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yellow tab claims they have sold more copies of zeta than be did with all buyable releases combined. that means atleast 1million copies.

10^6 * 90€ != solvency problems.

Sadly Zeta/Haiku aren't perceived as a platform right now: BFS could 'give' del.icio.us [integrate it and be a star!] and Apple TimeMachine [= HFS+ metadata + Backup API -> BFS + Backup API] in 1996. Q) Why integration or imitation isn't happening yet? A) Too few people to write gimmicks (for).

I hope Magnussoft will be able to leverage the collaboration with Haiku on the critical parts of the system and use it's game development experience to give the trendy style that Zeta needs to become a really visible option...

What Zeta actually need is more re-occuring revenue by merging with the company doing those games ports - they need to provide the whole kit; have an operating system, but also provide the tools for people to actually utilise the features on it.

>10^6 * 90€ != solvency problems

It is when PalmSource/ACCESS demand extremely high license costs to sell Zeta. I heard that yT were making peanuts on each copy of Zeta that was sold. They were barely breaking even.

The thing that must be remebered is, to produce Zeta you must pay developers. Developers would be earning something between $40,000 and $80,000 per anum. Add on support costs, licensing to GoBe, and all the other various costs such as marketing, promotional trips, Japanese re-seller ripping you off, Bernd writing off a company car, etc, etc and I'll bet yT only really saw pennies of _real_ profit from each copy they sold.

#1 - Writing 1 million in exponential notation is retarded.

#2 - Assuming we believe their claims that they have sold over 1 million copies of Zeta and 90 euros a pop, I'm curious WTF is wrong with this company. If they *really* had 90 million euros (less expenses), they would be playing an entirely different ballgame. Right now they act like a company that might have a million in assets, not even cash. I've not been very impressed with the leadserhip behind this company either, so maybe that's where this mystical 90 million went. It sure as heck didn't find it's way into product design/development, and certainly not into some fancy marketing.

In summary, either the poster discussing the licensing costs is correct, or yT is full of crap. I suspect it's a combination of both.

I mean, seriously, a company worth 90 million who wouldn't even say yay/nay if they had the source to BeOS? You've got to be kidding me.

"I mean, seriously, a company worth 90 million who wouldn't even say yay/nay if they had the source to BeOS? You've got to be kidding me."

YellowTab were NEVER worth 90 Million, if you'd bothered to read some of the above comments, you'd see why.. Zeta, after costs, licence fees etc barely delivered a cent.

Building and supplying operating systems is not a cheep thing to do.

Maybe you didn't pay attention to my post, or even read my last two points.

Firstly, I quoted a poster above me..

Secondly, yT made very little money out of Zeta, if my sources are to be believed. The overhead of running the company and paying the royalties to Palmsource/Access KILLED all of the profit.

Yes they had the source. Having the source is what ultimately killed them. They ended up paying through the nose.

I think one can assume/speculate the following: (purely conjecture)

<speculation>
yT originally had access to source code from an illegal source. Fact. It is out there. The whole big wrangling and smoke and mirrors were originally to hide this fact. As some point they managed to license the code they had/more recent code from PalmSource. When they did this a whole heap of NDA's and confidentiallity agreements came in to force. They then couldn't tell anyone. I suspect PalmSource invested some money in yT (the mystery investor) but then demanded high royalties for licensing the code. ACCESS probably demanded for the agreement to be re-negotiated. This will be when yT went insolvent.
</speculation>

INAL. This is all speculation, but stranger things have happened ;-) Don't quote this as being factual.. I just "invented it". But I believe it isn't too far from the truth.

memsom, I don't know much about yellowtab, but you could really be a novel writer. :-)

> I don't know much about yellowtab, but you could really be a novel writer. :-)

heh.. I was "reading between the lines" so to speak ;-)

Its a good start, but the company who has ported it needs to look further, and start porting other things to BeOS; for example, Windows Media Player formats/codecs so that people can play them on BeOS; sell them for a tocken fee of around $20 or so.

> I *think* ZETA already has ffmpeg with support for WMP formats.