Yesterday, I wrote a short editorial concerning the news that Magnussoft started accepting pre-orders for the next version of Zeta, 1.21. Today, via email, I asked a few short question which arose, more or less, in the comments’ section of that editorial, to Magnussoft‘s Rene Weinert. Updated: See question 3.
Note: please bear in mind the interviewee is not a native English speaker, so please forgive any spelling or grammar mistakes.
1. In yesterday’s short editorial, I summarised the past months’ events as such:
- YellowTAB develops and sells Zeta;
- YellowTAB gets in financial troubles;
- YellowTAB announces exclusive distribution rights for Zeta to Magnussoft;
- YellowTAB goes bust, broke, bankrupt, whatever term is legally applicable;
- Bernd Korz goes to Magnussoft, probably bringing along developers from YellowTAB, to continue Zeta development;
- Profit (hopefully).
Is this the correct sequence of events?
Yes and no. It is the right sequence, but there are some errors in your content, especially at point number five. Mr Korz is no employee of Magnussoft. Magnussoft owns only the rights to sell ZETA. Any further development is done by an independent developing team which includes Mr Korz.
2. Is the GCC4 transition and multi-user planned for 1.21, or for a future 1.5/2.0 release?
The multi user pannel is planned as an upgrade for the Magnussoft ZETA 1.21. The GCC4 transition will be done only in versions later than 1.21.
3. Will the above major features mean serious application breakage? Or do you have a compatibility layer or legacy layer planned?
Full compatibiliy of previous ZETA software/products is planned and we have a good feeling in realizing it.
Update: We are working on the new version (GCC4) and we were successfull in getting programs started on it. So we do have a compatibility for some programs we had tested, but as I have mentioned before, we are still working on the new version. So we can not say if or in what kind of ways the final product will be compatible with older versions, yet. To many changes have still to be done, before the master is built for the final release of the new product. So I can not give you a definitv YES or No for the point compatibility of the new version.
4. Will the free live CD YellowTAB released be updated, and easier to burn?
We are working on a new release of the Live CD for Magnussoft ZETA 1.21.
5. What’s up with the beta program announced by Magnussoft? When will people start getting their beta packages?
The beta testing phase is already done. All people who could be part of the beta team were contacted and received their packages and logins only a short time after the news. However, there was such big interest in beta testing, that we could not contact everybody to tell them the results individually. So, we decided to write a short newsitem, that the beta employments were finished.
We would like to thank René Weinert for answering our questions.
i got the invitation about 30/45 days IIRC.
This clarifies the relationship between Mr Korz, the “development team” (whatever that is), and Magnussoft. But the key questions remain.
It is public knowledge that Magnussoft signed a worldwide distribution agreement with yellowTAB. But since everything seems to indicate that yellowTAB is now bankrupt, who is Magnussoft obtaining the rights to sell ZETA from?
Also, how is this “independent developing team” any different from yellowTAB (other than just on paper)? And more importantly, do they have a license with the IP owners of BeOS to continue developing ZETA?
To tonestone57: if you are reading this, did you see that not everything is what it looks like? 🙂
Hi Sogabe,
Yes, not everything is. 🙂
The rights to sell Zeta are from Bernd Korz (who says he obtained these from BE Inc.)
Looks like Bernd has given a license to Magnussoft to sell Zeta (but the name Magnussoft Zeta, implies it is made by Magnussoft & not Yellowtab or anyone else).
Also, Magnussoft will provide support for Zeta & is the main distributor of Zeta, etc.
Basically, Magnussoft runs the show & without them there would be no Zeta.
An Independent developing team: sounds like they don’t work for Yellowtab or Magnussoft. They could be part of some secret organization. 🙂
Actually, it is some former Yellowtab employees, with maybe a few new faces, working together to develop Zeta.
Edited 2006-09-11 20:23
I highly doubt that Be, Palm, or Access would give a license to an individual (Bernd Korz) as opposed to a company (yellowTAB). Maybe Mr. Korz has another company that holds the license agreements and that we do not know about. But, then what do I know? 🙂
There is one thing we agree on tonestone75: yellowTAB and business around ZETA has always been sort of secretive. I believe that is usually for a reason: that they have something to hide. 🙂
Edited 2006-09-11 21:48
Terrific Thom for following up on this story & clearing up some of the information.
At least now you’ve given us some definite answers to go on.
yT & Magnussoft seem to keep things very secretive. You never know what to expect from them. Sometimes I wonder if they are trying to avoid the “Secret Police” or maybe they just want to keep users confused & uninformed (because they derive great pleasure from it) or maybe something else?
I pretty much *guessed* everything here, by using logical reasoning, but have to admit, wasn’t too sure about the relationship with Bernd, Zeta development team & Magnussoft (I too thought he might be working for Magnussoft).
hope everything goes well with the release, i just hope they make it compatible with Tracker.newfs the compatibillity in zeta 1.0 and 1.1 was ok but it broke the boneyard and some other stuff, and in 1.2 it broke so much, rendereing it practically useless. Also i would like to add that no version of zeta has ever worked on opteron mp system with a via mobo withouth the classical hacking of the kernel with the authenticamd line. Also Thom could you ask magnussorft if they dropped the openoffice.org port or if its continued? according to roadmaps on the internet yT had gotten quite far.
There is one thing we agree on tonestone75: yellowTAB and business around ZETA has always been sort of secretive. I believe that is usually for a reason: that they have something to hide. 🙂
After reading some articles about yellowTAB on the Internet [i.e., wikipedia], I wonder if Zeta uses a “closed source” or a “stolen source” license?
Is it true that Bernd Konz sued (or threatened to sue) a Haiku developer for “stealing” Zeta source code? Sounds quite ironic to me…
You must be referring to this:
http://osnews.com/story.php?news_id=11613
yellowTAB alleged that this one dev had breached his NDA, and Mr Korz apparently threatened with legal action. The dev posted the info here:
http://haikudev.blogspot.com/2005/08/threatening-mail-by-yellowtab….
Apparently, yellowTAB did not put the money where their mouth was. 🙂
Thanks for clarifying this, sogabe.
It looks like yellowTAB is exactly where it deserves to be. I won’t support this company (which means: what is left of it) with my money.
Actually I’m glad I wasn’t accepted as a beta tester. Usually, beta tester have to sign NDAs…
Let’s hope Haiku will be a success.
Magnussoft claims it do not employ the development team, but it do distribute the product the team develops.
Mugnussoft gives its name to the product.
Magnussoft provides support for the product.
Magnussoft grants the infrastructure for the site, beta tests, downloads, etc.
Mr. Korz (aka Zeman) is allowed to publish claims at the forums in name of Magnussoft.
So, what I understood, it is claimed to be a kind of outsourcing from Magnussoft to the team, which is not named nor introduced to the public, but there is a close relationship with somehow shared responsibilities.
Maybe the whole thing seems to be messy because of the near-to-be-mystic development team. The public may still be interested in the followings:
Who are the members of this team?
What is the legal form of this team?
How much and in what terms is this team integrated with Magnussoft?
Who owns (if anyone) the legal rights yellowTab previously aquired?
I am pretty sure, public would understand if parties said “It is not yet final” or “not yet decided” or “not yet worked out”. Practically we all (Magnussoft, developers and the public) are excited to see a success of the product, so we share the motives. You inside have a good position to say clear things, even that you can not say anything for now. Once again: we all would understand for now. But in time there should be satisfying answers to keep the trust and interest.
Edited 2006-09-12 11:22
Not sure what you mean, but I can say one thing: “it is not final”, “not yet decided” or “not yet worked out” will not inspire a lot of confidence in the product.
Add this to the lack of support for technologies such as Flash and Java, weak hardware support and the unrealistic pricing of ZETA, and I don’t think you expect “the public” to go crazy about ZETA, do you? 🙂
IMHO knowning that something is still shaping surely inspires more confidence than getting just some parts of the big puzzle. A statement like that would suggest it is not a mystical issue.
People worry because they think, if they do not understand something, that something is hidden or messed on purpose. Avoiding this feeling is the best interest of everyone.
Pricing of Zeta may be a subject for a longer thread, I do not really feel like picking it up. I am sure there are many who can afford 100 EUR, and I admit that some are out because of this price. Leave it to those professionals who see the results and count the big balance.
Technical issues are hardly always up to the OS development team as we all know; and the product of course targets those who can live without Java and Flash. Most probably: yet.
“IMHO knowning that something is still shaping surely inspires more confidence than getting just some parts of the big puzzle. A statement like that would suggest it is not a mystical issue.
People worry because they think, if they do not understand something, that something is hidden or messed on purpose. Avoiding this feeling is the best interest of everyone.”
I am not sure what to make of this, but you surely sound like a mixture of politician who claims to know what everybody’s interests are, and some sort of esoteric preacher. 🙂
The only points that I wanted to make are here:
http://osnews.com/permalink.php?news_id=15802&comment_id=161388
My comments about pricing were just an observation to the posts saying that ZETA was too expensive. That’s all.
As you say, there may bemany people out there that can afford $100 for, say, a cheeseburger. But the question is, will they?
It is indeed going to be a nice conversation
I don’t think saying “people don’t like to be confused” is anything politician. Neither is “knowning what’s up is the best interest”.
We share the questions, as you could see in my first post.
For the pricing issue: people decide to buy or not to buy the product. Some guys at the producer (let the name be “A”) tried to predict these decisions before selling. Some guys (“B”) analyse the situation after the sellings. If “B” realizes “A” was wrong, they surely will change.
A note: they haven’t changed anything yet, so (pretending they do not want to commit a business suicide) it may be OK generally.
I think Zeta is STILL overpriced.
YellowTab would have sold a LOT more copies of Zeta had they made the pricing more reasonable.
Who wants to pay MORE than Windows XP Home or MacOS X for an OS that isn’t finished yet?
I paid $39.95 for BeOS 5, and I think that would have been a good price for Zeta.
Had it been at that price point, I would have bought it to support them. But, $119.00US was just too much money for what the product delivers. And while I wanted to support YT and help them fund the development of Zeta… $119 was too much.
I threw $50 away on AmigaOS 4.0, and all I got was a T-Shirt for my money…
Magnussoft needs to seriously consider dropping the price of Zeta to a more reasonable $39.95 – $49.95, and to bundle it with systems like Linspire does.
Drop out the office software that most of us already own, and sell that seperately.
I recall reading that yellowTAB had to they pay license fees to Palm (Access now?). Maybe ZETA’s pricing needs to be high so that the license fees can be paid, development can be funded and there can still be a profit margin for distribution and resellers. If that is the case, I would not expect a change in pricing as long as they have to license IP.
I feel the exact same way. And, trust me… as the right people get behind Haiku, it WILL be a success!