YellowTAB informed us that their testing of Release Candidate 2 of Zeta 1.0 has finished. They sent us two screenshots of Zeta 1.0-RC2 and Bernd Korz replies to two of our questions regarding the RC-2.1. When is RC-2 is going to be shipped? Are the RC1 owners will receive it for free?
We plan to start the next 14 days to ship it. Production is starting tomorrow and will need 5-8 working days. And Mensys will get them then to ship them.
As we mentioned in the past the R1 (==1.0) will sell for around 10 Euro for every pre-R1 customer.
Regarding RC-2 though, we made more then 900 changes and so it really makes sense users use it instead of RC1. We have not decided yet if the RC-2 will be available for a fee or free, but we will make sure we will inform our customers as soon as the decision is made.
The new Zeta boot screen.
2. What are the main changes on RC2?
Radeon driver does work now. We updated the drivers for Radeon, Geforce.., we fixed all dead links, removed not working stuff, fixed a lot of bugs in Tracker, Deskbar, Installer… Updated all possible apps, almost finnished all translations, USB 2.0 EHCI got amazing improvements, IconCache is changed and makes the Icon Rendering faster (important in the Deskbar), Boneyard is
replaced. Several Preferences apps are now finnish rewritten and replaced.
LocaleKit to much more apps added. New versions for apps like Squeezer, Mozilla, Firebird, better email support for IMAP… DevKit is now working for R5 and Zeta, PersonalSettings got internal code improvements and fixes, SANE got more updates and works now well. Updated wget, gocr, dvdrecord. The list is MUCH longer…
The Zeta desktop.
If RC1 customers won’t be allowed to download this update (even if it’s really large) for free, I will really be pissed off.
i agree wholeheartedly…seems much of the BeOS community was disappointed with RC1 and Bernd Korz needs to make this available for free. I understand his company needs to make money, but it would be the only way they could redeem themselves. I still hope Yellowtab success. BeOS was the first alternative OS i ever tried and I loved it.
To those who has been on BeShare or involved in the community one way or the other, they should have been warned about yT a long time ago. Surely they add some stuff such as USB support and localisation to some extent. Agreed!
BUT, for the money you pay, you CAN and SHOULD expect MORE. Where is yT headed anyway? For all I care, if you want to be bleeding edge or want something newer, go for PhosphurOS, that’s as up to date as you’ll get.
I’m not convinced Beta 4 might be what you have in mind, but next update will probably be really good.
For those not familiar with PhosphurOS, I can just say it’s a patched Dan0, which is just as legal as Zeta is it seems. It’s also developed by Looncraz who was “employed” by yT. AS far as I’m concerned phosphur is all about doing choices right that yT made wrong. AND it’s for free.
Phosphur has yet to get a review on OSNews which at least I look very much forward to.
Download phosphur on http://phosphuros.tk/
To learn more about Looncraz read this article
http://news.beosjournal.org/?id=625
Gives you some background about him, his very aggressive view on things and his approach to the future. Despite what you might think of him, his capacity as a dev seems between very good to extremely good.
So maybe consider PhosphurOS an update to Zeta Rc2?
I fully agree. It is not really decent to let users use a release candidate and submit bugreports, but ask money for the bugfixes.
i don’t think they can actually ask money for a second release candidate to someone who already paid full price for this product. Sure they will need the money, but these things are bugfixes. It would be a rip off asking people to spend money again on RC2 and then AGAIN on R1.
I loved BeOS, but am I the only one that thinks that nothing can bring it back?
I don’t want to be negative, but I don’t think that Zeta or any of the other Be-ish projects will ever bring anything that can compete with Windows, Linux or the Mac OS. It takes a lot to develop an operating system and even YellowTab, which had access to all of Be’s code, has started out from code that was outdated compared with everything else.
Be has always been more elegant than Linux, but right now Linux runs on more hardware and supports more devices. It has more programs. It has more features. Can a Be alternative really compete against Linux? If a Be alternative got the features it needed to be modern, would it still be fast?
A lot of people have been saying that Zeta lost a lot of speed because of the SVG icons and the window dressing system.
I don’t know. It seems like more features = more resource use. Right now Be has a great foundation that is truely modern, but at the same time it doesn’t have the modern features. Is the reason that Be seems so fast because it doesn’t have the modern features? Is running Be like running Win 3.1 or an old Mac or Linux version?
This is just food for thought. I’d love to see a nice Be alternative, but I don’t think it would be the same.
“AND it’s for free” AND ILLEGAL !!!!!
Be has always been more elegant than Linux, but right now Linux runs on more hardware and supports more devices. It has more programs. It has more features. Can a Be alternative really compete against Linux? If a Be alternative got the features it needed to be modern, would it still be fast?
The driver issue will be a big questionmark probably for quite some time. I’d say that ACPI support is a bigger question as any computer up to date uses ACPI. Something recently solved in FreeBSD amoung other.
But to the question if BeOS/OSBOS can really compete to Linux, I’m confident the answer is definitely yes.
Every time I read an article (about every other day) which asks “Is Linux ready for the desktop” and a similar article, which keep suggesting the same things as it has done for the past 3 years to be a viable alternative to Windows on the desktop, I’m confident that BeOS/OSBOS can definitely be a competitive option.
You see, BeOS IS already ready for the desktop, at least in terms of usability, style, intuitiveness, responsive UI, consistency and so many of the things Linux (at the moment) lacks.
What BeOS lacks is APPS and as mentioned drivers and a foundation to continue building on.
However, with a small calculation… OBOS has finished 50% or more and many things have been improved. Plus that work on R2 has to some extent started (such as localisation for Opentracker). If we then know that for 3 years, the Linux ready for desktop question has been asked over and over again with prety much same answers while BeOS questions has been whether it will ever be developed again and that question is partially answered. Yes I definitely see that BeOS/OSBOS has a promising future.
On a little sidenote… the userbase seems to be growing again without any statistics on the issue, just noticing higher and hiiiigher BeShare activity lately.
RC2 is the same as RC1+SP3. SP3 will be free to RC1 users, but it won’t be named RC2 (which will be a new CD set).
I find it perfectly reasonable that yT won’t ship new CDs for free when theres a free update to the system shipped on their website.
I know Bernd has been a little unclear about it, I guess it’s a communication/language issue again, but you can read his explanation here:
http://yellowtab.com/board/viewtopic.php?t=1581
“AND it’s for free” AND ILLEGAL !!!!
Says who? What’s the difference between phos and Zeta legally? I haven’t seen anything which differs them? Have you? If so where?
Phosphur has it’s own site, everything seems to be in order and I haven’t heard yet of any legal complaints. Have you? If so where?
Innocent until guilty! And nothing I can come up with shows anything else… if there is I’d very much like to see it.
Eugenia, can you comment on this? I mean what’s your take about this? Is there anything which suggests that Phosphus is illegal? If so, what? In case there is, this should be settled now and for good….
I hope you are right, but Linux isn’t as far behind as you think.
Fedora Core 1 gives me as good or better consistancy than Windows, a more responsive UI than Windows, great usability, better style than Windows, a very intuitive interface. It’s not lacking in any of those areas. In almost every respect it preforms better than Windows. Package management is the one sore spot. It’s difficult to install new apps on the system.
Right now, Linux is fine for the desktop as long as you don’t want to install apps that don’t come with it. Right now, Be doesn’t really have apps to install.
Have you tried Fedora Core 1? It’s a very pleasant experience (everything except package management).
When they want us to pay for RC2, I’ll immediately delete Zeta from my disk. Forget Be and Zeta and stuff, they are the past.
For me it even isn’t fun anymore to work with these systems. OS X and even WinXP are better.
Right now, Linux is fine for the desktop as long as you don’t want to install apps that don’t come with it. Right now, Be doesn’t really have apps to install.
Geee… in terms of money, I’m not so sure I wanna pay for a system which won’t let me install new apps in a simple way. AND, I wouldn’t wanna start all over when a new release gets out and do a complete reinstall…
To be honest, I’m sure some can work with that, but I really like trying new apps in a simple way… call me idiot but that’s how I am =)
creatext: Maybe you should start reading previous posts?
It would seem, according to Bernd on the yT forums, that RC2 can be achieved by applying the service packs to RC1, therefore people that have already paid for RC1 would only have to pay for RC2 if they wanted it on a CD, which is reasonable enough.
I prefer OpenBeOS, because
– OpenBeOS is OpenSource/free (free like free speach, not like free beer). And there can be companies existing which sell distributions of it (like with Linux, where existing RedHat, SuSE, Mandrake, etc). But YellowTab prefer to sell its proprietary product.
– If you are an OpenBeOS beta tester, you don’t pay for it, that you help. On the other side, you help to create a better Operating System for the public, the community, the hole world.
– OpenBeOS have at the first goal to be 100% compatible to BeOS R5. But after OpenBeOS R1, they try to make it to an MultiUser-OperatingSystem. Thats something, what YellowTab don’t want.
But SingleUser-OSes are an easy target for worms and viruses.
So I think, it is better to spend money for the OpenBeOS-project and not buying Zeta.
Turop
You want a new Beos, do not want however not for it to pay. Much humans work hard for zeta. it is a shame to compare zeta with phos! Zeta has USB2, SVG tracker, local kit, is rocksolid and which those want user still?
BeOS is old and Phos is an instable code mash…
sorry for my english.
You want a new Beos, do not want however not for it to pay. Much humans work hard for zeta. it is a shame to compare zeta with phos! Zeta has USB2, SVG tracker, local kit, is rocksolid and which those want user still?
BeOS is old and Phos is an instable code mash…
Don’t know how much you followed the debate but Phos is hardly more instable as Zeta. Both are built on same base… dan0.
However, I’ve already mentioned USB2 and Localkit, I must agree that SVG can be added to that… but is those 3 worth all that money? I think not… just go Phos
You are right.
> OpenBeOS have at the first goal to be 100% compatible
> to BeOS R5.
Thats very important. They want, that all BeOS R5 programs can run on OBOS. And the want to be downwards-compatible, so that on all feature OBOS-versions all the old programs can run.
For Zeta, on the other side, existing still programs, which run on BeOS R5, but no longer on Zeta. And which programmer creates programs for a platform, where you don’t know, if it run on future versions of this platform.
I would love to try Yellowtab and OpenBeOS but this guy aint shipping yet, I have wrote 5 e-mails to Yellowtab asking where I can get RC1 even offering to help refine the product after the couple of bad reviews I have seen, no response from anyone out there at all, cant find out how to become a beta-tester. OpenBeOS is the most promising of the two. It still needs some major work done to it but its coming along very well. I still would like to eventually try Yellowtab but if their customer service is going to continue to be this way then I doubt I ever will.
>no response from anyone out there at all
This is because they do not require any more beta testers. They now sell their product and they already have beta testers, so I don’t see what they could reply.
>OpenBeOS is the most promising of the two
I fail to see how a pre-alpha project is more promising than an already working product. OpenBeOS will be in this status for quite a few more years.
As ealm already pointed out but some of you guys decided to ignore, Bernd was not really clear about what will happen. Let me say againwhat ealm alreay said just to see if it gets through some tick skulls around here:
1 – There will be a SP3. SP3 will be free just as SP1 and SP2 were. SP3 will bring your system to the same level as RC2. In other words, it will basically be the RC2 update for existing users.
2 – You can decide to buy the “formal” RC2 that will be pressed to CD. This would be what yT would be charging for (and it seems reasonable). Note that even the fact they will charge for it or not is not really decided (based on what Bernd said on this news story).
Now, do what you do best and find something else to pick on.
-Bruno
I fail to see how a pre-alpha project is more promising than an already working product. OpenBeOS will be in this status for quite a few more years.
I guess a whole lot of people think that a working product which is based on patched binaries has a lot less promising future than one which actually consists of sourcecode?
Can you enlighten me how this product possibly can evolve without OpenBeOS?
Can you also enlighten me from which repository the Nvidia drivers, Matrox drivers etc is from? That is MIT licensed code in the OpenBeOS CVS, so you could actually say that parts of what you pay for is OpenBeOS products when you buy Zeta… Big difference is when buying Zeta, you buy from those who compile the code rather than those who create the code. I guess compiling is the tricky issue?
OpenBeOS is probably 10 or more years away from getting to the stage R5 was at when BeInc failed, and whilst it will be usable before that time, I doubt that without somthing like Zeta in the meantime that there will be anyone left in the community to use it.
Comparing Zeta or OpenBeOS is like comparing OpenBeOS to Longhorn, yes we know its there, but right now for all the good it is doing in the community (which I do feel it is)Joe public can’t touch it, and Eugenia won’t be able to review it for many moons, or anything else that goes with a real life product and vapor comparisons.
OpenBeOS may well as you say have the long term future, but without something like Zeta, there will be few if any that will be there to enjoy that future…
A place for everything and everything in its place.
Depending on what the cost of RC2 is, I will *gladly* pay for the copy on CD-ROM. One of my computers had problems booting from the RC1 CD, so it would be a great advantage to me to have a pressed CD with RC2. If SP3 will be free, that’s fine, but I’d still like to pay a little for an RC2 CD. (Though if it’s beyond 20-25 Euros I’d probably reconsider.)
I’ve found yellowTAB to be very quick to reply to my emails, so I’m not sure why others are experiencing delays from them.
I was reading the interview with looncraz someone here posted a link to.
Incredible that that Bernd Korz guy doesn’t even reveal the details of their licensing to their own employees!
The interview also, quite clearly, revealed that Zeta is just another hack, and that they don’t have access to any BeOS sources.
So, if yT only have a “distribution rights” deal, why don’t they say so?
This company is becoming very, very shady in my eyes.
SP3 will be free for download as all other SPs. Bernd was thinking something in the area of 10Euro for an RC2 CD. The same price will be for the final DVD. It is only to cover mail and media price. The user license has been paid for.
ealm:
Maybe you have read that comment on the bottom “Your comment will not show up immediately.” ?
Don’t waste my time plz
That’s one ugly font they chose for ‘RC2’ letters in the bootscreen. Very in the spirit of Win95 I say! Why does Zeta leave that feeling as if it was designed (graphics-wise) by some middleclass housewife?
“The interview also, quite clearly, revealed that Zeta is just another hack, and that they don’t have access to any BeOS sources.”
Unless you can point to exactly where someone high-up at yT has officially said “We do not have the source code” then as far as I can tell nothing has ever quite clearly revealed anything about this situation, it is pure speculation, it would appear to me mainly from people trying to put down yT’s efforts.
Opinions are fine, as long as they are stated as opinions.
Unless you can point to exactly where someone high-up at yT has officially said “We do not have the source code” then as far as I can tell nothing has ever quite clearly revealed anything about this situation, it is pure speculation, it would appear to me mainly from people trying to put down yT’s efforts.
I guess same goes for PhosphurOS then. It’s not clear whether it’s Be’s source that is used or not…
You listen, and actually take seriously someone who says that if he were in a room with Bill Gates he would have bloody hands from beating Bill Gates, and would spend all the money in the world to “get him”?
Seriously, even if the guy is the most brilliant programmer in the world, he’s a mental case and needs to get out learn a little about the real world.
> Unless you can point to exactly where someone high-up at
> yT has officially said “We do not have the source code”
> then […]
I think too, that the interview is interesting. Consider, that the interview is from November 19th, 2003.
And until today it yT have not said “We do not have the source code” and they have not said “We _have_ the source code”, too.
And sometimes, to say nothing, is a statement, too.
Steve
>And sometimes, to say nothing, is a statement, too.
True, although people read far more into ‘nothing’ than is actually stated, they don’t read the facts as none are given, they read what they want to read.
Maybe yT have the source, maybe they don’t, maybe they are still working out an agreement, maybe they just have other priorities and saying “we have the code” would result in everyone saying “Fix the 1GB limit, do this, so that”. Who knows apart from yT themselves. There is no point in guessing the truth when you don’t know and can’t change what it is.
Sometimes there are as many reasons not to say things as there are to say things. Speculation rarely helps anyone.
It’s too bad that none of the BeOS derivatives support modern hardware setups…
I’ve lamented this fact before, but the sad fact is that BeOS is no longer a contender for those of us who have modern machines/configurations.
Although there’s several examples of this, the most apparent is the 1GB memory issue. While many readers of this site may have an old box sitting around that BeOS will run on, many more have moved with the times and upgraded their hardware to newer components, and larger quantities of memory.
And for a lot of people I know, our older boxes -Which BeOS would likely run on- have been relegated either to more mundane tasks (file serving, PVR, P2P, etc), or they’ve simply been given to relatives and friends who simply want to type emails and surf the web.
In other words, Zeta is releasing an OS that runs primarily on that old box in the corner. Not the shiny new PC sitting under your desk.
You might be still running that 800mhz beast with 512GB of Ram, but if so, you’re a member of an ever-shrinking demographic. Similarly, BeOS’s main audience, from a hardware perspective, is continually dwindling as well.
So that’s strike one against it.
Strike two is the lack of BeOS/Zeta developers out there. I think the large amounts of unsupported, unfinished, and beta software released w/RC1 is evidence of this fact.
Yes, you can make it sound good by saying “We’re including xxxx BeOS software packages with our release!”, but if the reality is that 90% of that software is out of date, no longer supported, or is only beta quality, than all you’ve done is alienate that customer who just paid you his or her hard earned money for your promises, and proven to the detractors that you’re selling a dead platform.
I really do wish the guys at Zeta well, but I don’t see a future with Zeta. If OpenBeOS fulfills its promises, I can see a small but loyal group of BeOS users surviving. Zeta could play a niche roll to such a user group if this were to happen.
However the Amiga currently shares a similar fate in that it also has an ever shrinking group of loyal (some would say blindly fanatical) fans, and several small developers who can make some money supporting their OS of choice.
But this scenario will not supply the numbers or the $$ neccesary to continue Zeta in its current incarnation. It looks like Zeta’s intended to re-establish BeOS as a contender in the “OS wars” (currently Mac vs. Linux vs. Wndows), and this just ain’t going to happen without kernel updates, more open communications (Just look at all the postings and misunderstandings in this thread about whether RC2 will be sold, released, or downloadable!), and more developers.
Incidentally, developers are typically the ones with the beefier machines so that their compiles happen quicker. The 1GB limit will alienate more and more developers as time moves on. This issue must be resolved if BeOS hopes to ever get above the “Amiga II” label that it’s slowly being associated with. No developers equals no platform.
As a side note, I wouldn’t discount Phos OS too soon though. If we’re going to consider the very real possibility of BeOS becoming a niche player ala the aforementioned Amiga, then I’d say Phos is setup in a much more enviable spot than Zeta. It’s much easier to continue something you do out of love for no money than it is to maintain a for-profit business with no customers.
This community really starts annoying me! There is a lot of wrong stuff written here:
XBe: “[PhOS]’s a patched Dan0, which is just as legal as Zeta is it seems.”
Yeah, it SEEMS so. But you’re wrong. Dan0 wasn’t publish officially…more illegally. Just because you can download something, doesn’t make it legal. Btw: YellowTAB negotiated with Palm. Did Looncraz? No. He is just building PhOS by adding some apps and hacking around.
XBe: “AS far as I’m concerned phosphur is all about doing choices right that yT made wrong.”
What choices? Can you be more specific?
@XBe “…go for PhosphurOS, that’s as up to date as you’ll get.”
PhOS is up to date? Okay, where is the USB support and localisation? Where is the support for users and developers? Do you want to ask a freak for help who write “DIE MICROSOFT DIE” in the http://phos.ablyss.net/2.png “About Be…”-box? There’s no serious (developer-)community or company promoting and developing PhOS. That’s no incentive to develope good apps for it.
@Anonymous (IP: —.dorm.brandeis.edu): “A lot of people have been saying that Zeta lost a lot of speed because of the SVG icons and the window dressing system.”
That’s the first time I hear that. Everybody I know is amazed by it’s speed. Please show me posts that say something else.
@ XBE : “What’s the difference between phos and Zeta legally?”
The difference is that YellowTAB is ALLOWED to work with Dan0 and to publish it. And just because PhOS has its own website doesn’t make it legal. (Oh…btw…the links to PhOS are broken.)
@Turop: “They [OpenBeOS] try to make it to an MultiUser-OperatingSystem. Thats something, what YellowTab don’t want.”
Oh really, who said that? Once, I followed a conversation between Bernd Korz and someone else on BeShare (or #beos.de?). They were talking about the way how the folder-system is influenced if you add multiuser-support. YT would be stupid if they were refraining from implementing that.
@Alan: “OpenBeOS may well as you say have the long term future, but without something like Zeta, there will be few if any that will be there to enjoy that future…”
My opinion. By not supporting YellowTAB, you really risk that BeOS will die completely.
As I said, I am really annoyed of this community. What is wrong about Zeta? What is wrong about a company that is trying to renew the BeOS world? As Be, YellowTAB is a company. And a company has to make profit. What’s wrong about that? If you don’t want to pay something for Zeta, than build your own BeOS-distro. Download everything you can find from bebits and get happy with it. If you download Zeta illegally, you don’t have my sympathy. If you wanna use it – buy it. YellowTAB invested a lot of work in developing Zeta and its apps, one has to honor this. If you work somewhere, you wanna get paid too, I guess.
Regards to all honest users.
Sometimes there are as many reasons not to say things as there are to say things. Speculation rarely helps anyone.
Indeed, and I also agree that it is speculation whether anyone has what source or not.
Isn’t that exactly the very reason to why it’s better to not spend money on something so uncertain? Wouldn’t it just be better to see something confirmed so that you can be sure that you’re money is spent in a smart way?
Hello,
One of my primary complaints about BeOS was a lack of a
good package manager, like RPM , pkg etc. Does zeta fix
this issue?
For the record I like the ability to test software and
then unistall it with no “extra” files left on my drives.
I also audit my drives by using rpm -qf to identify all files
on my system that are not owned by a package.
O well I got a drive ready for the shipping version
Donaldson
@ XBE : “What’s the difference between phos and Zeta legally?”
The difference is that YellowTAB is ALLOWED to work with Dan0 and to publish it. And just because PhOS has its own website doesn’t make it legal. (Oh…btw…the links to PhOS are broken.)
But you, who must have read through this thread, must indeed have noticed that what we ask for is what substance would possibly make Zeta more legal than Phos?
In what way is yT allowed to work with Dan0 that differs from Phos? Can you show me any statement which confirms this? What shows that Phos is illegal? Looncraz has contacts, he might as well have that “non showed” agreement with Palm for all I care too. What makes you think otherwise? What makes you think Phos is different from Zeta?
And please don’t give me rumours, give me hard facts…
The only reasons why Zeta getting a negative comments from users is they expect everything to be free. Oh and please don’t use OpenBeOS as an alternative because they got a long way to go before they see the light of day.
Without going into other aspects of Zeta, it does, in fact, run on a lot of modern hardware, although there is the 1 GB memory limit. It runs on my Wal-Mart Microtel and I have broadband, sound, I can print, scan and burn CD’s.
My Microtel is magic though. I never would have thunk it but, in 16 months, it has run everything I’ve thrown at it and that is a lot. I never would have guessed it would turn out to be The Greatest PC In the World 🙂
Dear children XBe(24 or 25 years old for nothing),
can you read the licence of the software, please!
LICENSE.
This Program is licensed, not sold, to you. You have a non-exclusive and nontransferable right to use the enclosed Program. This Program can only be used on a single computer located in the United States and its territories or any other country to which this Program is legally exported. You may physically transfer the Program from one computer
to another provided that the Program is used on only one computer at a time. This software is considered to be in use on a computer when it is loaded into the temporary memory (i.e. RAM) or installed into the permanent memory (e.g. hard drive) of that computer, except that a copy
installed on a network server for the sole purpose of distribution to other computers is not “in use.” You may merge it into another program for your use on a single machine.
Also I know you, Simmons, and other and I don’t like the BeOS Cummunity, at this moment.
Bye, little and stupid community.
Interesting. Now that you’ve read that license… how do you explain this license?
[i]This Program is licensed, not sold, to you. You have a non-exclusive and nontransferable right to use the enclosed Program. This Program can only be used on a single computer located in the United States and its territories or any other country to which this Program is legally exported. You may physically transfer the Program from one computer to another provided that the Program is used on only one computer at a time. This software is considered to be in use on a computer when it is loaded into the temporary memory (i.e. RAM) or installed into the permanent memory (e.g. hard drive) of that computer, except that a copy installed on a network server for the sole purpose of distribution to other computers is not “in use.” You may merge it into another program for your use on a single machine. You agree that the Program belongs to yellowTAB and its licensors.</I<
See any similarities? Does search and replace make things better? I especially love the part that Californias laws apply to Zeta license rather than German laws…
so is Phos would just search replace, you’d be satisfied? Have I got this right then?
“…what substance would possibly make Zeta more legal than Phos?”
1. A company always keeps in mind what is legal, what not. If not, anybody can start a lawsuit. yT _IS_ a company (German Ltd. exactly) – so keep that in mind. As a company Holder I have no fun to risc my company & existence by just working on illegal stuff…
2. Dano is else then leaked Sourcecode from Be Inc.. Anything you build ontop of Dano w/out asking PalmSource to get clearance is defacto illegal, too. That simple.
I (we all) don’t think that the guy from Phos went to Palm & asked them: “Hey guys, I wanna make a tuned up Dano in the freetime – may I do that?”
3. The fact that yT doesn’t tell us if they OWN the SC from Dano doesn’t mean that they haven’t got permission/relicensed it by Palm nor does it tell if they really own it. For some reasons, they have to keep ‘quiet’. That makes some people a bit angry – but companies are companies, not single persons – they got their own poinnts of view & dependencies & royalties…
Phos has, and that is by any means necesary to say, nothing to do with Zeta. A large mount of Code of Zeta is based on Dano Code [AND post-Dano Code 😉 – so guess who gave them this code..] and/or R5 Code – on the other part, more Zeta Code flows in and will continue to flow….
It is funny how stupidity rules in such a small community…
Why don’t you all support ANY (legal) attempt on keeping BeOS alive?
No one Lunix user thinks about legality of his distro – he pays/downloads it – the company does the rest (RH, SuSE Mandrake or whatever…).
If you don’t have done it, vote for the “OS of the future” at:
http://www.xentronix.com/module.php?mod=node&id=279
Nice. My favorite is leading the poll. 🙂
“1. A company always keeps in mind what is legal, what not. If not, anybody can start a lawsuit. yT _IS_ a company (German Ltd. exactly) – so keep that in mind. As a company
Holder I have no fun to risc my company & existence by just working on illegal stuff…”
Oh yeah, companies are really concerned about legality and not breaking the law, just look at Enron etc…
“2. Dano is else then leaked Sourcecode from Be Inc.. Anything you build ontop of Dano w/out asking PalmSource to get clearance is defacto illegal, too. That simple.”
Yep.
“I (we all) don’t think that the guy from Phos went to Palm & asked them: “Hey guys, I wanna make a tuned up Dano in the freetime – may I do that?””
What you think doesnt matter. Do you have any proof that he hasnt? Phos, wich i dont like btw, has shown exactly just as much legal papers regarding it’s status as Zeta, ie zero, nada, nothing.
“3. The fact that yT doesn’t tell us if they OWN the SC from Dano doesn’t mean that they haven’t got permission/relicensed it by Palm nor does it tell if they really own it. For some reasons, they have to keep ‘quiet’. That makes some people a bit angry – but companies are companies, not single persons – they got their own poinnts of view & dependencies & royalties…”
And for some reason maybe looncraz has kept quiet. Again, there’s no difference between being quiet and being quiet…
“Phos has, and that is by any means necesary to say, nothing to do with Zeta. A large mount of Code of Zeta is based on Dano Code [AND post-Dano Code 😉 – so guess who gave them this code..] and/or R5 Code – on the other part, more Zeta Code flows in and will continue to flow….”
I dunno, you tell me. it’s not like it’s stated anywhere if, how and when they got the rights and the source code…
“It is funny how stupidity rules in such a small community…”
Guess you’re part of the community then.
“No one Lunix user thinks about legality of his distro – he pays/downloads it – the company does the rest (RH, SuSE Mandrake or whatever…).”
If you dont understand the difference between an Open Source OS with a clearly available license and source code and a closed-source OS without official statement on it’s legality maybe you should shut the hell up?
I don’t hate yellowTAB because they require money to get/use Zeta. No, not all. I hate yellowTAB because of it’s early days when one of them said things to potential users that were totally unprofessional and showed more bad taste than I could have imagined from any one. I’m not repeating (again) word by word what was the most rude comment I personally overheard, but it was something I could only imagine from a frustrated teenager, but not from company that holds the future of one of my favourite platforms.
– Mika T. Lindqvist / FieldNet Association –
BeOS was a Developer System a fast one and it still is. There was no killer app for BeOS, it was never used professional. But it had a loyal community because it was the best designed desktop system at its time, more stable than MacOS and Windows 95/98. And looked much better than Windows. But it was only for home users and developers. The lack of pro software and the focus shift was the end for BeOS.
Now Yellowtab has a hard time, they have to fill all the expectations of the community that came up since BeInc. closed the doors. And they have to make money fast, because its a startup. So they make RC’s. Paying for Zeta is a bit like paying for the survive of Yellowtab. That’s ok when support of newer hardware is needed. But in my opinion i can’t do much more with Zeta than with my BeOS R5 pro. The System is fast but R5 was also fast on my old Celeron 433. There is in the BeOS world no software reason to upgrade my old Be System. There is no application under BeOS that need a P4 with 2 GIG of RAM. So i use my old box for some app development with the really cool BeOS API.
” This is because they do not require any more beta testers. They now sell their product and they already have beta testers, so I don’t see what they could reply ”
Lets see, Maybe they could inform me of that and point me to the purchase page because their software page says it is still unavailable? You think?
@btbeeston:
“The interview also, quite clearly, revealed that Zeta is just another hack, and that they don’t have access to any BeOS sources.”
Unless you can point to exactly where someone high-up at yT has officially said “We do not have the source code” then as far as I can tell nothing has ever quite clearly revealed anything about this situation, it is pure speculation, it would appear to me mainly from people trying to put down yT’s efforts.
Opinions are fine, as long as they are stated as opinions.
yT haven’t even produced proof of a license! I could be rude and say that they’re almost like SCO…
Anyway, here’s the quote:
“I figured out how to modify the zbeos, kernel (only changed the kernel date and time for him in honor of his son’s birth), About Box (never used my changes), media kit, libraries for compatibility, and much more for them.”
If you have access to the source code, that is not the kind of things you have to hire someone to “figure out” for you (ie. kernel date & time and about box are really elementary things). This is proof that Zeta is a hack. It is not an opinion.
Zeta based on dano code? Why do they still use Dano’s kernel ? dated 2001 ? they don’t have the [kernel] source, they’re waiting for OpenBeos, when ObenBeos’ll have a working kernel, yT guys will just patch it and replace that old [2001 dated] Dano source etc…
Why don’t say [Be]rnd anything about all the things, which are here discussed on the yT-side ?
There existing still the discussion, if yT have the BeOS-Sources or not.
There existing the discussion of the RC2
There existing the discussion of the binary-incompatibility between BeOS R5 and Zeta
There existing the discussion about Multi/SibgleUser-Mode.
There existing the discussion, if yT is still searching for beta-testers
Why don’t existing official press-anoncements about all this on the yT-homepage?
> they’re waiting for OpenBeos, when ObenBeos’ll have
> a working kernel, yT guys will just patch it and
> replace that old [2001 dated] Dano source etc…
But, if this is true, give yT the changes on the OBOS-kernel the community back? Or want yT only to exploit the community, ut give them nothing back?
Unless they have access to it illegally and must keep it silent, I am pretty certain yTab has 0 access to the source code.
Having access to the original sourcecode is an enormous commercial argument. Just say it and a lot of people will stop moaning and start buying. So if they had it they would have said it and LOUD. The Zeta thingie has existed for quite a while and they avoid the subject systematically.
If you suspect your wife from cheating on you and ask her if it’s true and then instead of saying “no I don’t” she just tries to avoid the question, what will you think? That maybe she doesn’t but prefers not to talk about it?
Now of you course if you actually have a wife you certainly don’t spend that much time with hobby Os, do you ? 🙂
” One of my primary complaints about BeOS was a lack of a
good package manager, like RPM , pkg etc. Does zeta fix
this issue?”
WAH??
I don’t know if you were trolling or completely confuse. Beos doesn’t need any kind of package management. Aside from maybe some randome weird ports, apps for beos were a single file mostly. You download it and click on it and run. There is no need for a packagemanager. You want to get rid of it just delete it. This was one of the beautys of BeOS, no real install really required past a unzipping, and telling it where you want the app. I cringe at the idea of needing any sort of package management for it. Granted if it’s an app that needs something like that past any simple installer i wouldn’t touch it.
RPM and such a grunge from the linux/unix world, the can keep them.
Says so right on their web page: http://phos.ablyss.net/about.html
PhospurOS is a modification upon an existing product created by Be, INC. The product version R5.1d0 (Nov 15, 2001) was leaked over the internet by an unknown source. It is an hybrid system, using components from wherever they may be found.
This Looncraz person admitted to taking the leaked sources, and sharing the info he collects to the public:
The sole reason for the existence of PhospurOS is to improve upon what Be gave us as best as possible. The leak had some issues, but not too many to overcome, that needed some attention. I have, over time, collected and catalogued bugs and repairs. PhospurOS is the culmination of my findings. At the same time, I have been trying to unearth hidden features in the API and in the OS, and make those available to the public for use. And documenting them when possible.
I’m not trying to bad mouth anyone or takes sides, but these are the facts that Looncraz himself put on his website that XBe posted the link to.
XBe is a troll and needs to quit trying to confuse the issue. You should be here to bring new and interested people in, not scaring people away.
Looncratz is broken. And if I ever employeed him (which I wouldn’t) I wouldn’t tell him anything about licensing. Support for that statement would be in how he’s handled being fired from yT for contributing, well, crap. ’nuff said.
PhosOS is a travesty and to compare it to yT is lame at best. yT fired him so he stepped up efforts to build off of Dano to “make his own Zeta” with the help of some other social malcontents. Congrats; your leader got fired from the company that might actually make this dream a reality, way to follow the loser.
The rest of the trolls who are trying to scare users away from buying Zeta in one form or another haven’t affected me but what do you asshats think you’re doing to other people that are on the outside looking in? If you want there to be interest in OpenBeOS and a good vehicle that will offer improvements and focus, you’ll want yT around. Just like any other major open sores project that’s actually helping people be productive.
Well, my point has bee proved, you guys did find other stuff to pick on when it was obvious the first oen was a dead-end. Way to go!
Anyway, I stillhave some comments.
1 – yT do not have to prove anything concerning their license agreement with Palm. In fact, it is more likelly they are not allowed to say anything exactly due to that. You have the right not to buy Zeta because you want proof and yT did not give it to you but saying that they *MUST* prove something to you or anyone else besides Palm itself is simply idiotic.
2 – yT is a company, as such they would be risking too much by investing their money on something illegal. That should be something obvious but being obvious does not seem to be enough these days. Palm would sue them if they needed to.
3 – PhOS, OTOH, is just one guy doing something that, based on what he said himself, is just to “destroy” yT. The difference between him and yT is that he does not need any license from Palm as Palm simply won’t care about him.
4 – To the people saying looncraz is a “very good” developer. Well, he is not. He may have a lot o willpower and desire to learn, but that does not make him “very good”. He is also a complete lunatic (from my point of view anyway. If he s not, he loves pretending to be).
5 – That XBe guy is obviously biased against yT. He takes *EVERYTHING* said and finds a way o turn it against yT/Zeta. Again he has all the right to not like yT but creating lies and/or distorting facts to try to prove your point is not really a good way to convince people. At least not people who can think for themselves.
-Bruno
> The rest of the trolls who are trying to scare users
> away from buying Zeta in one form or another
Hey, whats wrong with you? Not all poster, which are not completly behind yT, are trolls.
TLy have shown, that PhosphurOS is illegal. But he have nothing said about yT or Zeta.
And nobody have ansered the open questions about yT and Zeta.
And instead, that you answeres the questions, you get abusive:
> but what do you asshats think
no more comment needed
Well, if there are any developers that feel they need 1 gig RAM for developing under BeOS, I find myself wondering: what in the heck are they developing, and what software are they using????
Even a debug build of Mozilla won’t be nearly large enough to use that much memory, and to the best of my knowledge, that’s currently the largest application for BeOS. There’s currently nothing along the lines of NuMega BoundsChecker available for BeOS, either (that requires a lot of RAM) and nothing that analyzes all the source code like Gimpel PC Lint (another memory hog when used on complex applications) so nothing currently exists that needs that much for resources.
That is, unless someone has written software with massive cyclic dependencies, and the linker bogs down having to look at every other object file and library to link to every other one… then you have something with a structure looking suspiciously like some software-I-won’t-name, but on a much larger scale (say, Mozilla for scale) that probably hasn’t been released yet.
Because BeOS (at least as of 5.03) is so relatively undemanding of resources, combined with no significantly large apps that need 1 gig RAM (unless you happen to be throwing around and manipulating very large graphic files from a scanner or something like that; even then, BFS disk throughput is great for large files) that the 1 Gig limit has the most major problem of using BeOS on machines that are well equipped for more resource hungry systems. Be goofed by not allowing machines to boot with more RAM than that: they should have done a check like this to allow those machines to be used, even if the rest of the system had a problem with knowing what to do with it (pseudocode):
if(memory>1024megs)
memory=1024megs;
If a developer requires 1 gig RAM for development tools to operate in, then they’d darn well better have a lot of power provided by those tools that simply don’t exist for BeOS as of yet. I’m currently developing a tool to bring an IDE far more powerful than BeIDE, and I can’t see that much memory being used unless you insist on loading every file of a huge project all at once. It just isn’t necessary!
Jonathan Thompson
http://home.comcast.net/~softwareengineering/index.htm
This is exactly the thing I was trying to get accross, its all well and good that OpenBeOS is starting to take form, but its at best 7-10 years away from being anywhere close to where BeInc left off with the R5 series. A lot of the newest drivers have come from people supporting OpenBeOS, and some say this is a bad thing, why? BeOS was an idea to give Microsoft and the rest of the big boys a bloody nose, so why not pool our collective resources?
The funny thing about all of this argment regarding legality source code access and similar is that from an outside perspective, the only thing being achieved is that the platforms community looks like a bunch of canibals at a Mall at the first day of january sales. Has the community been looking inward that long that it is prepaired to drive away fresh developers and users the first chance it gets to reistablish itself?
So what happens if YT are destroyed by this?
What remains of the community will likely disintergrate further then has already happened, those that remain will probably end up like those that remain furvently loyal to the Amiga, they will become relics, laughed at by other communities as fools, and imo they would deserve everything they got. Bernd and co would be hit hard financially and most likely it would destroy Bernd personally. Way to go folks.
And by the time OpenBeOS comes into its own, and becomes usable to everyday folks, there will only be memories of what some of its supporters did to a key financial backer of the community some years previous, if you as a company looking to invest in new tech saw that, would you want anything to do with them? I sure as hell wouldn’t and I doubt any CEO with half an ounce of sence would either.
(Yes I know that YT doesn’t support OpenBeOS directly, but as a result of their action, OpenBeOS’s developers get recognition for their good works, indeed OpenBeOS gets recognition full stop).
So with this in mind, do the folks so against YT really want to continue with this bitter assault?
In one sentence I’ll sum it up: This crap must end before its too late.
Sorry it’s not a troll and mozilla is not ‘a single file’ I installed games and other apps and now I would like to remove them and I’m not sure where they have loaded themselves, especially the UI mungers that effect it. And RPm isn’t that bad neither is a any of the other systems. It makes it a lot easier to distribute software if there is a formal packageing system. (dependency checking is really great to resolve support calls).
On a Palm Liscense as a comercial developer I want to know if Zeta has the right to what they are selling befor I port applications to it. If they are potentially breaking the law in another country I would like to know this before I invest time and energy. I would also like to know that an Open-GL hardware layer is going to be done. (open GL 1.4 at least)
Donaldson
> In one sentence I’ll sum it up: This crap must end before its too late.
Right, let us all get cool on things. Who thinks he has to boycott Zeta and wants to wait for OBOS – go ahead, be happy. I for myself don´t want to wait.
Who thinks is the best thing around – go for it and take care. Looncraz now has the chance to proof how talented he is. I for myself expect zero point zero.
My strategy: I pay good money for a product that is very good today and has the chance to get even better tomorrow. In other words: I PUT MY FAITH IN SOMEONE and in my case it´s a small company from Mannheim that gives people jobs – not only there but all over Europe.
Why i do that? Because that reminds me on something i did back in the days with a very good product called BeOS R3…
I agree with you, except the 7-10 year time for OpenBeOS to be on par with BeOS r5. It will take much less, I think.
Otherwise, folks: as Alan said.
Alan
Unless the OpenBeOS developers give up on their goal, your estimate is incredibly pessimistic and doesn’t show an understanding of the reality of the sort of thing they’re doing. Why is that?
Well, even though it is done part time by many people, there is the fact that it is still done by many people, though that does have its own overhead involved. Be Inc. never had that many people working on the OS itself during their existence, so it isn’t like BeOS was created by a thousand developers working over a long period of time. Be Inc. was never that big.
Furthermore, you discount the advantage that the OpenBeOS team has compared to the original developers, and the reason so much open source software that exists quickly supplants the application that it works like: it takes a lot of time to experiment with something to make it work the first time, but far less time to re-create something when you have a firm knowledge that it does indeed work, and that it can be done. Because the OpenBeOS team have set a fairly firm goal of being compatible with BeOS 5.03 in terms of binary compatibility and functionality, they have a standard which they can test against.
They also don’t have the burden of working with the crusty code of the original OS, like anyone would that’s extending the original, if anyone actually has that code. A reality of complex development is that it is often easier to rewrite something from scratch than it is to fix something that’s complex enough and is broken, and that’s especially true if the original code has been organically grown over a long period of time. A careful analysis of the Be API in the headers will quickly bring someone that understands what they’re looking at to the appropriate conclusion.
In addition, while the OpenBeOS developers don’t need to reuse code from other sources to re-create BeOS, there’s been a lot of knowledge gained with other projects that can be reused in providing a system that re-creates or surpasses what Be, Inc. created: look at the latest Linux scheduler as a good example of that. The concept is easy enough for a developer with some experience to copy the idea quickly without having to actually look at the Linux code, because of the simplicity. The Be engineers didn’t have that available to look at.
Now, the only quandry that’s really an issue for OpenBeOS is that related to drivers for the latest hardware. However, there are enough GPL drivers available for Linux that it isn’t impossible to see them being ported. After all, the drivers don’t have to be a part of the official code tree for the rest of the system. While it won’t be simple for some of those drivers to be ported, it won’t be impossible, either. If nothing else, those GPL’d drivers often give interesting insights into the quirks of the hardware they control, which is often far more vital for porting/writing drivers than having full source compatibility in the first place. Most software development time isn’t spent in writing code, but in testing and debugging time. That is, it is in the case where quality is a concern. Of course, if you look at the quality of and the licensing issues of the software distributed with Zeta, it’s painfully obvious that not enough attention was paid to things that are easily tested. I’m still very much waiting to see how YellowTab makes restitution for their stupid and blatant licensing violations to the license holders. I’m also waiting to see how they deal with the various apps that are legal enough for them to distribute, but are nothing more than a sick joke to their customers: the trial software that nobody can buy, the software of such poor quality that it should never be put on a commercial distribution without big WARNING labels all over it. A few words of WARNING would go a long way!
Jonathan Thompson
https://publish.comcast.net/cgi-bin/countmgr
i intend to purchase zeta. However i really do believe that both the future of the be-like OS community and that of yellowtab is going to fall squarely on the shoulders of openbeos.
Yellowtab’s future might be best served by calculating a means to become a openbeos (or whatever it will be called) ditro vendor in the future.
I encourage both yellowtab and OBOS to pursue a course of frugality when it comes to what they put in there. There are way too many bloated operating systems already. Keep this one simple, small, and efficient. In addition to the obvious benefits from keeping the OS light there is the potential to reuse older hardware, something which might gain openbeos or zeta an audience in the developing world.
There might be a solution to this RAM limit issue soon!
http://be4ever.tuxfamily.org/mbs.php4?sort=post&view=extend&expand=…
http://forum.beosjournal.org/viewtopic.php?t=863&postdays=0&postord…
Bernd has also revealed in the yT forums, that yT is working on a solution as well.
Would it all fail we still have OpenBeOS though
I got a forced 3 week disconnection… and really missed the troll… but I got a nice one there to welcome me !
Well, if there are any developers that feel they need 1 gig RAM for developing under BeOS, I find myself wondering: what in the heck are they developing, and what software are they using????
I was speaking in general terms… Certainly there aren’t a lot of developers focussing only on BeOS. Perhaps some small time developers are, but for there to be the kind of developer support that Be/Zeta will need in order to sustain its current market, and grow its new market, Be must win over knowledgable, experienced developers.
And these developers are often earning their money by programming for a living. Since programming for Be right now pays slightly less than the average burger flipper (no market share equals no development), we’re generally going to be talking about people who develop for Windows or Linux. I would throw out the Macintosh crowd as I don’t think anyone’s working on PPC BeOS anymore (I could be wrong though… I never really followed the PPC crowd too closely).
And guess what? Most of these professional developers realize that more memory equals shorter compile times!
I never indicated that developers need 1GB just for application space, but rather for their development tools, any apps they need open in addition (Photoshop, email, whatever the average developer keeps on his dev box), and for compiling!.
Certainly you can get by with less, but my point was and is that Be’s already behind as far as hardware support goes. Modern “desktop” machines are quickly moving to larger memory configurations for their base models. 256 was standard a couple of years ago, 512’s now the norm (or is right around the corner from becoming the norm if it’s not already), and for people who want to get their jobs done quicker, development or otherwise, A gig or more is quickly becoming common.
Larger amounts of memory mean less time that the compiler and tools need to spend swapping bits back and forth off the hard drive, and thus much quicker compile times.
This is fairly common knowledge… Your reply seems to indicate that your take on my comments was one of “Be won’t survive if it can’t run programs which need 1GB of memory”, and that was not my point.
My point is and was that you need to attract professional developers if you want professional apps. You need professional apps if you ever want to achieve more than a marginal share of the alt. OS market (see my Amiga comment from my 1st posting).
And most developers are not going to keep an old PC with less than 1GB of memory around just in case they ever feel like picking up the BeOS as a side-skill. They will and are upgrading to the latest and greatest processors so that they can be more productive and move on to other projects. Compiling sucks, quite basically.
That was my point. That Be is automatically eliminating potential users and developers by keeping this 1GB limitation intact.
I realize that YT probably doesn’t have the source to the kernel (whole ‘nuther debate there!), and this isn’t likely to change until one of the fledgling Be clones (ie, OpenBeOS) bears fruit. By then we might be up to a 2GB standard… Who knows.
My point though is that as hardware advances, and people upgrade to shorten their work times, there will be less and less hardware that BeOS and its derivitaves will run on.
In my opinion, this has to change! At least Windows will let you tell it how much memory it can access (out of the total amount on the machine). If Be allowed such simple limitations (ie, “Maxmem = 768” or something similar) this would be a non-issue… People could just setup a simple config/boot file, get the latest hacks to allow Be to run on their CPU of choice (since plain ol’ BeOS will choke on a modern Athlon or P4 without such patches), and off they go.
But sadly, this isn’t possible right now. 8(
I understand your point(s), but the 1GB limit will only hurt Be more and more as time passes.
I said 7-10 years to get to the point where R5 was, not that it would be working and usable, By R5 BeOS was polished, stable, and public friendly.
I’ve no doubt that in a couple of years that OpenBeOS will be running compitantly in its own right, but I suspect it will take much much longer to achieve the finish that R5 had.
Getting things working, even a second time doesn’t take that long, but cleaning it up, removing the bugs, even adding them for full R5 compatibility (Some of the things in R5 only do what they do because of things being left on the todo list due to time constraints, and coders for R5 work with those restraints in mind so their apps expect certain things to be there, and to NOT be there)… will (I think) put it more into the timeframe I suggested. Look at AROS as a good example, its taken them from a few months after Commodore died to get to the point where you could now use it as a replacement for C=’s original ground breaking OS, and they too had detailed information regarding the various API’s (Though not as good as Be Inc’s documentation). As a side note, parts of Aros such as preference panels etc were put in to replace originals as far back as 1999 (OS3.5/9 benefitted heavily by the work of AROS developers), some 5 years before AROS started to truly shine in its own right (As it does now).
If OpenBeOS is at the stage R5 was in terms of functionality polish and so on and such, before that, then hats off to the developers (whome we both agree I suspect are doing a damned fine job), but that doesn’t help us now does it?
@Choulth
that last part was almost poetic 🙂 well said sir, well said.
> Yellowtab’s future might be best served by calculating
> a means to become a openbeos (or whatever it will be
> called) ditro vendor in the future.
Personally I think, if YellowTab have this future-goal, all is perfect and in harmony.
If YellowTab helps to improve all the OpenBeOS-code and give all their changes to the OpenBeOS-project back, it’s grandious.
I have no problem with it, if yT includes in their OBOS-Distro then additional closed-source programs. I have no problem with it, if yT use until the OpenBeOS-compionents are not stable, the original ones.
But yT don’t want to support OpenBeOS. They don’t want to be a OpenBeOS distributor.
OpenBeOS want to be binary-compatible with BeOS R5. But Zeta isn’t it.
Since Zeta exists, programs existing not only compiled for BeOS, it now exists for BeOS _and_ Zeta.
And if developer use Zeta, it is possible, that future closed source programs are only compiled for Zeta – and not for BeOS (and as a consequence not for OBOS).
And if the most programs are written for Zeta, then it is possible, that the goal of OBOS isn’t to recreate a dead OS, to recreate a stopped OS. Then they try to reprogram behind Zeta. But it is not possible to draw level with it.
Its like with the reprogramming of Java. If the Java-clones are in Java1.1 stage, there existing Java3 or Java4.
Zeta isn’t compatible with OBOS or BeOS. Both are in beunited, but they are different.
Buying Zeta is like to put the digger in the heart of OpenBeOS.
Why do Yellowtab release only the RC1 only as the deluxe package. Many user own a copy of gobe productive. 99 euro are much money. 109 euro when i want the final version.
Deluxe and unready? Yellowtab seems to be in the middle of their development process on the way to R1. Every “Service Pack” brings much more functions to the system. Did they need the money so much that the product must be released in such a early stage? Is the profit of a cheaper version to low worth the work they have? Who should buy RC1? Longtime BeOS user without gobe? Or do the want to show Newbs a RC for 99 euros. Everyone who paid that has the right to expect something.
I don’t know if you were trolling or completely confuse. Beos doesn’t need any kind of package management. Aside from maybe some randome weird ports, apps for beos were a single file mostly
A file is the abstraction of some data on the harddisk. A “single” file means that there is a common name for this data. So if you do not like the idea of multiple files belonging to a program, you can simply abstract further on top of a filesystem and establish a naming scheme with your desired properties.
Practically spoken, if you do not like that with GNU/linux a program consists of many file, just compress them (e.g. with tar + gzip). You then have one single archive which can be transparently decompressed, and you have what you want.
But this does not obsolete a package manager, because a package manager manages interdependencies. It really does not mean much if you call it files or packages, but if you hava a file “B” that depends on file “A” a package manager has a useful purpose (it will automate installing file A if you install file B).
XBe wrote: See any similarities? Does search and replace make things better? I especially love the part that Californias laws apply to Zeta license rather than German laws…
This is not unconditionally true. It depends on where you are. If you are in Germany for example, german laws will apply to the license.
The subtleties of law aside, I think that this is a really trivial statement of affairs…
Mr. Banned:
You are reading too much into my posts, and presume to know what it takes to compile something quicker. You inferred incorrectly that I suggested that BeOS was in the least affected for survival or anything like that in terms of any applications that need that much RAM. You also suggested the need for that much RAM for all the other applications running on a developer’s machine at the same time as compiling.
Well, other than things like email clients and web browsers, it is atypical for a software developer to have such huge memory using graphics applications like PageMaker open, as that isn’t what constitutes development for someone that needs to compile code.
Furthermore, as I will state again, if the software being developed has a decent structure, and is not spaghetti code in terms of dependencies, there is an upper limit as to what will assist in faster compile and link times. And unless you are developing software the size of BeOS or some other OS itself in terms of number of lines, and everything is included, then having more than 512 Meg RAM (to allow for all the non-compiler tools in memory, as well as the OS) is simply wasted, unless you use it for a RAM disk. Why? Because properly compartmentalized software of any size never has any single component with a huge translation unit, which is defined by a single source file and all that it includes via #include directives to compile. With a 512 Meg RAM machine, a properly structured application won’t even approach that amount of memory used by the compiler and linker in the processing. The real signicant time will be involved in reading the source code needed for each unit from the disk or the filesystem cache, and the CPU time to do the compiling, followed by writing that data back to the filesystem/cache. With properly structured software, no particular file is actually read very many times before it is no longer looked at. Thus, having a huge filesystem cache with all the source files in it is of limited value, and you are STILL CPU limited for compile and link time, and the compiler/linker itself will never use more than a small fraction of that memory for its purposes, because no translation unit is ever that complex and large for a properly structured application.
But, if you don’t find my assertions (even when based on personal experience) to be satisfactory, read the book “Large-Scale C++ Software Design” by John Lakos for some numbers related to this discussion. It is very enlightening, and still 100% applicable, despite the age of the book. Failure to take heed of the principles regarding structural design of large applications as outlined in this book will require powerful machines to overcome a design/implementation deficiency. Taking heed of the principles will make it quite efficient to build huge applications on a wimpy machine with little memory. If your application is 10 times larger than another one, it should only take about 10 times longer to build, and not much more than that. Memory for compiler tools is not a real issue. Save that memory for all the other things you are using! Maybe you’ll be able to play Solitaire or the equivalent while building without slowing it down notably:)
http://home.comcast.net/~softwareengineering/index.htm
does someone knows about the status of blueeyedos, means how far it is from getting released. judging from their website, not much has happened during the last ~6 months.
transforming beos into some highly customized linux still seems to me the most promising approach rescuing its genes into the future…
> But yT don’t want to support OpenBeOS. They don’t want to be a OpenBeOS distributor.
That’s so _completely_ wrong.
YellowTAB employees are in contact with the openbeos guys and many of them have also contributed code to the OpenBeOS project.
> OpenBeOS want to be binary-compatible with BeOS R5. But Zeta isn’t it.
WRONG. fact: almost every beos5 app (binary) works with zeta as well
> Buying Zeta is like to put the digger in the heart of OpenBeOS.
lol
B.E.OS was recently LGPL:ed due to lack of interest.
Guillaime is cleaning up the source in order to put it up on public cvs.
I noticed the screenshot of Zeta booting up under Bochs. As a n OS X user i’ve tried to get BeOS to work under Bochs with no success, later explained to me to have something to do with the kernel, as i recall. Anybody know how they got Zeta working under Bochs and if we’ll be able to do that when it comes out?
“1 – yT do not have to prove anything concerning their license agreement with Palm. In fact, it is more likelly they are not allowed to say anything exactly due to that. You have the right not to buy Zeta because you want proof and yT did not give it to you but saying that they *MUST* prove something to you or anyone else besides Palm itself is simply idiotic. ”
Hey if you want my money for something I wanna know it’s legal, no way I am gonna pay for something if I can’t get any support because it turns out a company was making use of someone else’s IP. I guess that makes me an idiot.
Re-read what I said. I did say you have the right not to buy it and that’s the way you have to show you are not happy. You can say they should show you whatever you want to see if they want you to buy their product. It is up to them to show or it or not. Again, as I said, they probably can not show anything like that even if they wanted to.
Really, a case like what you describe is not what I was referring to. You decided to wear the mask and that’s your problem, not mine. Sorry.
-Bruno
But that’s not a solution. That’s a bad hack that tricks the OS. You won’t be able to use any more than 1 Gb, the OS would just ignore it. It doesn’t really fix anything.
It’s like jump starting a car whoese battery died. It gets the car running, but it’s still broken.
Hopefully YT and Open BeOS guys are working together which is the way things seem to be. Now if we could eliminate the fracturing of efforts to get a BeOS like OS up and running ASAP with bugs like mem limit squashed then it would be great. I have never understood the way in which this community went their own ways like as if BeOS was the Tower of Babel. Bloody stupid if you ask me but at least Open BeOS has some great stuff happening and YT seem to be trying something commercially even if they have problems.
As for killer apps, BeOS was on the way to getting them like Nuendo for Audio and there was Editrol from Roland which was built using BeOS as a base for Audio/Video editing. Then there was the awesomely cheap Tune Tracker radio automation software for BeOS which made radio broadcasting automation very affordable. I mean come on gang there was stuff there and we need get it happening again.
But that’s not a solution. That’s a bad hack that tricks the OS. You won’t be able to use any more than 1 Gb, the OS would just ignore it. It doesn’t really fix anything.
It’s like jump starting a car whoese battery died. It gets the car running, but it’s still broken.
It would fix the problem with BeOS not booting with more than 1 gb ram. Though it wouldn’t utilize more ram than teh first 1 gb it would still do as a temporary solution until OpenBeOS or any other approach matures to usable.
Seriously, there’s not much need for more than 1 gb ram in BeOS today, and there won’t be for at least the 1-2 years to come. And – again – when there is need, OpenBeOS should be mature enough to serve as a replacement.
if yT had access to the sourcecode, I think they would have used the widget compiler a long time ago to make the widgets look different, and that one wasn’t included with Dan0 but it’s in the sourcetree afaik.
times has changed now. windows is better for media production now than it was back in the 90’s, however windows still suck for things like audio production, it just sucks a little bit less than it used to.
the problem is getting those kind of apps for beos within a reasonable time. writing them from scratch (which would be the ultimate thing) takes a lot of time, porting existing apps is nearly impossible unless you have a lot of money.
Buying Zeta is like to put the digger in the heart of OpenBeOS.
Nonsense! Buying Zeta is the only way there is a faint chance that 3rd party commercial developers will rejoin. No one will develop commercial software for an OSOS that is many many moons off its first release. Zeta will show if 3rd parties find it feasible to again develop for “BeOS”, and if they do, this will benefit OpenBeOS beyond measure.
Personal note: the amount of simple and small minds in this thread is staggering. Don’t you guys have a life? Is bitch and moan all you can do? I feel sorry for you, honestly.
Helmar
you are also in this thread, think about it Helmar
Hey Donald,
Apps are in 99% of the cases installed in /boot/apps to a single folder which you can just delete.
Settings are stored in /boot/home/config/settings/<application name>, either as a folder or a file (depends on the developer), so you should be able to find all files pretty easily.
Hope that helps!
> YellowTAB employees are in contact with the openbeos guys
> and many of them have also contributed code to the OpenBeOS
> project.
Could you give us a few examples?
Is there a list of yt employees? I could only find contributers i.e. non-employees?
“If you dont understand the difference between an Open Source OS with a clearly available license and source code and a closed-source OS without official statement on it’s legality maybe you should shut the hell up?”
And again, once more:
No one f*** Lunix user thinks about legality of his distro – he JUST pays or downloads it – the Company does the rest (RH, SuSE Mandrake or whatever…). The Company has to cope with it. Not the user!!
I think it was simple enough to understand, Technix?
Neither you nor anybody will get a clue of indepth information, what was licensed how.
And it has no evidence, as long you belong to yT (when you work for them) or you build an own Hybrid on Dano.
It is not about us to fiddle the details. We should just encourage everyone to develop on this platform – our mission. The Developer can decide both ways, if he wants to earn money with an app or not (which is correct). It is really admirable how yT works now. And I find it great how OBOS or BeFree develops.
And, yes, for sure there will adopted portions of OBOS, which may replace Zeta’s Dano portion’s if they are better – it makes sense and the licence is liberal (see Apple’s OS X toppings on FreeBSD Unix 4.3.x).
The single user can make his own decision in the future to buy a ZetaOS which come with unique self developed Apps AND unique drivers, or, if he had taken a look to frizbe 😉 at first, a free BeOS fellow distro. So what is YOUR problem, Dude?
This license talks is just a mudthrowing discussion, which leads to your disqualification…
If I pay for devs to build an App or a Suite for BeOS I will sell it, never do it for free. You can buy it or not – but you can’t do anything else as to shut up when you try to ask me more, then – that simple.
If I develop myself an App, it’s up to ME, not to YOU what I do with it and how. You are the last person to who I have to give answers for that or why I do that, same as before.
You are on a one way road to no where, Technix.
>>YellowTAB employees are in contact with the openbeos guys
>>and many of them have also contributed code to the OpenBeOS
>>project.
“Could you give us a few examples?
Is there a list of yt employees? I could only find contributers i.e. non-employees?”
IDE Replacement/Radeon driver guy Thomas Kurschel, for example and Axel Dörfler (tell me if wrong, Axel).
Also there are yT coders, who code also for OBOS (from France, AFAIK).
Inverted, every 9th OBOS guy develops also code for Zeta ;-).
Switch to the thread to this misinformative Information:
http://yellowtab.com/board/viewtopic.php?t=1581&sid=615708e62155a07…
yT CTO speaks clearly.
Thomas Kurschel and Axel Dörfler are not yt employees. Their work only found their way into the Zeta distro (MIT license allows that).
Your info is very vague, your claims without evidence.
I don’t see the point in attacking me here… I just want simple answers to some simple questions.
But as we’ve seen, it’s rather pathetic how certain companies are managed… which also explains another reason not to buy as the future look very non promising
Roger: maybe this will convince you?
http://bugzilla.yellowtab.com/reports.cgi?product=-All-&output=most…
..3-4 additional OBOS people working for yT
Personally I don’t think it’s healthy if too much people work on both OBOS and Zeta.
OBOS should be completely independent and yT’s co-operation should be in those parts of OBOS interesting to Zeta. With other words it looks pretty good today!
…I feel sorry for your mother
Thanks for that link, ealm.
I agree that Zeta and OBOS devs shouldn’t mix too much or yt could be tempted to pull a SCO some time in the future.
OTOH, the only OBOS dev (though we haven’t seen a commit from him in a loooong time
) that I see at this URL is BGA (not a yt employee). It looks like he is keeping the mail daemon replacement compatible with Zeta and thus seems to work only on non-yt code.
So, I still think the claim that “YellowTAB employees are in contact with the openbeos guys and many of them have also contributed code to the OpenBeOS project” is a bit far fetched. It looks more like the other way around, OBOS (and other) devs try to keep their code from breaking under Zeta.
Which is a good thing, but something totally different from what was implied in the quote.
…I feel sorry for your mother
NOw that’s something I can agree on