posted by Eugenia Loli on Sat 6th Sep 2003 00:49 UTC, submitted by Jill
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.
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