For the first time in its 7 years of existence, some decent statement has been released concering the legality of Zeta. Access, the current owner of Be, Inc.'s IP, states: "We have sent 'cease and desist' letters to YellowTab on a number of occasions, which have been uniformly ignored. If Herr Korz feels that he holds a legitimate license to the BeOS code he's been using, we're completely unaware of it, and I'd be fascinated to see him produce any substantiation for that claim." Update: Bernd Korz has replied on his blog.
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Member since:2006-02-19
Member since:2007-04-05
There would seem to be two possibilities here: either (as we believe) Mr. Korz has no license at all to support his activities (and this is evidently far from the first time this issue has come up), or whatever license he has was not disclosed to Palm at the time the sale of Be's intellectual property assets were being negotiated.
Either way, there's no existing license: if there somehow was a secret, magical, undiscloseable license granted, by Jean-Louis Gassee, the Tooth Fairy, or whomever, since it was clearly never disclosed to Palm when such disclosure was a requirement, Palm (or PalmSource or ACCESS) would certainly not be bound by it.
To provide an analogy, you can't sell a car on which you have an outstanding loan without either settling that loan or disclosing its existence to the purchaser. Certainly, you can't expect the buyer to both pay for the car and pay off your loan on the basis that you simply didn't bother to tell him about it.
I'd note that neither Palm, nor PalmSource, nor ACCESS, has ever seen so much as a wooden pfennig in royalties from sales of Zeta.
Member since:
2007-04-03
The fact that Access is not aware of YellowTab's license and has sent them notice to stop development does not necessarily mean that YellowTab does not have a license. It may not be worth it for YellowTab to contest at this point because Haiku is almost out and YT could base Zeta on Haiku if they wanted to.
In my view YellowTab made an effort to keep BeOS alive. I for one appreciate that effort and bought into Zeta including the 1.21 version.
Bernd probably lost money on YellowTab and Zeta. I hope Bernd makes what ever code they developed available to the Haiku folks if they wish to use it. (Drivers, Security, Media stuff, UI and Shareware apps, Translator s etc...)
I personally thank Bernd and the YellowTab team for their efforts in keeping BeOS alive and wish them well.
ciao
yc