re:Access Microsoft-It's conspiracy time.

[Doc Ruby]

That's why I live in the US. Where I was born, so I don't compromise on my freedom. Some other Americans have no excuse for such compromises.

Re:Access Microsoft-It's conspiracy time.

[Anonymous Coward]

Wish I had mod points. I can only hope metamoderation addresses those lame flamebait mods.

Re:Access Microsoft-It's conspiracy time.

[dhasenan]

Damn straight -- it should be -1, Sadly Mistaken.

Re:Access Microsoft-It's conspiracy time.

[Doc Ruby]

Why don't you back that up, instead of just squeaking out an empty insult?

Re:Access Microsoft-It's conspiracy time.

[Anonymous Coward]

...so I don't compromise on my freedom.

No, you just compromise on everybody else's.

Re:Access Microsoft-It's conspiracy time.

[Doc Ruby]

No I don't. Every freedom I claim I claim for everyone.

What's your problem, Anonymous slave Coward?

Re:Access Microsoft-It's conspiracy time.

[Doc Ruby]

Re:Access Microsoft-It's conspiracy time. (Score:1, Flamebait)

Moderation 0
    50% Flamebait
    30% Underrated
    20% Insightful

Anonymous scaredy TrollMods must kill responsible free speech, while they whine about libel. They misspelled "I don't like it" as "Flamebait".

Re:Access Microsoft-It's conspiracy time.

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't need a name. I am a FREE MAN! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAA

i'm a little teapot
short and stout
here is my handle
here is my spout

there. that should take care of the stupid filter.

Re:Access Microsoft-It's conspiracy time.

[Doc Ruby]

You don't even have a handle. That's what makes you not so much a free man, but rather a cheap one.

Re:Access Microsoft-It's conspiracy time.

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't even have a handle.

How can you say that!? I have a colossal "handle". Well, that's what SHE says. I am the GREAT ANONYMOUS COWAAAAHD! Bow before your nameless overlord and beg forgiveness. And besides, those are the words to the song. You don't want me to go around making stuff up, do you?

...but rather a cheap one.

I prefer "popularly-priced".

Remember, you can only be free if nobody is aware that you exist. Once they find you, they got you.

I own the patent on sealing wax for evelopes

[sizzzzlerz]

Don't you dare try and create your own based on my intellectual property!

Re:I own the patent on sealing wax for evelopes

[Anonymous Coward]

>I own the patent on sealing wax for evelopes
Good thing that nobody else knowswhatan "evelope" is.

Don't bother reading the article ...

[tomhudson]

Here's what happens if you do:

From TFA:

Object not found!

The requested URL was not found on this server. The link on the referring page seems to be wrong or outdated. Please inform the author of that page about the error.

If you think this is a server error, please contact the webmaster.
Error 404
www.osnews.com
Sat Apr 7 10:14:11 2007
Apache/2.0.54 (Linux/SUSE)

Doh! Someone feed the bloody cat!

[Anonymous Coward]

Its like watching the rise of Atari & Commodore fight
it out in a dirty mudwrestling contest on retro cable.

Nostalgia

[BillGatesLoveChild]

Oh for the days when Programmers didn't need to double major in Law.

Re:Nostalgia

[shaneo]

So are you longing for the days when open source code wasn't widely usable/viable and nobody cared enough to bring lawsuits, or for a society where all code is written "for hire" and there's no disputing who owns the rights?

The legal problems don't come up until you try to "extend" someone else's work or accept contributions back into your own. Seems relatively easy to dodge these bullets.

Then again, an intentionally ambiguous license controlled by a mad-man with an agenda isn't really helping anyone out here, either...but that's a red herring in this argument.

Re:Nostalgia

[Anonymous Coward]

That ended the day the 22-yr old son of a Seattle lawyer signed a deal to develop the OS for the IBM PC.

Re:Nostalgia

[tgd]

A five year old knows you can't take something that isn't yours...

You don't need a law degree. Just ask a five year old.

Re:Nostalgia

[Ithika]

For a technology site there are an awful lot of neo-luddites around here.

Re:Nostalgia

[jc42]

> > A five year old knows you can't take something that isn't yours...

> You don't need a law degree. Just ask a five year old.

Yeah, but most five year olds have also learned that you should share your toys with the other kids. If you have a fun toy, you don't hoard it and keep it somewhere that nobody else can have any fun with it.

The folks who "own" BeOS don't seem to have picked up on that kindergarten lesson, though.

Re:Nostalgia

[BillGatesLoveChild]

Was commenting more on the number of legal stories. I just want to write code, man:

"Bobby, can I use a linked list for a one-click web site?"
"No Daddy, they're patented. And don't try a triple linked list. They're patented too"
"But Bobby, a patent must be novel, obvious and useful!"
"Don't get my started Daddy. I still have to read my RIAA Preschooler Education Kit. Say that CD has a Sharpie Label. Bad Daddy, Bad!"

Re:Nostalgia

[BiggerIsBetter]

Dude, you should have been modded insightful.

Re:Nostalgia

[mink]

At least your kid isn't bothering you about your interval of Prozium.

Mod Parent UP

[mungtor]

It's actually informative, not tinfoil hat ranting like the GP.

read this one instead ...

[rs232]

'If Herr Korz feels that he holds a legitimate license to the BeOS code he's been using, we're completely unaware of it, and I'd be fascinated to see him produce any substantiation for that claim'

was Don't bother reading the article ... (Score:2)

Article sucks, but interesting topic

[Bearhouse]

How much code is out there that could be re-used, saving time & money, but we can't legally get to? It's a fork off the 'should software be protected by copyright or patent' debate. Sensibly, both patents and copyrights are limited in time, for just this reason. Holders of such rights are continually lobbying to extend them for unreasonable (to me) periods. Whilst I understand that an aging rock star would want to extend protection to - say - the end of his/her life, should this apply to s/w? How about a 'use it ir lose it' clause. Any s/w not actively marketed, supported and developed for 5 years, (which in an eternity in the tech world), should automatically become open source. Of course, anyone benefiting financially from this could/should contribute something to the owner of the rights...

Owner of the code - but they're not using it!

[billcopc]

It's funny how Access owns the code, yet they're not doing a damned thing with it. They've halted distribution of a product that isn't competing with their business, and if history is any indicator, they aren't ever going to release any BeOS-related software ever. They are an IP company, they buy stuff up, sit on it for a while then license/resell to actual inventors and manufacturers for a profit. This kind of business is one the most revolting abuses of the 21st century, because all they do is kidnap information for a ransom, potentially hiding it away forever if no buyer comes along to pay their inflated price. This type of activity precisely underlines the need for patent reform. This doesn't help anyone except the people cashing the checks, ultimately IP-hoarding hurts everyone as it stymies technological progress. BeOS had some great concepts ten years ago, but through the company's pitfalls and this now legal bullshit, the then-modern real-time paradigm is now grossly outdated. Why don't we all go out and buy all the fresh fruits at the market, then sit on them for a few years and see what's left of them ? It's a waste, it's stupid and it's inconsiderate. Access is all those bad things!

Re:Owner of the code - but they're not using it!

[Anonymous Coward]

There are practical uses - they can use it as a research OS from the standpoint of conducting benchmarks. They can also extract code, algorithms, and architectural ideas from the sourcebase without the risk of being sued by BeOS's IP owner (since they are said owner). Lastly, maybe someone will make them an offer they can't refuse. As Donald Trump once said, if you have something that someone else wants, that's worth money.

Re:Owner of the code - but they're not using it!

[bigpat]

All those things might be useful, but there should be a clearer abandonment clause to IP. If you aren't producing products and actually selling them, or using IP in your publications for say a period of 5 years, then you should lose the exclusive right... 'Use it or lose it' should be the law of the land. It actually used to be part of the law for copyright in the US, but it was stripped out in favor of less red tape. But I don't think there needs to be red tape, like there was with registration with Library of Congress, companies should simply keep and make records of their use of IP in their business so when challenged they have to provide records. Sure the law could be little more than a nuisance if it is not written properly, but it should make it clear that the products must be purchased by persons independent of the company or if the IP is in support of a product or service then it must be actively published and distributed (even if not sold) also to persons independent of the company.

Re:Owner of the code - but they're not using it!

[Frozen Void]

Patents and copyrights serve no purpose in Information age.

Re:Owner of the code - but they're not using it!

[drolli]

IMHO if they bought the code they may do whatever they want. There is no obligation for them to open the code. Fuethermore I doubt that they don't use ist. I could imagine that some of the beos ideas are very usefule in the resource-limite devices Access Inc is usually providing Software for!

Re:Owner of the code - but they're not using it!

[tji]

They own the code. They can do whatever they want with it.

I was a big fan of BeOS. I went to their first demo-tour in Ann Arbor, way back when. I never bought a dual processor PowerPC BeBox, but I did install and use it once it became available for intel. So, I think their letting BeOS whither and die is a HUGE waste of all that good code, with incredible multimedia capabilities and many other advances that are still not met in Mac OS or Linux (and certainly not Windows).

When they were negotiating with Apple, I was ready to make the jump to Mac OS. (I eventually moved to Mac OS (NeXTStep based), after a while, because it was the best available desktop OS). When Palm bought the code, I was ready to more to using Palm devices. But, since they never released a product based on it, I never bought a Palm.

I, too would love to see a BeOS operating system available. But, it's their code. They are under no responsibility to release it, allow other people to benefit from it, or release the code. Such is life.

Re:Owner of the code - but they're not using it!

[Britz]

Actually BeOS went down because of the lack of apps. Adobe never ported Photoshop and Steinberg never ported Cubase even though there was talk about both. Maybe a company with a fruit as its logo had something to do with the Photoshop port never coming through, but I dunno, maybe some other Slashdotter can shed some light on the history of BeOS.

With the current free software that rivals proprietary software in both quality and features in many fields and that seems to be made for porting fringe operating systems seem to stand a much better chance. Just look at Ubuntu. Personally I am running Debian as my desktop OS.

Parent may not be right about Access being responsible for the downfall of BeOS, but now, that BeOS actually may have a chance (I heard that Firefox was ported for example) they may be responsible for it never coming back.

Re:Owner of the code - but they're not using it!

[adrianmonk]

It's funny how Access owns the code, yet they're not doing a damned thing with it. They've halted distribution of a product that isn't competing with their business, and if history is any indicator, they aren't ever going to release any BeOS-related software ever.

I don't think that's a fair characterization. The current shipping version of Palm OS is Palm OS 5.x. Several years ago, after Palm had bought Be (in which I believe they got both source code and talent), Palm created Palm OS 6. This had lots of multimedia capabilities, supposedly based on BeOS.

Here's the problem, though: this was a little bit after Palm split itself into PalmOne and PalmSource, the former being the hardware portion of the company and the latter being the software portion. PalmSource had OS 6 ready, and they even released a Palm OS Simulator that you could run on Windows. I have a copy and even used it to verify that my company's Palm OS software would run OK on Palm OS 6. It definitely existed. But, although Palm OS 6 definitely existed (in fact, they released at least 6.0 and 6.1), it was a bit of a flop. It was PalmSource that made the code, but PalmOne (the hardware company) never actually released any devices with Palm OS 6 installed. And Palm OS isn't like Windows or Linux: it's not modular where you can just get some drivers and run the OS on any hardware and it detects what hardware you actually have and configures itself for that. Instead, there is a custom build of Palm OS for every device released. So it basically has to come on the device from the factory in order to be able to use it. PalmOne controlled what OS release came on the device from the factory, and they never chose to release a device with OS 6 on it.

At that point, OS 6 was basically dead in the water. Then later ACCESS bought PalmSource and announced they were ditching all the effort behind OS 6 and substituting a Linux kernel instead. Palm OS 6 had been based on its own custom kernel (which was quite possibly descended from BeOS as well).

So, this isn't really a "buy up patents" business model. Instead, it's a company that let their technology stagnate for a while, then decided it was time to do something new, but didn't quite pull it off. Then they decided to switch to Linux, and who knows what will happen with that (although it's a better idea than the previous one, I think).

Re:Owner of the code - but they're not using it!

[billcopc]

The founding idea of "use it or lose it" is pure and honest, but we all know there are easy loopholes around it, and it's called the paper release. Once again I wish people had any sort of integrity and discipline and simply stopped throwing money at these IP goons. If the "business" of patent hoarding ceases to be profitable, they will stop doing it and find some other racket.

Re:Owner of the code - but they're not using it!

[danparks]

> BeOS went down because of the lack of apps.

That was part of it. More importantly, though, was Microsoft's hand in things. Be's demise was mostly due to Microsoft's predatory practices (surprise, surprise). Be filed suit against MS for the destruction of Be's business through anticompetitive acts. In particular, Be claimed MS did shady things to prevent PC makers from including BeOS on dual-boot PCs.

MS and Be settled by MS agreeing to pay Be something like $25 million (and admitting no wrongdoing).

I had one of the original BeBox computers, as well as running the BeOS on both PCs and Macs. Too bad it's gone. Pretty cool while it lasted...

Zeta 1.5

[Anonymous Coward]

Torrent link please

Patent != Copyright

[eean]

This has nothing to do with patent reform. They bought the copyright to BeOS.

Copyright does need reforming, but not for the case of technology. Copyright's should probably last only 14 years as opposed to a 70, but thats pretty damn irrelevant for software. And source code is usually under "trade secret" anyways.

Re:Patent != Copyright

[Anonymous Coward]

> Copyright's should probably last only 14 years as opposed to a 70, but thats pretty damn irrelevant for software

Egad, no. 50 years from creation, never renewable, seems reasonable for copyrights.

Patents should be 15 years, and only when there is a working prototype. 7 years without one. Waiver and delay should cause you to lose the patent, much as the case is with trademarks. It should at least be an allowable cause of action for challenging a patent.

These specific lengths of time should be put into the constitution. Problematic as that may be, the words "reasonable" and "limited" in the current constitution sadly have no place in today's climate.

These are pretty long intervals, but shorter than the current lengths, and don't impede the progress of the useful arts as they do now (the situation for drugs is worse than it is for software).

Funny how I submitted this on Wednesday evening...

[Anonymous Coward]

...and it only appears now....

Gotta love slashdot. I also seem to have recalled explaining a few more things in my summary that would have prevented the fringe element from heading off into conspiracy land as well....

First off, the reason why ACCESS is only *now* responding on this issue is because Korz was making overtures towards open sourcing the code--something that ACCESS could not keep silent about. As Lefty says in his comments both at bitsofnews and OSNews.com, they'd been sending cease and desist letters for some time already and Korz was ignoring them. To try and take legal action would be only to invite lawsuits over code that ACCESS saw no income from; so why should they stick out their necks for a libel suit with the possibility of generating only negative income? It is only because ACCESS wanted to prevent any possibility of Korz giving away their property they chose to risk the possible libel suit now.

Secondly, 'Zeta' was a dead parrot. It was NOT truly being developed, because obviously Korz did NOT have access (pun unintended) to the source code or he would have done more with it. The only true successor to BeOS is Haiku, which as I stated in my summary is nearing its 1.0 release with all originally developed closed-room re-engineered code that is BeOS R5 compatible.

Third, BeOS Max PE which is developed by a Greek coder to be the best and most updated (using bits of third party hacks and including newer drivers for more hardware as well as bits of Haiku that work better than the old BeOS parts) may be forced to discontinue development. This is something that would be a tragedy, since it is thanks to Vaspar's work on this (free) project many of us are able to run BeOS on new hardware. And I say that as someone who bought BeOS in the store almost a month or two before the announcement they were going bankrupt.

--bornagainpenguin

Sorry to state to obvious...

[Arkan]

... but it's another reason to use (really) open source software. No such thing whould happen with GPL/BSD/OSI...'ed code.

Time to join Haiku, I think...

--
Arkan

That sucks

[k1e0x]

BeOS was a really good OS for its time, its a shame that its never gotten much of a chance. Imagine tho if OS X was actually BeOS.. it could have been..

Maybe Haiku will turn into something equally as cool.

Re:That sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah it could have been shitty. Get over it already, its fucking dead.

open-source project is immune

[nurb432]

Not in the least are they immune to the same sorts of troubles as some 'company' when IP rghts are violated.. Its just harder to shut it down when its some sort of distributed creature. But legally, there is really no difference.

Re:open-source project is immune

[despisethesun]

Legally, there is a difference because Haiku does not use any BeOS code. It is a binary-compatible reimplementation, not a derivative work. The relationship between Haiku and BeOS is similar to the relationship between Linux and Unix. On the surface they look similar and work similar, but under the hood they are very different animals.

Re:open-source project is immune

[tverbeek]

I'm sorry, I assumed that anyone with a Slashdot account understood what "open-source" meant. It's pretty much the opposite of "proprietary". Hope this helps.

Re:open-source project is immune

[be-fan]

He didn't say open source projects are immune to IP litigation. He said that they are immune to what happened to BeOS (and tons of other cool software) --- having a company sit on perfectly good code without any intention of either continuing it as a product or freeing it so the community can continue development.

Re:open-source project is immune

[nurb432]

And beacuse its open source it means it magically cant be infected with other peoples IP?

Re:open-source project is immune

[tverbeek]

There's a huge difference between a developer walking away with the source code of a semi-popular piece of software so no one else can use it (the scenario we're talking about), and a saboteur sneaking proprietary source code into an open-source project and getting it shut down (the scenario you're imagining). If you want to talk about the latter, go ahead and find a discussion where it's relevant.

Re:open-source project is immune

[nurb432]

Go ahead and stick your head in the sand. I'm done wasting time here.

I do hope your pet project goes down in flames due to something like this.

Re:open-source project is immune

[Eunuchswear]

1. IP doesn't exist. Please clarify - are you talking about trademarks, copyright or patents?

2. If you're talking about copyrights then Open Source or Free Software is inherently better protected against copyright violations than closed source - after all if the source is available it's pretty easy to see if there is a copyright violation. Who knows what the hell goes on in closed source projects?

Re:open-source project is immune

[nurb432]

1 - All are threats.

2 - Can offending code/trademarks/etc be removed since its 'seen'? Sure, I never said it could not, but it might be so tightly bound into the project that it can kill the project totally and still cause people involved to be held legally liable.

Re:open-source project is immune

[Eunuchswear]

1. Property isn't threat, property is theft. Copying isn't theft, copying is copying. Hence IP != P.

2. Yes, a project could be destroyed if it were (necessarily) based on patented algorithms (although not all jurisdictions allow patenting of algorithms (yet). If it were based on copyright code the copier could be in for a world of hurt (and quite right too). Trademarks? I'm writing this using Debian IceWeasel.

SCO UnixWare includes stolen copyright code, but who other than the people who've gone to all the effort of disassembling it know? Closed source can (try) to get away with a lot of shit that Free Software or even Open Source wouldn't dream off.

Re:open-source project is immune

[mink]

So how often have OS projects (large ones like operating systems) been brough down due to this? I am not aware of any but I do not follow every bit of OS news.

You never heard of SCO?

[Anonymous Coward]

You must be new here.

coolness, Amiga Drama without the cool tech

[Anonymous Coward]

coolness, Amiga Drama without the cool tech, it's dead, let it die, don't buy it, the quicker it dies a commercial death the quicker these a#$holes go away

It's related to most of them,

[Anonymous Coward]

as most of them go nowhere.

Your MS conspiracy hinges on one thing...

[trimbo]

People would have to be using or willing to use BeOS/ZeOS.

The OS has been out for 10 years without any ownership debate and what kind of market penetration does it have? 0.000005% maybe? There could be a thousand people worldwide who actually run it 50% of the time?

Microsoft broke the law to get Windows where it is against OS/2, DOS clones and Mac, let's stop claiming that Linux and BeOS are losing on the desktop because of a massive MS conspiracy. They're losing because few desktop apps would run on them and consumers just want their Quicken, games, etc..

Re:Your MS conspiracy hinges on one thing...

[tverbeek]

You think that Microsoft for some reason refrained from using the same kinds of tricks against BeOS that it used against other OSes? When Be tried to make deals with OEMs to bundle or pre-install BeOS as a free option, Microsoft "persuaded" them not to. The fact that Windows was already installed on their PC when they first plugged it in had more to do with its acceptance by consumers than the availablity of apps for it (which wasn't all that huge in the early days).

Sure, today Microsoft no longer needs to "conspire" to hold onto most of the OS market, because of customer lock-in, but back when BeOS took a shot at that market (admittedly a few years later than it should have), Microsoft still needed to... and they did.

Re:Your MS conspiracy hinges on one thing...

[trimbo]

When Be tried to make deals with OEMs to bundle or pre-install BeOS as a free option, Microsoft "persuaded" them not to.

Oh please. You're claiming that Microsoft pulled anticompetitive pricing tactics against Be trying to dump their OS on consumers? Provide some record of this. Because if it's true, I've lost respect for Microsoft as a monopolist.

What would have been the benefit for the OEM when it would have created a support issue? No OEM wants to deal with support calls related to an OS that had zero applications. Even today, OEMs won't install Linux for typical home desktop machines because it creates a support problem... yet you claim they had to be strongarmed into not installing BeOS ten years ago? C'mon.

I am an OS geek, I had a triple booted machine running BeOS, Linux and Windows in 1998. Guess which OS never got used? And I wanted BeOS to succeed. The reality is that no one had to kill BeOS. It was an OS without a market from day one. If Zeta died today, no one would notice more than a cute project finally fading off into the sunset.

Re:Your MS conspiracy hinges on one thing...

[Stormwatch]

Oh please. You're claiming that Microsoft pulled anticompetitive pricing tactics against Be trying to dump their OS on consumers? Provide some record of this. Because if it's true, I've lost respect for Microsoft as a monopolist.

No, they threatened not to license Windows to any PC maker that also bundled other systems with their machines.

Do you hear that sound?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Whoosh!"

BeOS has been gone too long

[supachupa]

I've been a big fan of BeOS ever since I first used it years ago. I was so impressed to be able to load it up on my obsolete dual proc pentium pro system and see it come back to life. Any other operating system I put on it was way too slow.. even Linux. But BeOS truly did take advantage of having two processors. Suddenly it was like I had a 400MHz Pentium II. It was a PC resurrection! But then, stupid Palm bought it and killed it. Development and especially interest in it all but died. This operating system was truly the best Operating system, potentially, for end users. This is what I wish the MacOS operating system evolved into, instead of OSX (not that OSX is half bad). With the impending release of Haiku 1.0, though, I am left wondering.. is it too little too late? The look and feel of it are so dated now. There are very limited applications available for it compared to other operating systems. Pooh on Palm for killing this OS. I hope it's not too late for it to make a comeback, but I wonder if the only way to make that happen is to open source it? Otherwise, I wonder if there will be the critical mass to modernize it.

Re:Funny how I submitted this on Wednesday evening

[Ruie]

Funny how I submitted this on Wednesday evening...and it only appears now....

The art of new reporting is not only in choosing what to report but also when.

Obviously, your submission was too soon :)

He Who Controls the Bootloader

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's a good read on how Microsoft's monopoly of old prevented BeOS from ever becoming a more mainstream OS. If you were to compare BeOS 5 with Windows 98/Me (back in those days mind ya) as far as being considered an overall good software product; BeOS would have won that vote hands down. This is something the DOJ should have focused their efforts on instead of the stupid web browser bundling saga! Of course if Netscape would have been bundled with Windows instead of IE, then Netscape would be enjoying the 80+% browser share today instead of IE!!

http://www.birdhouse.org/beos/byte/30-bootloader/

Re:He Who Controls the Bootloader

[snuf23]

I ran the Intel flavor of BeOS. If you think BeOS had a chance and the only reason it died was because of MS, I think you are mistaken.
Most people are application oriented not OS oriented. If their apps don't run on a given OS they don't want it. Period.

Multi-threaded wonderland

[Latent Heat]

Never had any direct experience with BeOS, but the story I keep hearing is that it was really responsive and able to do audio and multimedia in a way that we are beginning to approach with a lot of processor power.

Windows never claims to be "real time", soft, hard or otherwise. The problem is that Windows can "go away" for tens of milliseconds (perhaps less with modern, faster hardware) to do things like disk accesses and what not without being responsive to interrupts or time slice preemption. The explanation is that they are trying to maximize throughput according to some metric than absolute millisecond-level responsiveness, which is what you need to do multimedia without sporadic frame hops. The other thing is that their time slice scheduling is quite course and if you are doing multi-threading (at least on single processors), you almost need to simulate a co-routine type of swapping back and forth by cross waiting and signalling of threads -- the time slices are too coarse to respond at the millisecond level.

The story I kept hearing about BeOS (and to a certain extent OS 2 as well) is that not only were these systems more finely grained, either in not having low-level non-preemptible tasks or having having less coarse time slices, the use of threads and the use of waits when one thread stalled and signals for waiting threads to proceed permeated programming GUI apps.

Windows, OS-X, the various Linux window managers, Java Swing, are pretty much all based on a message-passing non-preemptive cooperative multi-tasking type GUI that runs on a single thread. Yes you can use worker threads to help compute-bound or other apps, but the GUI runs a single thread and those worker threads have to synchronize with that GUI thread to display results.

Do OS-2, BeOS have multi-threaded GUI's? What were they like from the developer side? Were they a PITA to develop functioning GUI apps, or was the application-level multi-threading doable with the tools and protocols provided? Is there anything to learn from BeOS from the way they did GUI apps compared to the Windows, OS-X, Linux, Java Swing, and everybody else way of single-threaded GUI's?

I'm surprised people consider BeOS to have value

[argent]

Several years back when I had the chance to try out the various versions of BeOS on the hardware available at that time, it wasn't significantly better than its contemproraries. The file system was interesting, but having applications depend on features of the file system is a great way to create a software ghetto, like the Mac was before OS X: metadata about the file belongs in the file system. Metadata about the contents of the file belongs in files. The object oriented API might have been interesting, but it was too heavily based on an oddball OO language that was particularly hard to work with: C++. The kernel was intended to be part of a "Media OS", but it didn't make any attempt to provide real-time support.

There were some nice features in the shell (Tracker), but they could have been implemented on a conventional OS.

Performance was poor. The only OS it outperformed on the same hardware was the classic Mac OS... Windows, Windows NT, OpenStep, and open source UNIX were all faster. Of course the contemporary Mac OS was near its nadir of performance.

When the rumors of Apple picking it up, I was somewhat hopeful... it was definitely better than what they had.

When Palm picked it up I was horrified. Palm's existing OS was far better suited for the PDA, and it was looking like Palm was going to end up with some really nice and cheap handhelds... if yo could get a Palm to retail for under $50 (a target they could have easily met and suprassed by now) everyone would be using them in high school instead of calculators, and they'd have no competition. But instead of doing what they did best, they decided to go after Microsoft on Microsoft's turf... and went from an easily-maintained 80% of the handheld market to "who's going to buy them"?

BeOS? It's a poison pill. The Amiga of the '90s, without the virtue of EVER having had a hope in hell.

Troll?

[Anonymous Coward]

Offtopic, yes. But troll? What exactly about the post is a troll?

Re:I'm surprised people consider BeOS to have valu

[humankind]

The object oriented API might have been interesting, but it was too heavily based on an oddball OO language that was particularly hard to work with: C++.

You had me until you said C++ was an oddball language that was hard to work with.

Re:I'm surprised people consider BeOS to have valu

[argent]

You had me until you said C++ was an oddball language that was hard to work with.

Just because something is popular doesn't mean that it's well designed, or even mediocre, or even following the usual design principles of things in the same class.

Consider the current US system of measurement, Microsoft Windows, or classic Mac OS. These are all oddball designs in a world of better systems, and cause (or caused) all kinds of problems for people who had to use them.

C++ is partly a throwback to the very earliest models of OO languages (like Simula), and partly a language crippled by the early implementations that used C as a back end. It's very difficult to interoperate with C++ from other languages, the early binding of method names makes it a poor choice for an OS API, and the mixture of objects and primitive C types leaves it open to all the type security problems of C... with few of the benefits of C's low-level design to compensate.

Lick the alphabet.

[Anonymous Coward]

Props to Sam!

Re:I'm surprised people consider BeOS to have valu

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because something is popular doesn't mean that it's well designed /.../ C++ is partly a throwback to the very earliest models of OO languages (like Simula)

Simula was very well designed and a joy to program. C++ is painfull with no real features. With some modernisation (like actually having a compiler that takes full advantage of the language on modern hardware and to remove some Algol remnants), Simula could be more usefull than Java, Python or C++. Especially with multicore CPUs. And unlike C++ and Java, Simula code is readable and not prone to typing errors.

It's not the parts of a programming language that counts. What make a great language is how the parts fit together and what practices is in use.

Re:I'm surprised people consider BeOS to have valu

[humankind]

I am sick and tired of lamers blaming poor coding and design on the language, especially C and C++.

The fact that C doesn't have automated garbage collection is not that big of a deal to any competent programmer. Now to a slacker, second-rate programmer, then yes, it certainly is an issue. And the irony is a crappy programmer will still write a crappy app in higher-level languages... the bugs may not be related to variable overloading, but they'll likely be just as obnoxious.

C/C++ is designed for performance and control. Java can't hold a candle to C/C++ in any mission critical application without requiring exponentially more resources. I know the Java fanbois don't want to hear it, but it's the truth. I have 20 year old C apps that are still running perfectly today. If you like high-level languages, that's cool -- some people like to use Microsoft Frontpage as well.. but don't say the lower level stuff is a problem when it isn't. It's just a problem for you because you can't be bothered to have complete control over your app -- you'd rather divest a significant portion of that in some third party library that will probably yield even more security holes in the future.