Be Inc. and Microsoft Corp. today announced that the parties have reached a mutually acceptable mediated settlement of an antitrust lawsuit filed by Be Inc. in February 2002. Be claimed that Microsoft maintained its monopoly by having exclusive dealing arrangements with PC OEMs prohibiting the sale of PCs with multiple preinstalled OSes. Be will receive a payment from Microsoft, after attorney’s fees, in the amount of $23,250,000 USD to end further litigation, and Microsoft… admits no wrongdoing. UPDATE: BeOSJournal.org has an interview with ex-Be employees Dan Sandler, Baron Arnold, and Dave Brown. Interesting is also Frank Boosman’s blog on the issue:“…it would have been interesting to see the case go to trial. […] Be made some very specific allegations about anti-competitive behavior in operating system licensing, and I would have been fascinated to see the parties debate that issue in court.”
All other terms of the settlement will remain confidential. Be is currently in the process of completing its dissolution pursuant to the plan approved by Be’s stockholders in November 2001. In accordance with that plan and upon completion of its dissolution, Be’s net cash will be distributed to shareholders.
The Microsoft press release went live after the stock market closed and to ensure smaller traffic (weekends are pretty slower traffic-wise for all tech news sites).
And that folks, is the end of the legendary Be, Inc.
And on other BeOS news, the programming book (written for BeOS R4, now a bit out of date for BeOS 5+) “Programming the Be Operating System” from O’Reilly, is available as free download in PDF format.
F–k!
OMFG!!!
Now they can get OEMs to bundle BeOS…oh wait they can’t.
This isn’t even a slap on the wrist!
It’s a good thing the market will destory MS with free software.
-Hugh
I know its “innocent until proven guilty”, but if you were really innocent, why would you settle? Especially considering MS does have enough lawyers to fight off an unjust lawsuit.
I think the amount speaks for itself, MS is guilty 😉 Oh well.
You’d think all these lawsuits MS has had over anti-trust would finally convince some of the trolls that MS’s bussiness practices are unethical, but they keep persisting that “Its only people trying to be l33t that dis MS”.
Did I spell “dis” right?
i could get more money out of mcdonalds by saying i spilled coffe on myself.
could this be where they got their supposedly innovative filesystem from?
“could this be where they got their supposedly innovative filesystem from?”
don’t think so. Palm should have the rights to that one.
WinFS is in development since 1993, it has nothing to do with BFS. Please don’t speculate whatever you want.
Yeah, this was anti-trust, not copyright/patent.
This was Microsoft taking its MontyPython-like foot and crushing little things.
> Did I spell “dis” right?
I believe the correct spelling is di55 !
Totally agree about the amount speaking for itself. With settlements like these the MS warchest should have enough left to buy a few medium sized countries … and then for coffee and doughnuts all round – woohoo!!
they should invest in in resurrecting BeOs
is zeta-BeOS getting some of this money??????? i can’t wait for this new version. MS can’t continue “manipulating” or controlling the software industry. this happens when you can’t compete against other companie. a big win for the Be community.
beFair.
– 2501
“they should invest in resurrecting BeOs”
I think Be Inc. learned their lesson the last time that BeOS failed.
Besides, MS probably just bought this: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1558604979
😉
BTW, according to that book, work on BFS wasn’t started until September 1996. MS had been floating talk of “Cairo” before that (possibly 1993, as Eugenia mentions). Also, according to that book, earlier BeOS versions had a database separate from the FS to track attributes.
So, at best you could say MS and Be inspired each other to compete in this space. BeOS eventually pulled it off with BFS. MS for whatever reason has felt the need to wait till now to make another go of it.
It was the focus shift IMO, that killed it.
Eugenia wrote:
“WinFS is in development since 1993, it has nothing to do with BFS. Please don’t speculate whatever you want.”
It seems a bit far-fetched, I daresay (Wouldn’t it have been released by this point?). Then again, I know not how long it takes to design & implement a good file system from the ground up. Do you by any chance have the source which states WinFS begun in 1993?
> It seems a bit far-fetched, I daresay (Wouldn’t it have been released by this point?).
Not necessarily. Not everything MS is developing at their labs is going live.
As for BFS itself (answering to DCMonkey), it is inspired by SGI’s XFS. Dominic used to work for SGI before he went to Be to create BFS (then he went to QNX, now he works for Apple btw).
And talking about other Be engineers, some are left at PalmSource, others are at Danger, Inc., others at SONY Games, others at There.com, while 4 core ex-Be engineers are now at OpenWave (including my husband).
Nothing is ever going to happen to MS if they are allowed to just keep buying their way out of trouble. If all these people sueing MS just keep taking the payoffs, nothing is ever going to change.
What is the lesson we can all learn from this, kids? You can get away with anything … provided you have enough $$.
It’s not like bill gates pointed a gun at their head and said “settle for $23.5K or die” now is it.
I would have -loved- to been a fly on the wall at THAT meeting.
How on earth did they come to the conclusion that accepting 23.25 million would be reasonable?
And what about the no repurcussions aspect? I’m truly sick to my stomach about this “settlement”. Very disheartening, but in a way, it’s a HUGE relief, as now it only strengthens my resolve to see things succeed with the future BeOS in the open source world.
-Chris Simmons,
Avid BeOS User.
The BeOSJournal.
linux community has to be careful because MS is behind SCO. lets see what happens. they are laughing in the back.
> How on earth did they come to the conclusion that accepting 23.25 million would be reasonable?
Probably they made an estimate how many BeOS copies they would be sold if MS did not lock the OEM bootloaders with their contracts, and they came to the conclusion that they wouldn’t make more than that kind of money. Which is kinda reasonable, if you think about it. The BeOS community never had more than 100,000 real users for example (I am not talking about random downloaders of BeOS 5 who don’t stay with the platform), and that number was on its hey day, between the R4 and R5 releases.
WinFS isn’t actually that innovative. Work on the idea of WinFS begun in 1993, but that was an object oriented DB filesystem that looks nothing at all like the new WinFS, which is merely SQL on top of NTFS.
but… that’s only for in the R4 R5 days
with R5 things were really beginning to look good for beos, they had good media opinions, and if they hadn’t died, who knows how much money they would be making now…
Umm.. So you’re saying that each user of the 100,000 would only spend 23 bucks, total?
I seem to recall that BeOS R5 Pro sold for $79 USD, correct me if I’m wrong.
Not to mention products like GoBE Productive, books, programs, etc.
-Chris Simmons,
Avid BeOS User.
The BeOSJournal.
The R5 days had lots of chapskeaters, not buyers. They brought absolutely no revenue, they just downloaded, ran it once, and went away.
I insist, between the R4/R5 days were the golden days of BeOS, for those who remember, the “old ones”.
Not to be picky dude but 100,000 x 23 aint 23.5 million
it’d be $235 per user.
yes, but the point is, that if they hadn’t died, maybe they could have arrived at a point, where people woul be buying and using their OS now or in the futire
I know its “innocent until proven guilty”, but if you were really innocent, why would you settle? Especially considering MS does have enough lawyers to fight off an unjust lawsuit.
Settling for $25 mil is a good deal; in the US, people settle even when innocent in order not to pay more in legal fees. Inevitable legal costs incidentally is one of the big reasons they didn’t want to pay dividends, iirc.
However, it’s horrible MSFT gets to tie distributors up like that. Obviously few of us are lawyers, but this doesn’t sound good for society.
but to spare you all, I will just say that this is extremely dissatisfying and disheartening.. both about the past and as a foreshadow of the future of this repellent industry.
err.. right.
My bad. Still… That’s slightly more expensive than the cost of a new version of the latest M$ OS, is it not?
I -know- that I’ve spent far more than that on BeOS related merchandise, and besides, we’re talking about potentials here, as Eugenia points out.
The potential market for BeOS was FAR greater than 100 thousand people. Lest we forget about the 1 million plus who downloaded BeOS R5 Personal Edition in the very first month alone?
I say again, 23 million is chump change.
-Chris Simmons,
Avid BeOS User.
The BeOSJournal.
At the end of the “useful information” part of that article, there’s this:
“Founded in 1975, Microsoft is the worldwide leader in software, services and Internet technologies for personal and business computing. The company offers a wide range of products and services designed to empower people through great software — any time, any place and on any device. “
It then goes on to tell you about MS’s copyrights and how to get more information about them. I know it is common to have blurbs about businesses in these articles, but this is too much… and there’s no explanation about what Be Inc. is/was.
Can someone point us to articles that don’t seem to fall right off of the “MS marketing and law” department? I’m curious to see how it is reported elsewhere.
> My bad. Still… That’s slightly more expensive than the cost of a new version of the latest M$ OS, is it not?
So what? The BeOS price was not this though. $235 is A LOT. Plus, Be was only getting about $10 bucks of each copy they were selling!
> The potential market for BeOS was FAR greater than 100 thousand people. Lest we forget about the 1 million plus who downloaded BeOS R5 Personal Edition in the very first month alone?
This is why MS paid $235 per user and not $50. They paid for about 2,3 million users if you think that Be was only getting a few bucks per copy sold! And Be could never have 2.3 million users, even Red Hat today doesn’t have more than 2 millions. The MacOSX community after 3 whole years got to 6 millions.
>I say again, 23 million is chump change.
I don’t think so. It SOUNDS small, but you have an idea about Be that might not be real: Be was small, its market was really small. I believe that the money paid was right. Be thinks of this too, otherwise they would not have agreed.
> Can someone point us to articles that don’t seem to fall right off of the “MS marketing and law” department?
What are you talking about Jace? EACH and every press release has a special section “About the Company”, where it is the same copy of text everytime, no matter what was announced. That kind of copy is part of each press release, on all companies, not just MS.
To explain myself a bit more, it is NOT the amount of money paid that bothers me, it is the fact that Microsoft got unpunished! This is what really bothers me: “admits no wrongdoing”.
Trust me, the money paid were right for what Be lost. It is a fair amount as I explain above.
But that money is NOT enough to let MS “admit no wrondoing”. Because they DID do wrong.
I heartily agree with Eugenia (wow.. twice in one day.
about the wrongdoing part.
Microsoft was wrong. Everyone knows this, but yet they are not punished. Why?
-Chris Simmons,
Avid BeOS User.
The BeOSJournal.
I know all articles have these blurbs, I said as much.
I said: I know it is common to have blurbs about businesses in these articles, but this is too much… and there’s no explanation about what Be Inc. is/was.
It isn’t the presense of the blurb itself. The style, extent of it and the total lack of info about Be. The Microsoft info is almost longer than the story.
Umm… isn’t $23Million more than Be, inc. ever had? I think it is… But I’m not sure… If someone corrects me on that, I’ll accept it.
So… What happens to all this cash? Does it go to the shareholders? Is there going to be some kind of ressurection? (I’d like to see that, but I can’t see it happening. *cries*)Does it end up in someone’s pocket?
Did you not read all the story? Yes, it goes to shareholders, after the lawyers are paid.
NULL wrote:
Eugenia wrote:
“WinFS is in development since 1993, it has nothing to do with BFS. Please don’t speculate whatever you want.”
It seems a bit far-fetched, I daresay (Wouldn’t it have been released by this point?). Then again, I know not how long it takes to design & implement a good file system from the ground up. Do you by any chance have the source which states WinFS begun in 1993?
—————–
I can confirm that this project was started then.
Be stockholders, who aren’t anything like microsoft people, may have three choices at their disposal. They cash out, in which case, they make an embarassingly low amount of money, they tell Be’s lawyers not to take this settlement, or they don’t cash out, in which case, be can return to some semblance of operations, which is why you’d even want to sue MSFT anyhow, for disruption of operations.
I am recommending the last option, because, I don’t believe Be Stockholders want to do worse damage than microsoft could have ever hoped to do. Some say that doesn’t make sense- It makes perfect sense. If Be went back in business, and things worked out right(like the would have if msft would have stayed away from be’s deals and operations), then some people would be concievably cashing dividends instead of cashing out. Be had a lot of good deals that were disrupted. They were a good company. “Focus shift” pundits can go chew on a BONE. Some believe that them vanishing is reality, I say “reality is what you make of it”. and be would vanish only if YOU made it so.
I hope a shareholder’s meeting can be called to discuss all of this. I also hope the shareholders will remember IBM, during the great depression. I hope they will make the good choice. There is only one good choice. The other two don’t look too yummy.
>>>To explain myself a bit more, it is NOT the amount of money paid that bothers me, it is the fact that Microsoft got unpunished! This is what really bothers me: “admits no wrongdoing”.
It pales in comparison with all the wall street firms paid hundreds of millions of dollars to New York state and the SEC and “admits no wrongdoing” in CRIMINAL TRIALS in the Enron and WorldCom fiasco.
Everybody does it — negotiate a settlement and admit no wrongdoing.
Just my luck. I owned stock in Be until a year ago.
>>>Be stockholders, who aren’t anything like microsoft people, may have three choices at their disposal.
The shareholders don’t have any choice to the matter. The lawyers don’t represent the shareholders, only the company itself. It’s a mediated settlement, not under duress (ie. Be Inc. already died, you can’t make it “more dead”).
Having another shareholders vote — only adds to expense, thus lowering the amount shareholders get back. The ONLY way that shareholders can do — is to sue Be Inc. (and its directors and the lone CEO) that the settlement is not in the best interest of the shareholders. But as long as Be Inc. can show that the settlement is a “reasonable” one — you lose the lawsuit.
The third choice doesn’t affect whether be can litigate in other nations where they conducted business operations.
there is a lot of things I hope people will think about. I hope people will make the right decision.
And furthermore, MSFT can say they had no wrong doing all they want to, if Be accepts the deal, you and I know better and that’s good enough. MSFT would be stupid to try it again against Be as well, as the deal cannot stop Be from suing if msft tries it again.
Anyhow, I wish everyone the best of luck, and hope they make the right decision.
>>>they tell Be’s lawyers not to take this settlement, or they don’t cash out, in which case, be can return to some semblance of operations, which is why you’d even want to sue MSFT anyhow, for disruption of operations.
This is even more absurd. If Be don’t settle, then the lawyers leave (they don’t get paid because of contingency fees) and the lawyers ain’t going to bankroll the costly lawsuit against to the end.
Cash out — what cash out. Be Inc. has $4 million left. They can’t even buy back BeOS from Palm.
I think if you took the cash out, you might actually truly kill it. Ah.. now you see.
Or do you?
>>>The third choice doesn’t affect whether be can litigate in other nations where they conducted business operations.
Pretty much only the US where lawyers are working on a contingency fee basis. Therefore, you have to finance the lawsuit itself.
Sam,
I trust you don’t really understand this, because you’re superimposing figures around like an enron cpa..
I’m stating the truth. 23+4 million = ?
Not to mention, if they choose to stay in, which they can do(shareholders can do this), they can make more potientially than they have ever made. This time, with no MSFT to take their money away.
What, do you think the be shareholders took msft to court?
NO. What guides your premise. You should know mine is plainly obvious.
Sam, you don’t use beos. Too bad, you’re missing out on something cool.
No.. you don’t use beos. But you can…
There is no one working at Be Inc. anymore. The only guy is the CEO (I think an accountant by profession), never actually ran anything his whole life.
All the other people have gone to better things. What — you expect that JLG will come back and work for free like Steve Jobs did for Apple?
> The only guy is the CEO (I think an accountant by profession)
He is a actually the Be laywer.
>you expect that JLG will come back and work for free like Steve Jobs did for Apple?
I suggest you read this: http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=3203
>>>I’m stating the truth. 23+4 million = ?
I didn’t read your 3 choices carefully, but I understand it now.
>>>Not to mention, if they choose to stay in, which they can do(shareholders can do this), they can make more potientially than they have ever made.
Again, the shareholders has NO CHOICE. The majority of the shareholders voted to dissolve the company. That’s it, end of story.
As I said it, the only way that you can have a choice is for the Be Inc. shareholders to sue Be Inc. and say that the settlement is not in the best interest of the shareholders (not as you stated Be shareholders suing MSFT). Again as long as Be Inc. can show that this settlement is a MEDIATED settlement and that the settlement is REASONABLE — you don’t have a case.
Sooner or later we have to hope that enough people decide they won’t do business with such an patently unethical company such as Micros**t – until then… Now, to you who still use their products, far be it for me to dictate what you do with your hard earned cash, just please allow a simple observation; As long as ms is funded they will continue to crush everyone who stands in their way. Also, I am also not sure I have it all straight: I keep hearing people; “Micros**t this Microsh**t that” while a windows machine sits on their desk. ?? This year I have decided that I will not continue to fund them. Not a penny. I have purged my computer of anything to do with ms and am happily living a life free from the virus infested windows world.
>>>Steve Jobs
I know about the learjets. I am just illustrating that Be Inc. doesn’t have a learjet to convince JLG to forego his current job which pays real money and real stock options to come back to Be.
There is no “Be” anymore. Be owns nothing, except that money. They have no technologies or engineers. It is all sold. There is no reason for anyone to come back, especially JLG. JLG has another job anyway.
You’re right, and that’s the saddest part of this whole thing.
The money won’t go to anything worthwhile. It’ll just end up split up into a bunch of private bank accounts.
This sucks.
They can show all they want it’s a reasonable settlement. The shareholders(some of which I know) don’t have to accept it, based on any number of premises. Most who invested in Be, liked Be and were loyal investors. You don’t find that sort of rarity often but it’s good to have. It’s a good thing <tm>.
If the shareholders voted to do A, they can vote to do B.
Congress does it all the time for much less nobler purposes.
I entreat you to bear that in mind.
You people can’t have it both ways.
Microsoft is the devil because it was found guilty of US anti-trust law. All the anti-MSFT camp like SUN and Oracle are saints because they weren’t found guilty of anti-trust laws.
What about SUN, IBM, HP, Oracle….. that settled criminal and civil lawsuits and claim no wrongdoing (like Oracle’s mess in California last year).
There EVERYBODY are the devil, not just Microsoft. You can’t have it both ways.
Yeah, I just got that.. vote “Be”
>>>The shareholders(some of which I know) don’t have to accept it, based on any number of premises.
It doesn’t matter. The shareholders voted by a majority to dissolve the company. There is NO SECOND VOTE.
…that they(MSFT) ADMIT no wrongdoing
we know different.
the 4+23 million is after attorney’s fees, paid in full OF COURSE.
Some see this as final defeat. I see it as a chance to enjoy a small victory, channel this.. and make a bigger one later on.
I would use the protection blanket this affords us. anyhow, there’s not much more for me to say or explain. this is really good if we make it good.
Let’s make it good.
>>>The Microsoft press release went live after the stock market closed and to ensure smaller traffic (weekends are pretty slower traffic-wise for all tech news sites).
That’s not fair to Microsoft. Be hasn’t issued a press release yet (unless that is a joint press release).
The negotiation could have gone overtime — that’s why the late release. Also most company issue stuff after the trading day because of various SEC regulations (unless you want to halt the trading in the middle of the day).
It is a joint press release, and I am sure it was not Be the one who would have liked to publish that on Friday evening.
Well, after a long time waiting, I should be getting a small portion of the money back that I had in shares of Be. Not that I expected to actually get anything, since MS probably could’ve just kept things on trial and appealed them until Be ran out of money to pay its lawyers (as you recall, they had what, $3.5 million or so left?).
This $23m will help appease the shareholders and venture capitalists, etc. who put money towards Be. It’s sad, yes, but Be tried to do something really cool, and got blasted out of the water by a monopolistic competitor. It happens.
Fortunately it sounds like all of Be’s engineers are off doing exciting things, which is a good thing – now they can be putting their experience and creativity towards making a bunch of other software products better.
Alas, all good things must come to an end. Be, we hardly knew ye.
All this BS only to get there ?
/me really ashamed.
Here’s another book for y’all
http://www.ercb.com/brief/brief.0011.html (sorry, couldn’t find it at Amazon). This book is about the development of Windows NT
Here we go:
In this book, they talk about the development of NTFS. Around February 1991, the book says Jim Allchin came around to the NT team and asked them to axe the NTFS as they were working on this grand new system codenamed Cairo that would include its own file system that sounds by all accounts very much like the FSen were are talking about today.
Jim Allchin joined MS in 1990. Allow me to quote from his MS BIO:
Before joining Microsoft, Allchin helped start Banyan Systems Inc., where he was the principal architect of the VINES distributed network operating system. He spent more than seven years at Banyan, holding numerous executive management positions in development and marketing. Ultimately, he became senior vice president and chief technology officer.
While completing his doctorate in computer science in the early 1980s, Allchin was the principal architect of the Clouds distributed transactional, object-oriented operating system. Before that, he helped develop the DX series of operating systems for Texas Instruments Inc.
— ( http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/jim/default.asp )
I’ll bet the inspiration for Cairo, including a DB like file system came from his experience working on (even if only at a managerial level) those projects. Part of it also comes from Bill Gates’ “Information at your fingertips” kick he was on at the time. I’m sure there was research at some university or another that influenced both of them as well, but Be?
Be was founded in 1990. BeOS was released 1995. Jim Allchin joined MS in 1990. Who knows how far they got with Cairo before they had to slap something together to ship as NT 4.0. I’m sure they at least now know what not to do.
Jim Allchin now heads the OS platforms division at MS.
Are you all so sure they will fail this time?
Make of this info what you will, but I don’t see a “MS ripped off WinFS from BeOS” story here.
PS: That stuff about Allchin’s experience with distributed OO OSen reminds me. Longhorn isn’t supposed to be just a desktop OS. There is a Longhorn server planned too IIRC. Ya think maybe this WinFS query stuff will work across the network, distributed as it were?
Heck, I wouldn’t be surprised if a future Longhorn based Exchange server does nothing more than send outgoing mail and deposit incoming mail in the proper WinFS folders and update the appropriate attributes (sounds like your typical UNIX MUA doesn’t it?).
>>>It is a joint press release, and I am sure it was not Be the one who would have liked to publish that on Friday evening.
Not necessarily. I think it’s the only way around. The settlement is not a big news for Microsoft (in terms of dollar amount) that they can release the press release mid-day without halting the stock trading.
However, it is big news for Be Inc. and that requires the halting of Be Inc. stock trade (even in the pink sheet market). Be is a one person company and Be’s lawyers who negotiated this deal ain’t securities lawyers (neither is the lone lawyer who works at Be.) So unless they want to spend an extra money and clear it with a securities lawyer in order to issue the press release mid-day — Be would want to issue after the trading bell.
I meant it’s the OTHER way around.
It’s a good thing the market will destory MS with free software.
I certainly hope not. Almost every free piece of software is crap. Only exceptions are probably those sql servers, apache, and kde. The rest are crap.
I believe this is still quite important, now all the other anti-ms os developers can do the same.
Be was a collection of dreamers and crazies. They never made a fully fleshed out and debugged OS, never made or did anything substantial that supported ISVs, and never seriously understood what it took to make a commercial product.
Any company that chose PowerPC over x86 for a mainstream OS shows that they have incredible brain damage. In all likelihood just that one mistake killed the company. Too much energy in the wrong direction sucks the life out of a company.
It’s too bad Be never had a good biz guy running the show. They could have been something then. A lot of talent and energy went down the drain.
And the fate of Be had little to do with Microsoft. Witness the chump change settlement. Be had no case.
Soon we will be talking about Amiga dying the final death. And in not too long, Apple. Evolution takes a while, but it always works. The smart live and the stupid die. Thank God.
BeOS had its time and place, too bad that they didn’t do something about the basic fundamental flaws in the system, namely, a lack of ISV’s and IHV’s.
Although it sounds a little optimistic, it would be nice if the current owners of Be’s intellectual property opensourced and licensed it under the BSD license.
quote “JLG has another job anyway.” what is it? any links?
personally i would never invest in a JLG run company.
Apple offered JLG and be inc $120+ million and JLG/be inc said no. JLG should have foreseen that steve jobs/next was a logical alternative, which is what happened.
tsk-tsk
good-bye, Be inc.
it was nice knowing you.
.m
Well, I know that when Be released the BeOS 5 PE many people used that, and the workarounds to get it running on its own partition. However, I don’t think that all were “cheapskates” as some would have you believe.
I may not have bought a lot of software, and do admit to running some applications with “questionable” sources, but all my BeOS software was purchased. BeOS 5 Professional Edition, Gobe Productive 2.0, Sound Play (still the best audio player ever), Groove Maker (full boxed set), gobeProductive 3.0 (just to support the awesome Gobe guys), as well as Scot Hacker’s BeOS Bible, and DPS’s wonderful Programming the Be Operating System. (Hell, I even spent close to $600 for a rev 6 BeBox with every version of BeOS from DP8-r4.5.)
Some of us truly loved the BeOS, and felt that it deserved the full respect that it was never truly given. I just kinda feel hurt being considered a cheapskate.
— Rob
It’s great — I suppose — that O’Reilly is releasing DPS’ Programming … as a PDF, as it will let people see just how great the BeAPI really was. He has a great style of writing. His Programming MacOS X is a great text, too.
Based upon the settlement plus Be’s cash balance and the recent number of shares outstanding on the Company’s 10-Q filing, I’ll be getting a little over $200! What’s the most poetically fitting way to spend the proceeds from this lawsuit?
does anybody know how the money will be distributed?
Will every shreholder payed automatically or only by request?
Companies settle frivilous law suits all the time, especially in cases like this. Any idea why? It’s cheaper. If ms continued to fight it and won who would reimburse them for the cost? A company that only continues to exist on paper to continue the lawsuit? Ms saw a cheap out and took it. It’s good business, not an admission of guilt. But hey if you don’t believe start even a small business and get sued by someone who is broke.
I call this a frivilous suit because ms contracts with oems have not been shown to violate any federal or international laws. Thats right none, zip, zero zilch. They were heavy handed and unfair to competitors but they benefitted both parties. Oems got windows for less than they would’ve otherwise paid, making them extra profits. Ms secured their continued dominance. Contined because if you aren’t the lead dog you couldn’t get oems to sign contracts like these.
Microsoft’s settlement with Be Inc. may be deceiving. Certain parts of the agreement is being kept under wraps.
In Microsoft’s Caldera settlement, Microsoft seem to be saying Caldera would recieve about 150 million, by stating they would take a 3 cents per share charge on the earnings, for the quarter. The actual amount seems to have been between 250-400 million. Caldera was not publically owned, so it is impossible to get an accurate total.
Now, what else that might be worth some bucks, such as possible Microsoft buying dollar for dollar Be’s tax losses is unknown. If you own any Be shares, and it climbs to above the per share “known” amounts, then maybe you had better hold on and not sell, to find out more.
Be had, according to their last statement, 8.6 milion is assets. This was a big case, with triple damages on a win in court. Be was, at one point, valued at over 1 billion dollars, by the market. A minimum of 3 billion (1 billion tripled) for Be was a minimum it seems they would have gotten, with a win in court. To settle, for around 25 million would seem ridiculas imho. Be’s case against Microsoft was as solid as they come. Trial was to start soon, or before Feb 2004. The trial would have only been a matter of weeks. Something seems to not be right here, and I think it is in the secret terms of the deal.
I also think Judge Mota has to OK the deal, and he may reject it, if he feels Microsoft is getting off too easily. Motz has done this before, on other Microsoft cases.
For Be shareholders, we can be found here, for future info–Dwight
http://messages.yahoo.com/?action=q&board=beos
On a copy of Windows XP! You should be proud to support such a great American company!
>>>Microsoft’s settlement with Be Inc. may be deceiving. Certain parts of the agreement is being kept under wraps.
It’s not like Caldera — Be Inc. is being liquidated. How are they going to hide the money?
>>>I also think Judge Mota has to OK the deal, and he may reject it, if he feels Microsoft is getting off too easily.
According to the press release, it’s a MEDIATED settlement (i.e. by a 3rd party mediator). It is highly unlikely that Motz would reject it.
“Be’s case against Microsoft was as solid as they come. Trial was to start soon, or before Feb 2004.”
How was it solid? No laws were broken. Was it unfair. Hell yes. But unfair doesn’t win a lawsuit. The mistake people are making is they keep thinking of the government’s case against ms as all encompassing. It’s not. It covered only using their os market share to move into other products. Period. That’s why middleware is an issue. If it was all encompassing then the break up would’ve stuck. It didn’t, but not because ms bought their way out of trouble. It didn’t stick because it went over and above what was acceptable punishment. It would be akin to taking everything you own if you get caught stealing a tv. I understand many of you were/are be fans but think about the law. Not about feelings. Not about individual abstracts of what is justice. But about the law, justice as defined by society.
btw it sickens me that people whine this much about a damned os dying when there are bigger problems in the world. According to national geographic magazine there are more human slaves then there have ever been. But god forbid you people care about that. You’re too busy whining about a 23 million dollar windfall.
MS will never admit wrongdoing. That statement can possibly cost them billions. Anyway, wasn’t BeOS shunned by Apple? I always assumed that Be, Inc. had an uphill battle after that fiasco.
If I were a VC at Be, I’d be happy to get $23 mils before plunking ten million down for starters into an anti-trust lawsuit. Because Microsoft put in the fix, Be would lose the anti-trust suit anyway.
It’s disgusting that Be blamed their troubles on Microsoft in the first place. “We made a lot of stupid decisions… well, we better sue Microsoft.”
Can you imagine it, an Intel-funded company suing Microsoft? Be just pissed all their funding down the damn drain doing retarded stuff, that’s the real problem.
At the end of the story, Be bled Microsoft for chump change and is dead and gone.
And all I can say is good riddance! And now the Be-fanatical people can rest in peace!
>>>It’s not like Caldera — Be Inc. is being liquidated. How >>>are they going to hide the money?
They can’t totally hide the money like Caldera, but Microsoft hides negative reality, as much as possible. Take for instance their quarterly reporting. In the last year, Microsoft admitted to cooking the books some. They would not report all the profit in a quarter, so they could add the profit into down months, and make the profits look solid quarter after quarter. Microsoft is very sensitive on preception, and trys to manipulate it as much as possible. The settlement had to be announced, and the way they did it was that the stockholders would get so much in cash. Now isn’t that a little strange. Why not give a total for the deal. Because the total implies more, and maybe much more. Right now the public says, yea, Microsoft didn’t give them much, and it was just to get rid of the suit. Microsoft would die, if they had to announce they gave major consessions to Be Inc, which they possibly did, if it is not announced as part of the deal. Sure Be Inc. shareholders, and the public looking at Be’s SEC filings will probably know the basic deal, but not Joe Average on the street. In this regard, it is like Caldera, except Caldera had no SEC filings.
>>>According to the press release, it’s a MEDIATED >>>settlement (i.e. by a 3rd party mediator). It is highly >>>unlikely that Motz would reject it.
Motz has rejected such deals, in the last year, between other parties and Microsoft, and they were probably negotiated in the same way. Motz’s duty is to the law, and what he percieves as the public good. Microsoft is a convicted monpolist, and Motz will not let Microsoft take advantage of a deal, to further Microsoft’s monopoly, if he sees it, to be that way.–Dwight
“How was it solid? No laws were broken. Was it unfair. Hell yes. But unfair doesn’t win a lawsuit. The mistake people are making is they keep thinking of the government’s case against ms as all encompassing. It’s not. It covered only using their os market share to move into other products. Period. That’s why middleware is an issue. If it was all encompassing then the break up would’ve stuck. It didn’t, but not because ms bought their way out of trouble. It didn’t stick because it went over and above what was acceptable punishment. It would be akin to taking everything you own if you get caught stealing a tv. I understand many of you were/are be fans but think about the law. Not about feelings. Not about individual abstracts of what is justice. But about the law, justice as defined by society.”
How solid was it. Awfully solid. They had 390+ findings of fact they could use, as fact against Microsoft, without having to prove them.
Point 1…Microsoft holds monopoly power on the Intel PC.
Point 2…Microsoft has used it’s Monopoly power to illegally maintain its monopoly and block competitors.
Point 3…Microsoft OEM contract were monopolistic (illegal), and were designed to block competitors.
Point 4…The Windows computer is the only economically viable method of entering the Intel PC market.
Point 5…Microsoft used it’s illegal OEM contrats to block BeOS from the OEM Windows computers of Gateway, Compaq. and Hitachi. They even went so far as threatening to yank their Windows licensing, from these companies.
Point 6… Microsoft under oath stated that, if BeOS was allowed on the Windows computers, in dual boot mode, that “AND WHEN ENOUGH APPLICATIONS ARE OVER THERE TO SATISFY THE USER IN QUESTION, HE HAS NO FURTHER USE FOR WINDOWS”
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/trial/transcripts/jan99/01-27-pm…
“btw it sickens me that people whine this much about a damned os dying when there are bigger problems in the world. According to national geographic magazine there are more human slaves then there have ever been. But god forbid you people care about that. You’re too busy whining about a 23 million dollar windfall.”
This is about honor, freedom and corruption. The money is not the issue–Dwight
Be honest OR be rich.
Someone knew this was going to happen? Why else for the stock doubling before?
Scr#w Be Inc. and Scr#w Microsoft. I bloody hate them both but I loved BeOS. Made such a refreshing change for a computing environment. Oh well eventually OpenBeOS will be done and after that Zeta (-;
I gave out the options here… there were three. Only one is going to be right, and one is indeed dead wrong.
and that’s cashing out and running for it…
That was the deal. NO funny business.
However, Microsoft can’t do this again. Sure, be can go after triple damages of 3 billion. In court. And they would win.
I know it seems like a meager amount. I say either reject the offer, and nail them to the wall in court, or, take the 23 mil and recommence operations.
Appearantly MSFT really wants this not to go to court, so why the low amount, comparitivly speaking? No, if they want to settle, they can settle for more than that. If they don’t want this going to court, I suggest they suck up their pride a bit…
Stop thinking we’re dumb enough to accept their pathetic offer.
23 mil?
bill wants this out of court?
PAY.. grrrrrrr..
They act like we would just take that and go it?
Pay, BILL, or we’ll turn your company upside down.
The art of the deal, don’t offer too low, or too high.
23 million is just begging to be sued into oblivion.
Do they really wanna keep it out of court? Well, 23 million sure don’t reflect that…
*ahem*
Wag this!
23 million? Hey, I got a strategic PUBLIC communication for you, UP
YOURS!!!!
I’m announcing the deal has been rejected. Forthwit. I’m also announcing that if Waggener Edstrom continues, they’ll be arrested for insider trading.
Yeah, just whet our appetite just a little more..
You’re thinking long term? Well, you better start packing your lunches, because after we done with you, there won’t be any of micro-soft’s money to buy you fancy dinners with.
I can’t believe you people stand for this, it’s lock and load time.
There is no BeOS. They had to ‘focus shift’ to find money largely because of Microsoft’s practices.
Again, there is no REAL alternative to Windows, IMO.
This is justice?
Peanuts imho
would be if they spent first 2 million to buy the BeOS back from Palm, the next few million havbing programmer sanitize it of third party code and proprietary goods, and then open sourced the remainder – whatever is left, and THEN distributed the rest to shareholders. THAT, my friends, would be a much worse outcome for Microsoft. Even if only a little, there would be parts of the BeOS that would advance OpenBeOS and B.E.OS.
look the bottom line here is clear. It pays to run a dirty business. The penalty ($23 million) is nothing. I reject the notion that be would have only had 100,000 users. If beos came preinstalled that number could have gone up a bit higher. The entire thing could have grown.
Bascially, it pays to be a crook and that is a sad statement.
>>>Why not give a total for the deal.
You don’t understand how the world works. It’s not Microsoft that is not giving the total figure out. It’s Be’s lawyers that wanted the figure to be hidden. It’s Be’s lawyers that draft the joint press release. It’s Be’s lawyers that negotiated the settlement. (When Microsoft announced that they settled with AOL for $750 million, the price of Microsoft shares actually rised.)
>>>Motz’s duty is to the law, and what he percieves as the public good.
Motz rejected the settlement of the 100 private class-action lawsuits —- because it’s full of funny numbers on how many schools get how many used computers with microsoft software (and Apple complaining didn’t hurt either). In the Be settlement, it’s pure cash settlement mediated by a third party mediator, very different.
>>>I say either reject the offer, and nail them to the wall in court, or, take the 23 mil and recommence operations.
For the nth time, you don’t get to reject the offer. The lawyers work for the company, not you.