As promised earlier, YellowTAB has released an official statement concerning the bankruptcy rumours. “Rumours have been circulating for a few days now: yellowTAB has been put under bankruptcy protection. This causes many questions and uncertainties. We wish to explain how bancruptcy protection affects our product.”
7. Will you continue to collaborate with the Haiku-Team intensively, as you did with the Intel extrem driver?
Yes. We will step up our collaboration on driver development and increase the development of new drivers and applications. This work will fall under the Haiku OpenSource License.
9. What will happen if yellowTAB has to close it’s doors?
ZETA will continue to exist and efforts will be made to find an adequate alternative to continue development.
10. Does ZETA still require activation?
No. To make the user experience smoother we have removed the activation requirement in ZETA 1.2.
It sounds like there is something about it. At least it appears that they have problems.
Even closer coorporation with Haiku, looking at alternative ways of development, and removal of the activation requirement. This does indicate some problems, unfortunately.
“10. Does ZETA still require activation?
No. To make the user experience smoother we have removed the activation requirement in ZETA 1.2. “
Excellent, and don’t assume because I say that I’m a software pirate. On the contrary, when I buy software software and install it I don’t want to be scrutenized as if I was a criminal before being allowed to use it. Pirates find ways around this stuff, the internet is absolutely full of warez, key generators and cracks.
When a competitor has a lead on you, treating your customers better can be a big selling point.
The activation was a joke anyway. More smoke screen than state of the art.
Please, God! Not again, not AGAIN!
Aaargh…
But, they do it…
It does sound suspicious. Having read some of the german interviews from Mr. Krotz this wouldn’t surprise me if it actually was true and the company is indeed in financial trouble. Why would a potential costumer would by Zeta if I see something like this:
9. What will happen if yellowTAB has to close it’s doors?
ZETA will continue to exist and efforts will be made to find an adequate alternative to continue development.
I look forward to seing Haiku.
Well… if yellowTab dies, will be a good thing to open the source of Zeta, and a merge with the Haiku team. At least they will not end like BeOS and left the whole community on darkness.
They probably can’t open source it (remember all the debates about whether they even have the soruce code) as Palm Source own the rights and they just have a license. At best they can open source all of their apps and enhancments and even some of those may be encumbered.
Exactly – I don’t think yT OWNS the original BeOS code – I believe at this point they are only licensed to use it (if even that – I have still never seen any documentation with specific details on their agreements with Palm, Inc.)
I also do not see the Intel Extreme driver “collaboration” with Haiku yet – either the Intel Extreme code donated to Haiku is sitting on someone’s machine waiting to be checked into Haiku SVN, or yT just simply forgot to deliver it… I’m eagerly awaiting this so I can test Haiku on my Intel Extreme graphics.
I think Haiku is most definitely the future – and hopefully more developers will flock to it with the shakiness surrounding yT.
Before I go, I beg people to please join TeamHaiku on Seventeen or Bust! We’re jumping through the ranks, and it won’t be long before we surpass TeamBeOS!
http://www.haiku-os.org/forums/viewforum.php?f=29
Yes, support us with Seventeen or Bust!
Even though my machine is crunching along happily, I’m not even close to Michael Phipps or umccullough.
And we just fell down one place in the daily rate
Well, none of these statements deny bankruptcy, in fact they clarify it. My conclusion is that the single creditor has made a monetary claim against YT and had good grounds to do so.
Well I hope sales pick up!
It seems to me for the careful wording of the article that they are acknowledging that they are in bankrupcy protection (or administration as it is called in the UK) without actually specifically saying so
Yes let’s hope that. On the good side is that the company is taking pretty much full measures in order to rectify the situation. That’s nice to see.
They should open up the OOo port, develop it from Haiku’s SVN. Might take some of the burden of development of YellowTAB, will ensure that no work they do is lost and spur closer collaboration between the two parties. An office suite is something they both need if they want to be successful.
As for YellowTAB, I’ll be sad to see them go if they do. They’ve definitely pushed the platform forward.
This can be caused by problems with Japanese reseller,
probably they hoped for some portion of money from it in their financial plans and unreceived paiments resulted in cash-disbalance.
forgot link to problems with reseller in previous post.
Here is it:
http://www.yellowtab.com/news/article.php?id=186
What next a focus shift ?maybe an imbedded system for an electric deep fryer? all this sounds familiar for some reason.
pull a rabit out of their hat for 1.2. I think they have done a good job when considering they don’t have much in the way of investors/VC. They have been running for a long time on existing sales, good for them. But as a “user” I still don’t get much, well any, daily use from the OS. Too many holes. I had to keep rebooting into windows…way…way too much so I stoped using it. If they can finally deliver an OS that is truly useable, to a reasonable extent, that would probably help them a great deal. They need drivers and support for the codecs etc that people use today. Flash, etc….. Here’s hoping.
From day one, yT has had no kind of direction or goal whatsoever. From developing nothing but an installer for ages, to making a half assed attempt at a HTPC system, to attempting to port the huge and complex OOo project.
With a company leader demoing the OS on TV trying to push DVD ripping and x86 emulation as top features of the product.
Never once did they stop to talk to the many people that begged them to focus on a specific market, to try to make Zeta into something that actually can compete with other products. Not making it into yet another mainstream OS that will never get further than half way there.
Defining a market is essential for any business. I never once felt that yT had any clue as to which market they were aiming for. Did they even bother to examine it? I wouldn’t think so.
They did care about the OS, that’s for sure, but they didn’t seem to care about trying to survive as a business.
What I am surprised about is that they made it this far.
No offence to the many fine people that has worked with the development of Zeta. It’s the management of the company that is flawed.
Interestingly if to trust Bernd’s reports, they managed with two years to sell in order more copies than Be Inc did – even when Be Inc thought they know the direction.
They did indeed manage to sell quite a few copies, that’s true. But what does that tell us? Absolutely nothing.
It tells us more about Be Inc than about yT actually.
Where are the followups? How many of those who bought it are satisfied with the product? How many will continue to use it? What do they use it for? Will they buy products from yT again? Would they recommend it to their friends? etc.
Those are the most important things. You can sell a huge amount of any product no matter how good or bad it is, but creating a lasting business is a lot harder. It requires a proper strategy and good PR.
I wonder how many copies Be would sell today as compared to 6years ago? or rather, I wonder how many copies yT would have sold 6years ago.
It’s only natural that more people are online these days and getting exposure to alternative operating systems.
Buying a copy of Zeta will not only be of profit for yellowTab but also for Haiku:
* yellowTab has donated source code to Haiku. More driver source code = faster progress for Haiku.
http://haiku-os.org/learn.php?mode=news_view&id=404
* yT is porting OOo. If you want OOo on Haiku, yT is helping you here.
* If yT convinces one 3rd party developer to write software for Zeta, it’ll much easier to convince this developer to ensure that his app runs also on Haiku. Having a market of Haiku and Zeta users is more attractive than only Haiku users.
* yellowTab has donated source code to Haiku. More driver source code = faster progress for Haiku.
Correction here – yellowTab has said they will donate the code. I still don’t see it in the Haiku repository, so I can’t agree that they’ve donated it yet.
As for yT helping Haiku? I agree. If/when OOo is available for Zeta/Haiku/BeOS, I will rejoice! OOo is one of the last major hurdles that BeOS compatible OSes need before they will sway “major user acceptance” their way.
Correction here – yellowTab has said they will donate the code. I still don’t see it in the Haiku repository, so I can’t agree that they’ve donated it yet.
Hmmm…. – here is http://cia.navi.cx/stats/project/OpenBeOS/.message/1c01c1“ message from 24 th march.
That isn’t the code donated by Yellowtab, but some code written by Axel himself.
That isn’t the code donated by Yellowtab, but some code written by Axel himself.
I understand. Sorry and thanks for explanations
Let me translate.
7. Will you continue to collaborate with the Haiku-Team intensively, as you did with the Intel extrem driver?
Yes. We will step up our collaboration on driver development and increase the development of new drivers and applications. This work will fall under the Haiku OpenSource License.
Increasing work with Haiku well help out everyone in case we go out of business and it gives us more credit with the people who support Haiku becasue supporting us supports them.
8. Can I purchase ZETA directly from yellowTAB?
Yes. If you prefer to order ZETA from yellowTAB you can.
Please buy from us directly becasue we get more money that way which means we have less chance of going under.
10. Does ZETA still require activation?
No. To make the user experience smoother we have removed the activation requirement in ZETA 1.2.
In case we go under, users of 1.2 won’t be screwed.
AFAIK, from WalterCon , the activation can be closed or deleted.
My take
YellowTab was forced into this by someone else, probably a pissed off someone else.
YellowTab has made many mistakes.
They have a legal right to do what they are doing or else they never would have started. I heard this from someone “in the know” who talked it over with Bernd(or somebody else.)
In the absence of any solid info, rumor became truth.
“They didn’t say anything so they must be illegal”
YellowTab let it get out of control. They should have put thier foot down. “We can’t talk about this because of contracts we signed”
They should have said this every time it was questioned.
They should have worked more with Haiku instead of “oh Haiku is working on that, so are we, let’s work together.”
They need to make the offers of help and collaboration, and they should mention it a lot, that they are helping with a lot, not just 1 or 2 things.
They are the company; Haiku is a loose knot group. They have to go to Haiku, it makes them look better.
I should see them on the Haiku mailing, if they are on there, employees should have yellowtab after thier name or part of a signature.
It makes me be more confident about them as a company if they are (more)open and in the community.
Zeta is still a bit pricey, hopefully I’ll buy it when I get a job becasue I think they are starting to get thier act together even as they teater (seesaw) on the edge.
I can only hope this is the death knell for that horrible, evil company and their hodge-podge OS! As for them going out of business, the sooner, the better!
Hail Haiku! The *TRUE* heart and soul successor to BeOS!
People like you make Haiku look hostile and irritating. At the very least people face losing their jobs and all you have to say is that 15-year old stupid talk.
2. Will the retail price of ZETA change?
Yes. We may reduce the support to 4 weeks and in return we will lower the retail price of ZETA 1.2 to 89.90 Euro.
A) This is a clear indication they’re in *some* kind of trouble, if they feel forced to change their prices. Perhaps they need sales to pick up, get a larger userbase to make clear they have growth potential and thus prove to the judge they have a good chance to solve their debts.
B) Zeta is cheaper!!! Everyone has been complaining to no end Yellowtab charges too much, and now look, significantly less than the price of either Windows, OS X, RISC OS or Ecomstation, for a commercially supported product.
When the story first broke we heard assurances that the company wasn’t bankrupt but that a 3rd party was pressing the issue. In fact they are bankrupt. That’s what bankruptcy protection is. That doesn’t mean they don’t have money or that they are closing their doors, but it does mean that they are having a problem meeting their fiduciary responsibilities with their current rate of earnings. It is a semantics game to claim otherwise. There have been many companies that emerge from bankruptcy and go on to do very well, but I don’t think this is going to be one of them.
Back in the late 1990’s I was practically salivating with news of BeOS. I followed the discussions in newsgroups and in the trade press dreaming of the day of running BeOS on my own machine. When R4 came out I bought the combination BeOS/Gobe Productive/BeOS Bible combination. I was waiting for one of those smaller hardware vendors to actually ship with it by default, and there were a few, but in the end it was more cost effective to dual boot my machine. Once installed I astounded friends with the standard media demonstrations that left Windows98 and WindowsNT in the dust. With that enthusiasm I went out and bought the “Programming the Be Operating System” guide to start writing applications for BeOS, specifically to help with the Java port. However, as we know, within two years the OS had stagnated and collapsed.
Projects like Haiku and OpenBEOS are very important for preserving the legacy of the Be operating system. They have ambitious goals and I applaud their efforts. The yT group trying to take the legacy and carry it forward was also a noble effort. The problem with all of them is that it simply isn’t a viable business model. That doesn’t matter for open source projects, but it does for a corporation. The advantages offered by BeOS compared to their competitor operating systems of the 1990’s were profound. It was clearly a pace setter in many areas, and if it had reached critical mass it could have been a force to contend with. However most of the advantages have evaporated. This is especially true with respect to the user’s perspective of the OS, which is the most critical one. At this stage BeOS not only has lost any edge it once had but is in fact surpassed by many modern operating systems. Therefore you are looking at selling to a relatively small audience, namely nostalgic people like myself. You can’t make a reasonable sized operating system company around BeOS nostalgia. The reality is that it’s just not going to happen.
I wish BeOS could have achieved the great things it was destined to do. It could have, but it didn’t. There are lots of reasons for this which we don’t want to get into here. The BeOS legacy can be carried on quite well by the open source projects who can leverage the nostalgia community into forking over the relatively small sums it takes to keep an open source company alive. yT on the other hand is just a case of waiting for the money to totally run out.
The BeOS was at the time a leap ahead the others.. sigh.. But, you know, the guys around Haiku want to go forward an R1 and i’am sure yT went to do the same.
Until the BeOS spirit is still alive, i’ve the expectancy that it’ll happen.
If people are happy with Zeta now that they have bought it yes I am very happy with Zeta and hope they get out of bankruptcy so I can use it for many more years.
How I understand the Wikipedia article about Insolvenz, bankruptcy would be the most positive outcome possible, and they are now looking whether they still have enough assets just to start a bankruptcy case.
(But then, I know very little about all of this, and those Wikipedia articles about these things are rather difficult to read!)
Rush out and buy my third doomed OS. Diminishing returns:
Amiga – 6 years
BeOS – 2 Years
Zeta – 1 Year (had I bought it)
They should have fixed the sliding tabs, first.
On an vaguely unrelated note:
First Nerdore Hip-Hop Compilation CD
http://www.bedoper.com/nerdcore
That stuff in the link is supposed to be funny.. Right?
I really hope zeta gets to 2.0. I really do.
on another note, BeOS MAX is the first thing I ever downloaded related to an OS… what the heck happened to it and what was it?