http://www.osnews.com/story/16118/A_Brief_Look_Into_ZETA_s_Future Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2013, David Adams adam+nospam@osnews.com Fri, 24 May 2013 01:17:38 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif http://www.osnews.com http://www.osnews.com/thread?170103 http://www.osnews.com/thread?170103 Zeta Update has already something like a "home":
http://zetaupdate.com/zeta/
Especially the "About" section is very instructive, because Magnussoft describes here how Zeta Update works and what data the Zeta Updater collects.
But there is no information up to now when this update service will start. Mon, 09 Oct 2006 22:35:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (nelvana2005) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?170108 http://www.osnews.com/thread?170108 Given the past track record, I think "if" might be a more appropriate term to use than "when".

There were some smart people at yT, but it was run by monkies. Magnussoft seems to have the same issues. I don't really see Zeta as going anywhere at this point, too little, too late - all the BeOS enthusiasts have moved onto Haiku now that it is showing signs of going somewhere, and that doesn't leave Zeta with much of a market to sell too (unless they start those silly/borderline false shopping channel ads again...)

Regardless, good luck to them, I hope they can show themselves more capable of running a company than yT management were. I hope Zeta succeeds, as well, as that will benefit Haiku. Mon, 09 Oct 2006 22:46:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (ormandj) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?170123 http://www.osnews.com/thread?170123 no ill intention from my side but whats the point of buying or supporting zeta.. i think beos might have been a great operating system but if zeta does (or that new company ) not have the source code is it not all just a big waste of time? while you can make some progress you will never get any real breakthroughs, innovations or large changes made, right?

comments pleas.

DanielBrowser: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 4.01; Windows CE; PPC; 240x320) Mon, 09 Oct 2006 23:22:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (daniel_iversen) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?170145 http://www.osnews.com/thread?170145 I don't really see Zeta as going anywhere at this point, too little, too late - all the BeOS enthusiasts have moved onto Haiku now that it is showing signs of going somewhere, and that doesn't leave Zeta with much of a market to sell too

Ehh..Haiku isn't finished yet. Realistically speaking it won't be as stable and as usable as Zeta is right now for some time to come. Even though they're progressing at an amazing rate, there's still a lot of work to do. That leaves Zeta for the here and now. I don't see people using Haiku as their daily OS yet, but there are people that use Zeta as their daily OS, judging simply by the sheer number of copies sold. Mon, 09 Oct 2006 23:51:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Ronald Vos) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?170147 http://www.osnews.com/thread?170147 Last half of 2007 should be the release date of Haiku R1. Probably around november (or was it september? Or october? I forgot). Mon, 09 Oct 2006 23:53:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (dylansmrjones) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?170152 http://www.osnews.com/thread?170152 yellowTab (yT) never said if they have the source code or not to BeOS. Some people assume yT doesn't have it & others think yT does have it, but no one knows for sure (except for Bernd, CEO of yT).

yT may have access to the source code & pay a licensing fee to Palm OS (my best guess).

yT uses Haiku code (benefit from Haiku developments), plus yT & BeOS code combined to create Zeta. Eventually, yT could remove all BeOS code (& use only yT & Haiku code to create Zeta).

Plus, they are making advancements & enhancements. So, in the end, they are able somehow to improve the OS. Tue, 10 Oct 2006 00:04:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (tonestone57) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?170154 http://www.osnews.com/thread?170154 True, Haiku R1 is to be released around October 2007.

The thing is that in Oct 2007:
Haiku (will) = BeOS 5.x
Zeta (will) = BeOS 6.x (or BeOS 7.x)(what BeOS would have been had it continued on).

Haiku will be behind Zeta & it'll take another 1-3 years before it catches up to Zeta.

Also keep in mind that any improvements Haiku makes, Zeta benefits too, because yT incorporates Haiku code into Zeta. (ie: So, Zeta could actually stay ahead of Haiku by using Haiku code & also having yT programmers do their own changes, fixes & improvements too). Tue, 10 Oct 2006 00:10:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (tonestone57) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?170173 http://www.osnews.com/thread?170173 Something you are failing to keep in mind, Haiku has no "operating expenses" - at least none of the magnitude of paid developers. These companies are run by fools, all the secrecy and hidden agendas (ie. never discussing if they had source or not - that was stupid.)

With that kind of leadership, the money isn't going to be around to keep those devs paid, and when they walk - Zeta dies. It's happened once already, it got scooped up again (and the company seems the same as yT to me) - and it's likely to die again. Zeta isn't marketable right now, it's got a long way to go before it's in a position to be payware as an OS.

All the comments about Haiku not being done yet, etc - yes, that's true. It's also developed by people in their free time, and those people will likely continue working on Haiku as time passes. They aren't doing it for a paycheck.

You just wait, Magnussoft and Zeta are going to fizzle yet *again*, and it may or may not be picked back up the third time around. I'm truly tired of watching horribly run companies totally destroy something that once was/could have been great. That's why Haiku (imho of course) is the only possibility for BeOS to survive in one form or another. Tue, 10 Oct 2006 00:57:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (ormandj) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?170209 http://www.osnews.com/thread?170209 Words cannot even come close to saying how frustrating it is to be a Zeta user. I like the OS but would never recomned it to anyone, that just based on their customer service. Or, more correctly, lack of it. Tue, 10 Oct 2006 03:30:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (DFergATL) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?170230 http://www.osnews.com/thread?170230 Now I dont want to start a flame here but what does Zeta (BeOS) have to make it's $100 price tag worth paying? Especially since we can get Windows XP Pro and MacOS X 10.4 for about that price online. Tue, 10 Oct 2006 04:17:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Xaero_Vincent) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?170231 http://www.osnews.com/thread?170231 i loved the beos look/feel, and despite any improvements under the hood...

Zeta.. visually.. looks like shit.

its painfully obvious which gui's Be did, and which ones the people at yT have had their hands in. Tue, 10 Oct 2006 04:28:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (nivenh) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?170237 http://www.osnews.com/thread?170237 This is so boring. Who in the world is interested in stuff like preferences or how an automated software update (other OS had that for years) looks like. It seems that those folks don't have anything interesting to show or to talk about.
I knew BeOS and it actually looked fine back in the late 90s. But ZETA, well, looks as boring as those "brilliant" preference pa(i)nes. Tue, 10 Oct 2006 05:18:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (electr0n) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?170240 http://www.osnews.com/thread?170240 yellowtab changed the preferences a zillion times. Why don't they spend their limited resources on things that can be more meaningful to users instead, like the ability to print from Firefox, support for more chipsets, more audio/video codecs, ACPI, JAVA, etc.?

The ability to install ZETA on more hardware, to fully take advantage of the hardware (ie., modern CPU features, energy saving on laptops, etc.), to print from a browser, or to run JAVA/Flash apps will win them more customers than superficial changes such as endlessly changing the preferences, or adding eye-candy to the Terminal.

Looks like they have the wrong priorities. Tue, 10 Oct 2006 05:47:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (sogabe) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?170241 http://www.osnews.com/thread?170241 I agree.

Zeta needs to be priced at around $49 with 90 day limited tech support, and make incidents after that a small charge and free via a forum.

Zeta just can't charge the same money as Vista, XP or MacOS X. It's not worth it.

As a play OS, $49 is a good price.

These guys have to figure out the simple marketing idea of selling quantity... Sell more, and make more money.

A higher price means they'll sell less.

If Zeta 1.0 had been priced at $49 when it came out, I would have bought it years ago... At $119, it was priced way too high for me to justify it.

They never seemed to figure this out...

I didn't pay $100 for BeOS 4.5 or 5.0... Why would I pay $100 for Zeta??? Tue, 10 Oct 2006 05:56:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Mage66) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?170253 http://www.osnews.com/thread?170253 Somehow Zeta gives me a bad feeling.... I don't want it, and don't want to try it either. Yellowtab and now Magnussoft are such obscure companies. Everything(!) is vague and leaves us to guess.... About the licencing of the source code and now about the transfer from yT to Magnussoft. I will continue to use R5 untill Haiku is finished en I am sure that those $100 is better spent on donating to the haiku project, than on a copy of Zeta.
Everyone who considers buying Zeta, should donate to Haiku instead.... In the long run it will pay off!

PS. And I also dislike the idea that Magnussoft will use Haikucode in Zeta. Somehow this feels unfair. Tue, 10 Oct 2006 07:56:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (testadura) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?170257 http://www.osnews.com/thread?170257 ... didn't even start to boot. Well, on with life. Tue, 10 Oct 2006 08:27:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (deb2006) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?170309 http://www.osnews.com/thread?170309 Indeed, without the source they wouldn't have been able to make changes and resell it...

Why support Zeta/Haiku? Because you like it and think it can have a future as enjoyable media and home system.

### about legal issues ###

IIRC: Palm owns the BeOS code (they really wanted the engineers, but that's another story), and yT got a licence for continuing the development.

yT being the legal owner of the license, the new investor Magnussoft is presented as exclusive distributor and not as the new developer.
That would take some risks out for Magnussoft and lets the development going on under a different label which has the needed expertise. Tue, 10 Oct 2006 12:17:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (makc) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?170336 http://www.osnews.com/thread?170336 I am continually surprised by people posting dates on when Haiku will be finished. There is no promised date, no projected date, just "when it's done". We don't even have such a thing internally.

As for being behind Vista, Zeta, OS X, Plan 9, whatever, it is all about tradeoffs and choices. It depends on what you care about. In some ways, Haiku will be far ahead of where BeOS was (video drivers support, USB support, large memory support, GUI layout). We are not looking to make big infrastructure changes at this time so that we can get R1 out. But we will be so far ahead of R5 in machines that you can run on and networking performance/portability that I don't think that the comparison is fair anymore. Tue, 10 Oct 2006 14:00:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (mphipps) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?170366 http://www.osnews.com/thread?170366 The projected finish date of Haiku is posted on Haiku OS website. The date is an estimate of when the OS will likely be ready for use. BUT, Haiku itself may be ready sooner or later than Oct 15, 2007.

MILESTONE R1:
http://haiku-os.org/trac/roadmap

Haiku R1 will be more advanced & improved in some ways compared to BeOS 5.03, but it'll still be fairly close to BeOS 5 overall. (ie: Haiku R1 will be an improved version of BeOS 5). Though that will change with Haiku R2 release, & the following releases to come afterwards, which will have more notable differences, fixes & better performance. Tue, 10 Oct 2006 15:31:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (tonestone57) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?170369 http://www.osnews.com/thread?170369 being selfish here, my only interest in Zeta progressing is in the upcoming ports of the gcc 4.x toolchain and open office, since they will benefit me as a Beos/Haiku user aswell. and for that reason I'm happy Magnussoft picked up the distribution.

as for Zeta using Haiku code. the Haiku project PICKED the MIT licence knowing full and well that their code could be used in other closed source projects and were obviously ok with this. let's respect their choice, and the rights of Zeta/SkyOS etc to use this code in their closed projects. if the Haiku developers didn't want to allow this, they would have chosen another license. Tue, 10 Oct 2006 15:33:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Valhalla) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?170373 http://www.osnews.com/thread?170373 It sounds like you are telling the project leader about the project he leads

I think he has a good idea already or Haiku is in a lot of trouble! Tue, 10 Oct 2006 15:39:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (andrewg) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?170374 http://www.osnews.com/thread?170374 > yT being the legal owner of the license...

But didn't yT go bankrupt? How can anybody (other than the original IP owners) legally develop/sell ZETA then, if the company that had the license went bust? Tue, 10 Oct 2006 15:40:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (sogabe) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?170442 http://www.osnews.com/thread?170442 AFAIK they're under bankrupt protection, not bankrupt yet. So I think it's admissible to let development go on funded by Magnussoft.

If the licence is not transferrable (likely) I feel, but this is highly speculative, that yT will become some kind of 'consultant developer' for Magnussoft (which declared already that the development of Zeta will go on, but not in house).

I think it's a good solution for everyone. yT solves some financial problems and gets a bigger distribution channel. Magnussoft a new, visible product which can be developed from their side with economical parameters (read: reduce risks).

IMVHO of course. Tue, 10 Oct 2006 17:15:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (makc) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?170478 http://www.osnews.com/thread?170478 > I think it's a good solution for everyone.

Is it? I wonder if the devs, contractors and others who were most likely badly hurt by yT's misadventures agree with you. Tue, 10 Oct 2006 19:00:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (sogabe) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?170637 http://www.osnews.com/thread?170637 Maybe they left him out of the loop? :-)

That date was posted on Haiku OS site, so I thought it was Haiku's projected completion date for R1.

But yes, technically speaking, it is still somewhat too early to determine the actually release date. For now, I'll assume Oct 2007, until the roadmap is updated on the Haiku website. Wed, 11 Oct 2006 00:48:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (tonestone57) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?170643 http://www.osnews.com/thread?170643 Well, then you won't be happy to hear that Open Office was dropped by yT (& same goes for Magnassoft). Too time consuming a project to do.

There was mention of an arrangement to get a 3rd party Office Suite ported, but no other news or info was released.

It is also rumored that 1 or 2 other companies may make an Office Suite for Zeta - but nothing for sure.

I believe Haiku already has gcc4 (Check Changelog for proof).
http://svn.berlios.de/viewcvs/haiku/buildtools/trunk/gcc/

gcc2.95 was moved to Legacy. Previously I thought R1 would be compiled with gcc2.95, but now I'm not sure and believe Haiku R1 may instead be with gcc4 (too early to know for sure). Wed, 11 Oct 2006 01:05:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (tonestone57) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?170695 http://www.osnews.com/thread?170695 I think they still use gcc 2.95 (needed for binary compatibility). But they compile also with gcc 4 to be sure it will work ok when they change the default compiler in the future. Wed, 11 Oct 2006 08:17:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (SomeBugs) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread?170731 http://www.osnews.com/thread?170731 would have been better if they disbanded without paying salaries, innit? Wed, 11 Oct 2006 14:00:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (makc) Comments