Magnussoft has explained their side of the story concering the recent split between them and Bernd Korz and the Zeta development team. "The archived sales figures of Zeta were far below Magnussoft's expectations. Continuation of financing the project is economically no longer viable. For the time being, Magnussoft discontinued funding of the Zeta development team on March, 16th 2007. The exclusive distribution agreement will remain unaffected. The existing contract is valid until the end of 2007."
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Member since:2005-12-31
The illegal part would be the distribution of BeOS Max to other people.
Customizing or changing it for your own use would not be illegal. Sharing it with others could create a legal issue.
I don't think you have anything to worry about because it is very unlikely Palm or Access would go after you, Vasper. Palm or Acces are not working on their own BeOS to sell to the public.
Zeta has a 2GB ram limit. I read this on YellowTab(?) site awhile back ago. So, most likely have the source code & modified it.
Bernd has never been too clear about being legally entitled to make Zeta. This is why it raises concern among people. He has skated around the issue.
All I know for sure is that Bernd worked out some kind of deal with CEO of Be Inc right when they were being sold to Palm, the terms of the deal are unknown, but it gave him (Bernd) the right to produce and distribute a BeOS clone (Zeta) to the public. And he received the source code to Dano to work with.
The public didn't care about the terms of the deal. All they wanted to hear was: "We (YellowTab) have made a deal with Be Inc, that Palm agrees to abide by, which gives us legal entitlement to make use of BeOS source code to create Zeta. Also, as part of the deal, we received access to BeOS source code named Dano."
Member since:
2005-07-22
Actually vibe is half right. BeOS Max is illegal in some countries. Just not mine. However, if you own BeOS 5, like I do then making your own custom CD of PE, or using MAX, isn't legal either under copyright law of most countries. The only place this is illegal all together must be the USA...
On the issue of Ram, Zeta can use up to 2GB. This is proof that they have compiled the Kernel. The 2GB limit is because Zeta kernel uses a signed Integer to keep the amount of "visible" ram. Big mistake in kernels. Kernels for 32bit systems should use unsigned Integer that has a limit of 4GB. Why aren't they changing it? Because it would break every other program that is depending in this kernel...
Edited 2007-03-27 22:16