Now that there are a number of independent projects seeking to create BeOS compatible systems, BeUnited has launched an effort to share and promote the open standards for these Open Standards BeOS-compatible Operating System (OSBOS). Read about it at BeUnited.org
I know the good guys at BeUnited have been preparing for this quite some time. I am wondering what happened to the standards I was expecting, though?
I guess they’ll have some form of the BeBook, updated and enlarged, yes?
I still wonder why Palm doesn’t do any thing with BeOS. They bought BE from what I understand, mainly for their engineers and r&d. If they aren’t doing any thing with BeOS why not release the code? It doesn’t hurt them any does it? So what is the advantage of keeping it closed? I think they have a lot to gain by open sourcing BeOS. It would certainly help their reputation.
The standards are in the works. If you have an idea that you would like to propose to become a standard, submit it based on the required format (see the site for the format). The BeBook (the BeOS API) itself may become a set of standards (a few BeOS “distros” are using it already, I assume), but I imagine there is still discussion about this and that it would be updated and/or rewritten a bit.
The collection of standards documents may take some time as there are quite a few members of each organization (BeOS-Compatible OS) and we want to represent everyone equally and as well as possible.
As far as I am concerned, I think this is a great thing and I hope the BeOS community gets involved.
Some possible reasons why Palm does nothing:
1. Owning and hiding the code eliminates any possibility of lawsuits in the future should someone purchase BeOS from them. Why? Palm has the developers who made BeOS. The argument could be that one of these developers used some code or knowledge of some code from the BeOS to make a Palm product.
2. Palm may be using code from BeOS in the Palm OS. They claim this is not what they are doing, but you know how things are. If a developer is asked to create code to do something and that code is made already, works well, is portable and owned by the company, why not use it? Then, if the BeOS is open sourced, they would be giving away the edge that the BeOS components might be giving them in their Palm products.
3. Getting involved makes a statement. Any statement that they do not 100% understand and endorse could be negative to their business.
4. They don’t care about BeOS or the community and it would be more work and money to release the code under an open source license than to do nothing at all with it.
These are all “business” reasons; I personally don’t agree with them, but they are all valid reasons for Palm to do nothing with BeOS. Publicly. Internally, who knows what they are doing. I do not expect anything to ever come from Palm, though. So my personal hope is invested in OpenBeOS.
I was reading that and thinking, “Uh…duh…” but then I said to myself, “Self, uh…?” As you can see, I went through a long thought process when I arrived at the same conclusions you did. What *does* PalmSource need the code for? They only bought Be Inc. for the engineers. Or did they take some of the source code (kernels, APIs, etc.) and actually incorporate it? Or better yet: what is there that is worth keeping a secret in those mounds of code?
I know very little about Be, but unfortunately I do know something about large companies. Most likely they can’t justify staffing a project to restart BeOS when they’re already laying people off in droves. Even releasing it as open source would require some engineering, marketing, IT, and legal resources, but perhaps they are also afraid of “pulling a Xerox” and giving away the crown jewels. So the safest approach is to mothball the code, find something for the engineers to do, and wait for better times. In other words, don’t hold your breath.
Why do they link to Zeta (which is still vaporware) on the front page, but not to the rather excellent Beos Max Edition ? I should think it qualifies as an osbos.
I read a interview with one of palm’s product manager types. He said BeOS code was not being used in PalmOS5. Well my thought was that sence 5 was just ment to be a step to ARM, and Palm 6 was going to be the new multi tasking OS then maybe BeOS code will be in PalmOS6. PalmSource may just be playing like Apple and keeping as much about big future products quite so they don’t hurt current sales
Torrey, a few reasons;
1) Palm right now faces a huge competitive threat from Microsoft in the form of PocketPC. They are better off spending all their resources on OS 5 and especially OS 6 than trying to hit back on Microsoft.
2) In today’s economy, Palm is better off than spreading themselves too thin. When the economy is better, they should expand to new markets, but right now, they are better off focusing on one market, especially since they won’t know the success of other markets.
3) BeOS is built based on “what’s cool” and not consumer-driven. It is nice. It can play 10 Quicktime movies at the same time. So what? People want benefits, not features. The only way for Palm to do this is to target a small distinct market. Right now, that would be close to suicide for Palm.
4) They don’t get much PR out of this. The only people sore over the whole Be thing is really extreme ABMers, and Be OS users. Not a big market to me. Spending millions of green notes over so little publicity is the most stupid thing I ever heard.
Quite a few seem to be under the impression that beunited.org was some kind of big organisation/company that lay in hiding the last few months to come out with a set of standards under their belts and fanfares ringing in their ears.
It’s the opposite. beunited.org used to be a few individuals working on providing the necessary infrastructure and a mechanism to have the users, developers and interested commercial companies come up, discuss, refine and vote on common standards for future BeOS compatibles.
I said “used to be”, because as this infrastructure is now in place (being improved upon over time, I’m sure), beunited.org practically becomes the BeCommunity as anyone can become a member and work on those standards-to-be.
Power to the people!
I don’t think i’ve ever agreed with rajan before but i do. I’m sure i won’t in the not too far future though. He and jace have listed what are probably the reasons why beos won’t be released. I’ll add this.
Palm is far better off attacking the “desktop” by expanding the functions of the handheld and moving up via ever larger palm devices such as tablets, notebooks and perhaps a cheap and small desktop, that runs palm os X?, later. But we are talking about a 5-7 year progression here. In that time palm can continue to culture developers who can slowly migrate up with palm OS and palm devices.
To half quote a guy on the Cosmoe list who is a former Be employee and now works for Palm, he basically said that from what he can see Palm is willing to anything let anything slide, so long as it doesn’t cost money. They won’t sue people for using the verbatim headers, they won’t stomp on unofficial distros etc. So long as it doesn’t directly attack/affect their normal business (PDA and PDA OS development) they next to don’t care.
Be, on the other hand (or the single guy running the show) probably does care. Who knows.
ryan wrote:
Palm is far better off attacking the “desktop” by expanding the functions of the handheld and moving up via ever larger palm devices such as tablets, notebooks and perhaps a cheap and small desktop, that runs palm os X?, later. But we are talking about a 5-7 year progression here.
Interesting theory.
Tyr,
In answer to your question about why the Max Edition is not listed in the list of OSBOS projects it is because the OSBOS projects are software projectst that are writing versions of BeOS, and not distributions. The Zeta team is actually writing parts of Zeta, and some parts are licensed. They are also distributing Zeta, but first and foremost they are developing it. And btw, it’s not vaporware, as we have seen it running, and it’s very nice. Max Edition is not a software project to create BeOS, it’s a distribution of BeOS R5 PE.
Thanks for your comment.
Simon Gauvin
President, beunited.org