Linked by Eugenia Loli-Queru on Thu 16th Aug 2001 17:54 UTC, submitted by Irfon-Kim Ahmad
This Press Release today is everywhere on the net. Palm is acquiring Be's technology, hardware and their software engineering force for $11 million USD. Please notice that they are buying Be's IP, not the company itself.Our take: Well, at least something happened. I think it is safe to assume that Be will be now closed down (the closing down of the company is pretty much certain, according to the press release "Be's board of directors has approved the transaction, and the winding-up of Be's operating business following the closing") as they now own nothing (except if they want to enter another markets or.. become car or pencil dealers). Being myself a BeOS advocate, user and developer for several years now, I am sad to see this twist and what it probably means for the BeOS. While Palm has not stated what they want to do with Be's technology, my guess is that they do not care about the BeOS and the Desktop OS world. Slashdot has it right this time: I believe Palm mostly bought the engineering force, to create something new and continue make their living in the PDA market. Palm is entering the Desktop through BeOS you say? Yeah, right. I will believe it when I see it. In my mind, the only way to see a BeOS R6 is if there will be a third party licensee that is interesting to license BeOS and do something productive with it (assuming that Palm will be willing to allow that). Palm does not have what it takes to drive a desktop OS neither BeOS can be open sourced (too much licensed source code all over the place).
Update: Not a crucial update to the story, just trying to add a bit of spicy humour. We just had an anonymous sending us in this picture, while BeDoper has its regular, humouristic take on the latest happenings in the Be world.
Update2: ZDNews writes: "However, Palm said it has no plans to further develop the Be operating system as a standalone OS."
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given sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine Thanks for the great quote! Regarding the "death of Be" news, I personally don't see it as a death. It's evolution. Palm purchased Be's technology because they believe they can use it to add significant value (greater than $11m) to their business. Presumably, this means integrating parts of the code into their OS, to enhance the media capabilities. We're unlikely to see entirely "BeIA" powered devices, particularily since the "Be" name is not owned by Palm. Perhaps the best we can hope for is that the spirit and technology of Be Inc, can live and grow, within some future version of the Palm OS. At some point, a PDA may be all the computing power most people need, particularily when true 3G wireless finally comes around. If consumer demand moves further away from desktops, towards portable devices (as Be Inc was somewhat anticipating), Palm will be in a good position to dominate. As a result of the Palm deal, it's possible that some day, most people will 'feel' and use more Be in their OS, than they do Microsoft (it certainly won't be Windows CE they'll be using). In the meantime, my needs have outgrown the final version of BeOS, along with the remaining applications. I'm thinking of moving to Linux and Win2K, but a Mac would be nice. I use HP-UX at work and will probably be moving to Linux there anytime soon (destined to dominate for most engineers, IMHO). I don't actively use a PDA anymore, and have never tried Palm, although now I'm curious. They obviously have something going for them, as they stood out from the crowd and placed at least some value on Be's IP. So, anyone have any advice on the easiest way to copy Gigs of data so I can wipe my hard disk and start over ? Good luck to you all - David