palmOne has acquired the Palm brand from PalmSource. New products from, formally, palmOne should be released as just “Palm” in near future. PalmSource will probably change it’s name (let’s wait for more news).
Some rumors talk about palmOne’s PDAs running Windows mobile and PalmOS 6 doesn’t get industry support, what’s the next chapter of the “Palm” soap-opera?
They get 30 million!! They could easily just USE the money to finish EVERYTHING about PalmOS 6. But it ain’t gonna happen of course with money disappearing into a black hole, as usual.
It they switch to windows mobile… thats going to suck. just finish os6 already! gah!
Is that a new genre of cinematography? I’ve always thought it was “soap opera”.
😀 😀 😀 😀 😀
I blame USR/3com. 🙂
Does Palm still own the BeOS source?
Was that part of the sale?
If not, is it available?
How much is it worth now?
About 3 quid probably.
“About 3 quid probably.”
That much?
lets face it. Palmsource is in trouble. They have few licensees in the phone land and they’ve becom nothing more than a linux gui producer. That is not so special.
I like the idea of getting palmsource into feature phones (as opposed to smart phones) but it will be a good 2 years before that happens outside of china and i doubt they are earning much in revenues from china at this time.
But here is my real question: What happened with Palm OS 6. What a fiasco. Why are there no licensees? Was it that bad? Why is there no interest in it?
I am happy nagel is gone. He seemed likable and honest for a ceo but i don’t think he was the man for the job.
Palm should turn OS6 into a translation layer to run on top of OpenEmbedded. The Linux mobile market is going to take off. Instead of playing around with their proprietary OS and its ugly 2D interface, Palm should embrace the penguin. A Palm device that runs all existing Palm apps but offers a nice Qtopia interface over a 2.6 kernel would be a real threat to Windoze Mobile. They need to start seeing PDAs as laptop replacements, not beefy organizers.
Will they? Of course not. Palm is doomed.
That to me is bit more newsworthy of the site.
We loved you, back when you were relevant and competent.
PalmSource will probably switch for Be,inc
What with how bad the dollar is doing, 3 quid is probably like $100m
Then my I’m gonna have to figure out a way to keep my Tungsten alive indefinitely. Windows mobile is a horrible POS. Far too complex and cumbersome for a device that is suppsed to make your life *easier*.
Does Palm still own the BeOS source?
Yes.
Was that part of the sale?
Yes.
If not, is it available?
Possibly; ask yellowTAB GmbH. Good luck getting any useful information.
How much is it worth now?
I believe Palm paid $11 million for the assets of Be Inc. in 2001. It is still worth a lot now, in the sense that that code has enormous utility (“use value”); it compiles into a wicked-good operating system. As for a selling price (“exchange value”), it is “worth” whatever anyone is willing to pay for it: that is, whatever amount a willing seller and a willing buyer are able to agree upon. If I were loaded, I would try to buy the BeOS source code myself; I would immediately zip it up and email it to Michael Phipps at the Haiku project, along with full rights. Some of the source would surely be useful to Haiku at this juncture.
As much as I would appreciate the thought, I would much rather have the $11 million for new development than Be’s source code. For many reasons. As we have gone on our own way, we have done many things differently. Some better, some worse, I am sure. But I don’t think that Be’s source would be a huge help to us, just because it is *different* from ours. In addition to that, since a lot of that code is licensed, it still wouldn’t really help us because we couldn’t release it freely, as Be couldn’t and Palm can’t. No, I would definately not pay more than a few hundred dollars for the original BeOS source code in order to help Haiku.
Michael,
Do the current state of things at Palmsource concern you from a legal perspective? They are not in good shape and could be acquired by someone who might want to target a group (like Haiku) which seeks to recreate the the beos, which they would own.
In that case, I hereby pledge to give fully one-half of any lottery or gambling winnings I may acquire within the next five years to the Haiku project to be spent as the administrative team sees best fit in pursuit of the expressed goals of the project.
Haiku will change the (computing) world for the better. I have no doubt of that. Too bad I’m just a working stiff with nothing of value other than my labor power (and, perhaps, my unflagging optimism)….
Since I got my Zire 31 I haven’t found any useful software for it, I couldn’t even figure out how to use any of the programming languages I know to make graphical Palm application because there just isn’t enough software geared for the things and there are almost no developer tools to choose from.
Although its supposed to be impossible to upgrade the OS of the Zire 31, I’m hoping that someone is going to come up with some way for me to either put Linux on the thing or even put Windows CE on it since there is more software and developer tools for those two platforms.
30 million for a company that can’t deliver an OS on time and no roadmap. WOW.
Hehe. Not at all. All of the reverse engineering that we have done has been cleanroom. They could not show damages, since they are not selling BeOS. Whatever they would spend in lawyers for an hour to talk about possible legal action would cost them more than they would ever get from the suit. At least, until Czeslaw comes through with that lottery money. 🙂
that is why i got a Blackberry. Palm is going down hill. No Cobalt, no new OS on time…..forget it.
-2501
“Whatever they would spend in lawyers for an hour to talk about possible legal action would cost them more than they would ever get from the suit. At least, until Czeslaw comes through with that lottery money. :-)”
if haiku becomes successful you can bet that the owner of the rights to beos will come knocking and asking for IPR payments. If the owner of beos ever has to compete with Haiku then you can also bet that they will send their lawyers. Keep up the good work but be careful.
Lawyers are the heartless and souless of american business.
We’re Palm!
No we’re not! We’re PALMONE!
No, wait! Palm.
Oh. I don’t know. Who cares anyway?
A couple of hardware manufacturers. One new device a year that a few people will like.
How many PPC choices are there? OH! Tons.
’nuff said.
In a suprising twist of Galactic karma (or God’s influence if anyone actually believes in the old fella), yellowTab GmBH (gimme beos or haiku) announced an aquisition of PalmSource assets, including its Engineering workforce. was announced at a press conference today by yellowTab’s C(alphabetsoup)O Bernd Korz. When asked what yellowTab intended to do with PalmSource IP and Engineers, Mr. Korz announced that not only has Zeta got the original BeOS source code, but it has it’s creaters genes as well. They’ll sample some DNA from all employees and imprint that into the code as well (under the YTGPL, aka YellowTab Genetic Proprietry Licence). 3rd party use of the YTGPL is unknown at this time.
“Whatever they would spend in lawyers for an hour to talk about possible legal action would cost them more than they would ever get from the suit. At least, until Czeslaw comes through with that lottery money. :-)”
<if haiku becomes successful you can bet that the owner of the rights to beos will come knocking and asking for IPR payments. If the owner of beos ever has to compete with Haiku then you can also bet that they will send their lawyers. Keep up the good work but be careful.>
First, imo its not a question of “if” but only of “when” Haiku enjoys tremendous success:-)
Its tough to disagree with your advice to be careful as that’s always a good idea, but imo certainly Haiku has no reason to “live in fear” of any knocks on their door. (JLG would probably say something like “the more knockers the better”).
Just hypothetically, let’s say you acquire the rights to beos and ponder this type of lawsuit against Haiku. As a former shareholder of Be, Inc. who got burned to the tune of pennies on the dollar . . how would you explain to me the asset Be, Inc. claimed was practically worthless is now priceless? If it is so valuable, then did you not defraud the Be, Inc. shareholders (like me) in your documentation of the asset sale to Palm, Inc.? Do you think you will get away with that and not get sued yourself?
So far I’ve never sued anybody for anything but you may not be so lucky with the entire community of former Be, Inc. shareholders. Odds may not be so good on that one if you claim this abandonded asset still has great value today. Does it improve with age like wine? Yes it was special software but you must be careful to make it past “the laugh test” if you are filing lawsuits.
So far you cannot say that JLG has any history of involving himself in this sort of legal foolishness; and imo that is much to his credit. When he did sue, he had a case, it was against somebody with money, and he won. Every action so far seems intended to let old wounds heal and get on with the future.
Also what would be the basis of such a case against Haiku? Haiku is a nonprofit organization which has built its own codebase by legal and ethical means (not using any “leaked code”) operating in a sector which Be, Inc. publically chose to abandon. They are not trading on the Be or Palm names, etc. either.
Sorry . . . got all worked up there . . case dismissed.
(broken link)
>>>As a former shareholder of Be, Inc. who got burned to the tune of pennies on the dollar . . how would you explain to me the asset Be, Inc. claimed was practically worthless is now priceless? If it is so valuable, then did you not defraud the Be, Inc. shareholders (like me) in your documentation of the asset sale to Palm, Inc.? Do you think you will get away with that and not get sued yourself?
One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.
Cobalt Powered Smartphones?
http://www.allaboutpalm.com/news/item/Oswin_Technologies_Demonstrat…
its wild, palm goes down hill and blackberry goes uphill.
palm figured they could only survive windows mobile if they licensed the OS (pointing their fingers at OSX’s marketshare).
not only did it fall subject dropping to possibily similiar marketshare regardless of who licenses their OS, but they failed at selling it. They should adopt the licensing that windows mobile does.
Blackberry, with it’s OS that runs only on a blackberry seems to be coming out as the winner…. ironicly…
maybe steve job’s philosophy makes sense after all.