Report from PalmSource’s Open House Day

PalmSource, Inc. today featured their OpenHouce day (with the Sunnyvale mayor cutting a ribbon and all), a number of press releases and a few insights. OSNews was there, so here is our mini-report and a few pictures of the event.

The new headquarters for PalmSource is a large, modern building, with a gym & showers, a large kitchen, while the engineers have their own office with glass doors (instead of using the traditional cubicles). The employees have actually moved in to the building 1.5 months ago already, but the opening event was today.


David Nagel, CEO at PalmSource, gave a speech, presenting the new deals PalmSource had signed lately while he also presented awards to the three more significant PalmOS applications. Among the main points of the speech was that PalmSource is going the telecommunications way, with the help of Kyocera and Samsung.


After the speech, PalmSource’s partners/licensees were holding a mini-exhibition of their products, and people like Iambic Software, DataViz with their Documents2Go, AvantGO, and even Intel, Motorola, Kyocera etc, were there.


We got to talk to both David Nagel and Steve Sakoman about the BeOS situation as well. Mr Nagel told us that a few of the design principles in the sound department of BeOS will make it to PalmOS .


Steve Sakoman told us that if some pieces of code or design from BeOS/BeIA will be found suitable for the ARM platform (that the new PalmOS 6 will be running on) then they will be used, otherwise the best possible solution will be endorsed instead. Mr Sakoman also told us that PalmOS 6 will be featuring some more user configuration and even themes. The emulator that OS6 will feature in order to emulate the older software, is sometimes faster than running on the original hardware, which is a pleasant surprise. We asked Mr Sakoman what does he think about the new SONY PDAs that are not 100% compatible with all existing PalmOS applications due to the system changes SONY did, and he replied that from now on their partners/licensees will have to pass a specific PalmOS validation/compatibility test. Mr Sakoman declined to comment in the question if the new APIs will be C++ based. Regarding BeOS, Mr Sakoman said that there are absolutely no plans to release any new BeOS for the desktop, PalmSource does not work in this field, and that no significant offers have been made by third parties to buy the BeOS code and rights.


In the event, along with a few ex-Be engineers (and also good friends) I ran into, Jean-Louis Gassee was present too, as he is now a member of the board of directors at PalmSource. JLG said that he finds the exhibited Palm products very promising, but his personal favorite was the Kyocera PDA/phone combo.




The new building.




David Nagel giving a speech.





A lot of attendees.




From left: Manuel Petit de Grabriel (ex-Be kernel engineer, now at PalmSource), Jason Park (ex-Be engineer, now at PalmSource), Chris Bark (PalmSource engineer).




More people…




Steve Sakoman




(Good friends) Mathias Agopian and Dianne Hackborn (both ex-Be engineers, now at PalmSource)

45 Comments

  1. 2002-09-27 8:48 am
  2. 2002-09-27 9:08 am
  3. 2002-09-27 9:21 am
  4. 2002-09-27 9:34 am
  5. 2002-09-27 9:48 am
  6. 2002-09-27 10:16 am
  7. 2002-09-27 10:22 am
  8. 2002-09-27 10:49 am
  9. 2002-09-27 11:29 am
  10. 2002-09-27 11:46 am
  11. 2002-09-27 1:01 pm
  12. 2002-09-27 1:47 pm
  13. 2002-09-27 1:57 pm
  14. 2002-09-27 1:57 pm
  15. 2002-09-27 2:23 pm
  16. 2002-09-27 2:29 pm
  17. 2002-09-27 2:31 pm
  18. 2002-09-27 3:25 pm
  19. 2002-09-27 4:05 pm
  20. 2002-09-27 6:13 pm
  21. 2002-09-27 6:24 pm
  22. 2002-09-27 9:17 pm
  23. 2002-09-27 9:20 pm
  24. 2002-09-27 9:41 pm
  25. 2002-09-27 11:39 pm
  26. 2002-09-28 6:10 am
  27. 2002-09-28 9:44 am
  28. 2002-09-28 1:51 pm
  29. 2002-09-28 2:36 pm
  30. 2002-09-28 3:50 pm
  31. 2002-09-28 5:45 pm
  32. 2002-09-28 8:49 pm
  33. 2002-09-28 10:18 pm
  34. 2002-09-28 11:26 pm
  35. 2002-09-29 2:32 pm
  36. 2002-09-29 4:10 pm
  37. 2002-09-29 7:19 pm
  38. 2002-09-30 6:10 am
  39. 2002-09-30 1:45 pm
  40. 2002-09-30 2:24 pm
  41. 2002-09-30 3:38 pm
  42. 2002-09-30 5:22 pm
  43. 2002-09-30 5:40 pm
  44. 2002-10-03 2:34 am
  45. 2002-10-03 2:41 am