BeOSJournal.org reports that YellowTab’s Zeta has reached Beta 3, and is on testers hands. According to Bernd, project leader, later this week a new beta will be ready. This version has many fixes and improvements over the previous version.
YellowTAB Zeta Reaches Beta 3
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
This Zeta version seems an “only for your eyes” file! I’m wondering why nobody can review this product even being a beta relase!
We want to know more about this product. Why this secretism?
Please, excuse my english. I’m spanish.
To acoromi …
This is just a guess, but Zeta is a huge project, and Yellow Tab is a start-up company. They are BUSY working on their baby, getting it ready to ship. They do not have a marketing guru that knows the value of hype and is forciong the engineers to give him stuff to keep in front of the press. That is what you want, but this only comes from well funded or established companies.
Lets wait and see what they come up with.
Once the product is ready they will be more willing to spend their presious time on promoting the product. They would do better if they did some promotion now, but they just do not have the manpower.
I don’t care for beta, I can’t wait to see final version.
And I want Eugenia do review it! 🙂
Mybe I was too sceptical about Zeta, but that’s all because of my anger with Be Inc and it’s handling of BeOS r5.
We say here: If you are bitten by a snake, you’re afraid of lizzard.
Keeping my fingers crossed for Zeta!
Nikola
mmmh… I love BeOS. And i would like Zeta as the *new* BeOS. Nowadays, i’m building a castle of illusions about what Zeta could be.
I’m afraid of this castle could vanish like smoke when Zeta goes final.
Look at this. Almost no information about this product everywhere. A very few screenshots and no more. Mmmh… too strange for me.
acoromi
>I’m wondering why nobody can review this product even being a beta relase!
And I want Eugenia do review it! 🙂
I was promised by Bernd both a beta for a preview article and a final for a review article. Two months ago. I am still waiting.
I don’t understand why he does not send me the beta ISO, I have email him many times and he keeps making me wait and wait. I explained to him that it doesn’t matter if something is beta, it would be reviewed as a preview instead and the fact that it is beta it would be taken into consideration of course.
I find YellowTab’s behavior towards OSNews totally unprofessional and they know I am unhappy about the situation. OSNews and myself are having great relationships with all OS companies and we get betas or exclusive versions of software all the time for articles, but YellowTab seems to be reluctad to do so, and not just to us but to other publications too! My gut feeling says that Bernd would prefer to go “live” mostly when he’s got the thing finished, but problem is, this is a bad marketing practice. YellowTab should give some beta ISOs for selected sites and magazines for previews, because they need to create the “hype machine” asap. The “hype machine” is something that it is needed if you want to market such a product.
They are already late and personally, I don’t want to review anything from YellowTab anymore. Bernd gave me his word he would send me the ISOs, and he didn’t. And a few days before I leave for Europe, he would still tell me “tomorrow, tomorrow!”. Two weeks later, I am still waiting. And I am not happy about this. OSNews could help them a lot, because we serve about 65 times more web pages per day than ANY OTHER BeOS-only or BeOS-related news website. They just need to be more professional. And keep their word. They need to realize that keeping journalists happy is something of an absolute priority, because these journalists are the ones who can help them spread the word about their product.
When a major journalist (big sites or magazines) is writting a review of Windows or other Microsoft product, and he finds a show-stopper bug, I have heard that the MS product team would stop WHATEVER they do in order to fix that show stopper bug and send a fixed version to the journalist! This is what both YellowTab and a few other startups or hobbyists should realize: The importance of marketing. Because unfortunately, they don’t seem to realize it.
Eugenia, what is this? this is totally unlike you, you have emailed me earlier about my comments that you have seen unfit , this comment contradicts those emails.
I hope you mod yourself down or delete above post, this is in no way the sort of constructive comments I’ve seen on this site before.
and this comment have probably hurt the company more than it did good.
zeta is nearing rc1 , and he may have his reasons for not releasing any betas outside the beta group.
and as I understand it they are sparse with the information due to the fact that they do not want to promise anything that they cant deliver.
Cheers.
Rob.
Personally, I wouldn’t want a review of Zeta or any other product for that matter. Lately, it seems to me that reviews are nothing more that someone else’s lacking attempt and opinion about things they think ‘I’ might not like about something. I’m perfectly OK with waiting and being pleasantly surprised or perhaps “WOW’ed” by a new product. Why would I want to read about how someone doesn’t like ‘this’ feature; only to find out they had no clue what they were talking about. These comments are not directed at anyone, by the way, just a general overview of critics and reviewers. I just read reviews by 2 film critics that hated ‘The Two Towers’. By their ‘opinions’, I shouldn’t even bother to go see the movie. One said he was bored??!?!? Personally, I hope they wait and put out a ‘complete’ product. I’m so put off with installing beta/buggy software and having to uninstall, etc.
> I hope you mod yourself down or delete above post, this is in no way the sort of constructive comments I’ve seen on this site before.
Constructive comment? It was never meant to be one. It is simply the truth. People are asking us that they want ME to do the review and they also are asking WHY no one has done a review yet. And I replied to JUST THAT. You can call that WHATEVER you want Robert. For me, it is just the truth.
I am DONE emailing Bernd back and forth for months now. I tried to be as professional and as FORTHCOMING as I could with him and his product (I even explained to him that I want to see Zeta successful and that I was willing to do these articles because I REALLY wanted to help). Bernd behaved not good and he played with my good intentions like I was a TOY. We exchanged many emails and his reply was always “next week” or “tomorrow, hang on”. Enough! OSNews is not BeNews. It is 10 times more successfull than BeNews EVER was in its prime time in year 2000. This means that whoever deals with us, he has to keep his promises and do his part. Apple does. Red Hat does. SuSE does. Microsoft even does! Why YellowTab can’t??? Huh?
Now, I have absolutely no reason why I should burry the truth just to keep the BeOS fanatics happy and in their own dreamworld. I keep NO ONE happy. Neither Linux or BeOS or Apple or MS people. Whoever screws up (and I always give them a chance and time – as I did in the YellowTab situation for months now) will have to face the consequences of his own actions.
>Lately, it seems to me that reviews are nothing more that someone else’s lacking attempt and opinion about things they think ‘I’ might not like about something.
Lately? This is what a review is. An opinion. No matter how objective a review might TRY to be, at the end of the day, an in-depth review IS an opinion.
As for me reviewing Zeta I believe it would have been great, because I AM NOT a random person working on a magazine or an online site that he/she have never used BeOS. I lived and breathed BeOS for 3 years. It was my last thought of the day before I go to bed at night. And I “happen” to “work” for OSNews, a site that it is suited on reporting on such smaller OSes. And that site happens to be VERY successfull. And it could help YTab IMMENSELY.
Well He may have done wrong in withholding it for a prolonged amount of time but some companies prefer to release a stable produc instead of performing some weird PR circus events.
>and this comment have probably hurt the company more than it did good.
The did bad all by themselves. If they can’t respond to a single journalist who WANTS to help them (and not just do it because it is his/her “job”) how would you expect them to respond to 100 of these journalists? And how would they respond to the thousands of their users for support?
Sorry Robert, I don’t eat “stupidity grass” (as they say in Greece). YellowTab needs to wake up and be professional. Atm, they did the hurting all by themselves. If they were an open source project I wouldn’t care too much (you personally know about Rasterman’s behavior on not responding on E17 matters to journalists – he has me waiting since July 2002). But YTab is a company that wants to SELL their product. They better get their act together, because I don’t see them going well when and if they release.
Well He may have done wrong in withholding it for a prolonged amount of time but some companies prefer to release a stable produc instead of performing some weird PR circus events.
Sure! I understand this very well (while I don’t agree and I explained the reasoning above). But he PROMISED. And he STILL keeps me waiting for NO reason.
okay e17, as noted will be ready when its ready, you know this. end of story.
>Sure! I understand this very well (while I don’t agree and I explained the reasoning above). But he PROMISED. And he STILL keeps me waiting for NO reason.
He has probably given you a reason as i know he has given others. although not as “great” or as “successfull” but they have received emails stating that they will get this release when it has reached rc1 status.
go easy folks. Running a small company is difficult. Zeta is a huge project. Moreover, no new company really wants to put out a product until it is as close to perfect as possible. Otherwise, a beta that still needs work, could tarnish that new company’s reputation.
“He has probably given you a reason as i know he has given others. although not as “great” or as “successfull” but they have received emails stating that they will get this release when it has reached rc1 status.”
I haven’t.
I agree!
scared of your hard but realistic kind of reviews…(which I actually like)
You just could say at the end of the review: Zeta is just nothing more than R5.0.4+ and nobody would buy it…
Thats the point of influence and you have that kind of …
So he’s in the position to prove something else… and even if they are ten people, without acces to a lot of the BeOS sourcecode they have not much influence of the system itself but only on the apps which are devivered with Zeta…
they are now obviously working on…
Bochs is available on CVS too, you can compile it for BeOS with a few changes and have that *fast* version…
Bochs 2.0 is really great.
-A
PS:Don’t kill me, I could be completely wrong 😉
I hope this won’t bring the whole BeOS community against me, but…
I agree with Eugenia on many things about Zeta.
There are too many things which are not so clear, and put Zeta in a strange “limbus” (is it spelled correctly?).
Is it BeOS PE with some modifications?
Is it true that it can handle non-rectangular windows?
If it is, how it can, since this is a Dano feature? Did they use the leaked Dano sources? How can they have libraries compiled with gcc 3.0?
I think YellowTab should clear those things, and a OSNews interview would be useful.
P.S: Come on guys, if Zeta is just BeOS R5, won’t sell at all, and if it’s a better thing, why should YellowTab be
worried?
P.P.S: sorry for my bad english.
Zeta is a partially open source version of BeOS with closed source parts licensed from Palm Inc. According to Bernd Korz, Zeta project leader, they will consider replacing the closed source parts of Zeta with open source parts of other OSBOS projects as they become available.
http://www.beunited.org
Yellowtabs product Zeta is the evolution of beos r6 aka. “dan0”, with additional drivers and as mentioned above the company supports the osbos standards.
and it uses svg graphics for its icons etc.
I agree.
In Beosjournal, Daat says literally “The BeOS Journal will bring you a review soon, so stay tuned. ”
As you say, i don’t understand why Yellow Tab has this bad attitude (correct spell?) towards OSNews. They are closing many doors.
Well. Time will tell…
During the early days when I just newbie to OSNews.com, Eugenia was very incline toward BeOS to me. What have happen now? It seem that YellowTab really make her upset.
“Zeta is a partially open source version of BeOS with closed source parts licensed from Palm Inc..”
Palm didn’t license the code to BeUnited but licensed to YellowTab?
beunited is a non profit organisation .
Yellowtab is a commercial entity, note the difference in the organisations.
also there is another side to it which i am not inclined to mention .
and if you know business’s you also realise why it didnt happen.
Since we decided to talk about one person instead of the project…
If I may make wild speculations about a semi-public figure –
I would say it’s a personality trait of his. He is very ambitious and optimistic which makes him a real go-getter or foolhardy depending on your point of view. What he lacks is cynicism and realistic expectations. But afterall, the world is rarely changed by people being merely reasonable.
Though it does seem like I’m defending him, my opinion is formed from being dissapointed by his overly optimistic assertions and then ignored when I pressed for a reason. Perhaps there is too much blind ambition in that man for him to ponder and explain his mistakes to others.
It is not a good trait for a CEO. To be trustworthy, the management should talk freely about mistakes and the steps they have taken to avoid repeating it in the future. Otherwise, how can we have confidence in their governance?
Hopefully things will change for the better (lesson learned).
here is an extremely abreviated list of companies that have been late with betas or products. Yellowtabs behavior is the norm.
general motors
sony
Apple
Microsoft
Ericsson
Nokia
Ford
Docomo
NEC
Intel
Motorola
etc
etc.
Ryan, this is a COMPLETELY different story.
All the companies you listed are already known to the masses, and all have valid products which have sell lots of pieces.
YellowTab has not (yet?). So it is VERY important to be punctual.
I just read on TBJ:
“None have complains concerning stability and according to a beta tester’s own words “the tracker is incredible””
Since the tracker is already OpenSource, what about giving the changes back to the community, YellowTab?
The tracker they are using isnt opensource, notice my comment above, it is based off hugo santos work for yellowtab inc.
it isnt based off of opentracker , jack i think you should retract your statement.
“The tracker they are using isnt opensource, notice my comment above, it is based off hugo santos work for yellowtab inc”
Hugo Santos == Linn ?
Ssooooo… NOW I start to understand MANY things… not necessarily good things.
“jack i think you should retract your statement”
Uhm, ok.
Retracted statement:
It would be good if YT gave the changes back to the community.
Is it ok now?
Eugenia,
I sense a lot of resentment in your words for Yellow Tab.
While I agree with you that that is not professional behaviour, venting it in a public forum is gratuitious and completely unnecessary.
A few words like “I have unsucessfully tried to get a beta from YT for a preview for a long time” would have been more than enough. Instead, you go into a personal rampage on Bernd with full details of how he “misbehaved”, which I think is in itself VERY unprofessional of you.
Lead by example.
Koki
They will be giving things back to the community when time is ready (not necessarily Tracker).
E., perhaps your constant bickering about Zeta beeing nothing more than a PE with addons has just made them think about giving an early beta away. By all means, your recent outburst of “anti-beos” statements and now your rather harsh reactions against YT does not qualify you as objective tester in the first place.
Hey all! Stop and think all!
I remember, in jan-12-2002, BeUnited reports that Palm had refused your propost paying some millions to Palm…
How much YellowTab payed to have access to BeOS source-code?
Palm, If I get US$ 5.000.000,00 do you sell BeOS to me?
If yes, then why you not sell to BeUnited?
If not, then why you sell to YellowTab?
Michael Vinícius de Oliveira
BlueEyedOS Webmaster
yes Michael think.
As a non-profit entity, Beunited could not and cannot raise the money needed. it is called the essence of reality.
However a commercial entity that is backed by venture capital and a good LICENSE to access and further develop the code doesnt need to pay XXXX millions to reuse the code, it is all a matter of how to strike a deal with a company.
Probably, there’s an agreement between YT and Palm,
that some % of the sells goes to Palm.
(boy, THIS is bad english)
This is what comes into my mind.
Finally a new BeOS (r6 =]).
I want a alpha/beta/RC version!!!
Even if it crashes 40 times an hour!!!
PLZ tell me will there Be a public free rc/limited or smth version ???
“Ryan, this is a COMPLETELY different story.
All the companies you listed are already known to the masses, and all have valid products which have sell lots of pieces.
YellowTab has not (yet?). So it is VERY important to be punctual.”
it is more important to release a quality/reliable product than to be punctual. Yellow tab’s entire reputation is based on this one product. If the product fails to live up to expectation then the company’s reputation would falter. By comparison, those other established companies already have a reputation based on existing products, sometimes good sometimes not.
I didn’t mean that YT has to ship tomorrow.
But they need to show something. And OSNews is a good
opportunity.
Yes, maybe it’s a risk, since Eugenia will either talk VERY BAD or VERY GOOD of Zeta.
Anyway, I know she is pretty a good journalist, and she knows to be objective.
And, as acoromi said, there is too much “secret” about Zeta.
What about revealing the provenience of Zeta on the YT page?
I love WindowsXPerimental
I too want to see Zeta suceed (man, my english is horrible!) but I am disturbed by their attitude. Case in Point: I emailed Bernd right after the Zeta announcement and asked if he would agree to an email interview for a tech magazine I was contributing to about BeOS. he said yes. We polled our readers, got ten questions, emailed him. he said he would get back to use. never did. Despite repeated requests he never answered. I was dissapointed. I now throw in my lot with OpenBeOS.
That said, I’d like to see FreeCiv for BeOS
Well, personally, i think Eugenia is the BEST journalist to review Zeta. She has a great and good experience in BeOS world. And more important (is my opinion) she is sincere.
I think she is very objective with all her reviews.
Eugenia, keep up the good job!
acoromi.
This Hugo Santos and SVG icon support business got me interested (I’m currently addicted to creating such icons)… I did a Google on that and came up with an OBOS e-mail thread…
…I might be putting two and two together and making it into five here, but has Mr. Santos retracted his SVG OBOS code in favour of putting it into Zeta?
If so, what is the current status of SVG support in OBOS?
It’s just like the good old OSNews of yesteryear again…
How can you speculate on an OS when there’s been virtually no public information released, and/or reviews done? How small minded is it to write off a company simply because they can’t afford to do things the traditional way; Or perhaps they’re trying something new. How does little to no pre-release information add up to a bad product or a crappy company??
Other evidence of things being back to normal are that Eugenia’s once again ripping on individuals and companys because they didn’t appease HER (By the way… I HATE the way you ALWAYS emphasize remarks that make OSNEWS and YOU look like mini-GODS by CAPITALIZING everything. Try using the bold or italic tags rather than YELLING for once!).
And once again, people are wondering aloud how it is that Eugenia can act so unprofessional towards others, much less startup companies, without getting modded down as others would if they behaved the same way.
Where have you people been? This is all old school by now! It’s almost tradition that Eugenia rave about how great she is, and all she’s done for us and BeOS, and then to have her mod us all down when we point out that she’s behaving poorly, and or acting exactly how the same people she’s bitching about act.
Ooh! But perhaps today we’ll be in for that rarest of shows when Eugenia goes off the deep end and starts calling others “fucking assholes” and other wonderful names when people “question her authoritay'”.
Man… The last month or so has been great! No huge fights on the boards, no curse riddled insults from Eugenia about how she could solve the worlds problems (if they’d just LISTEN!), and no Amiga vs. the world arguements (although I’d like to see a little more coverage of the hardware systems, and their progress running other OS’s!). I often wondered if I was hitting the right link when I’d hit this site.
But now things are back to normal…
Hey -Perhaps the reason that they haven’t sent OSNews a review copy is that they’ve seen the way Eugenia goes off on people and companies that she has issues with, and they don’t want to deal with it. Possibly not (although it’d be a strong consideration for me were I releasing any new OS-related product), but you guys are writing them off without even having a clue about what they’re offering, or how it’s going to perform.
Ok, and now for the final step towards getting things back to normal, some people have to post stuff like “But I like Eugenias reviews and opinions”, and a couple also have to say something to the effect of “Why don’t you go elsewhere to troll. We not like you here!” (or some other poorly worded sentence). A few “Yeah, me too” comments would also be in order to really bring back that old OSNews feeling.
Ah… Back to normal at last. 8)=
not to be very rude or anything.. but this way eugenia is writing… well.. “they better act nice towards me.. or else..” it is a bit kindergarden:) that is just my oppinion..
and i agree with the former poster.. it seems that ms eugenia is looking upon herself as a godess of some kind.. and that the world should do as she wants, or else.. this attitude is bad, childish and quite damaging for a site like this! just try to act a bit above the mental 13-year-old stadium..:) thank you!
But I really want to see screenshots. I want to know whether to waste my time on this. I want to see how good the fonts, how nice it looks (BeOS R5 caught my eye before because of its great looks, but not it is old). But screenshots is not as important as to what features Zeta has. I want to know if they finally got a good browser (no BeZilla, please).
Stuff like that. SVG icons is great, but I’m not going to buy something just to resize icons on the fly.
Robert, actually, they could raise the money needed. Donations, donations and again, donations. They may take awhile, but they sure would try to get the money. Another thing is that BeUnited, to the best of my knowlegde of history, was not a non-profit organization before Palm turned them down.
If that’s the case, where YT was pissed off by the so-call anti-BeOS sentiment carried by Eugenia, then they are stupid. Eugenia is the most objective reviewer I have ever known. She constantly bashes Macs, yet her review on Jaguar was suprisingly positive (not that positive but way more positive than everyone thought).
Besides, Eugenia doesn’t bash Be, or BeOS for stupid reasons. She calls it a dead OS, it is true. She says it is hard to get drivers for the OS. True. Hardly no software. True. She is way more harsh of companies like Apple and Red Hat, yet they still send her a review copy.
Thank you RajanR. In fact, the BeOS forum on osnews is the only one I read and reply these days. No matter how we turn it, I spent 3 years of my life living the BeOS. And even finding a husband through it.
But my love for BeOS, won’t make me a blind person that would not make me see its limitations today. As a technology or as a product. Living in a lie, it is something that I am not accustomed to live, and this is why I sound harsh at times.
As for the people who don’t like the way I do things, well, they seem that they don’t really understand a few things, neither they have the whole background of who/what/where. Too bad, but I can’t and I won’t please everyone. It is impossible to do so anyway.
rajanr.
BeUnited has from the start been a non-profit organisation.
Ok!
But if BeUnited get 5 millions (for exemple) and give to Palm?
Palm want more money than yellowtab pay to it with % of your sells? or want receive big values in dollars in one time?
Do you can see? Think!
Michael Vinícius de Oliveira
BlueEyedOS Webmaster
are you using babelfish for translation?
yes I have pondered it for a bit and I am also thinking realistically, Beunited will have some great issues getting a hold of that amount of money.
the only commercially viable solution is for palm to either sell it off this way to a company or just keep it locked down.
so funny, not able to answer in the open:) well! again, this godcomples.. “we are THE blablabla..” “the best.. blablabla”
first of all.. i would take sourceforge and slashdot before osnews anyday! better, less arrogant and well, more opensource.:) when someone at a page starts with “we are the best.. blablabla.. THE site.. blablabla.. I AM THE BEST blablabla.. ” i get a bit.. hmm.. sad!? cause that makes me feel sorry for the persons stating such things.. and well, to put it in simple terms, if you were a guy, i would say you were having a small-penis-complex.. but i guess it is a breast/butt/stommach thing then…
Eugenia,
Take a look at iD software’s reaction to Doom 3 Alpha being released everywhere. They didn’t exactly like it. Zeta is a start up and can’t risk bad press. If I were them I’d do the same thing. The only time you NEED TO advertise your betas is if your company is publicly traded and you want a quick stock price boost to keep the board of directors happy, who intern keep the CEO in charge.
Could it be that Yellowtab doesn’t like you very much like alot of people here?
Am I to under stand that there will be a new version of BeOS coming out(although no from Be)? Has Palm really licenced some of the sourcecode to this company to allow them to make a desktop operating system based on BeOS? So now all those BeOS zealots don’t have to wait for OpenBeOS. Now we are going to have a resurected BeOS platform along with a resurected Amiga platform. Maybe someone will bring back GeOS next.
maybe not impossible i hear someone is working on “owp” oh right that was you ;D
Beware young men in a hurry.
All that Eugenia pointed out is that Bernd made commitments that he did not keep. He apparently did this repeatedly, these were not generic announcements, these where personal communications,
How long do you put up with people in your life who constantly let you down ? Not long , unless you are a fool.
After so many disappointments you begin to smell trouble, could it be a con, a flim flam, a ruse or just incompetence. Who knows?
Eugenia you are right to “quit” doing “business” with anyone who does not come through on their commitments. I sure do.
Don
Yellowtab supposedly has a deal with Be Inc. to distribute BeOS PE. They don’t have a deal to distribute BeOS Pro. Yellowtab has a deal with Koch Media for the remaining unsold copies of BeOS Pro. Yellowtab doesn’t have a deal with Palm at all.
Yellowtab doesn’t have any access to the source code at all. If distributors like Koch have access to the source code, then Gobe (another distributor) wouldn’t have stated that they couldn’t fix certain bugs because the bugs are within the OS itself.
Why are you people defending this guy at Zeta? In the world I live in, if a person *promises* to do something over and over and never does it, we call these people *liars*.
I wrote the word “supposedly” because it seemed like anyone can freely distribute the PE version. CNET’s download.com has the PE version ready for your download. LeBuzz.com has Buzz CD (with PE version included). TuneTracker came with the PE version.
So does it mean that CNET, lebuzz and tunetracker has a deal with be to distribute the PE version.
Remember how Lindows hyped their “supposedly” development deal with AOL’s Netscape.
http://www.zdnet.com.au/newstech/ebusiness/story/0,2000024981,20268…
sam, read the pe license.
and yes yellowtab has a deal with palmsource.
I am writing this in response to some posts regarding why beunited.org is not involved in getting source code from Palm.
beunited.org is a standards organization dedicated to support the development and publication of standards for all BeOS-compatible operating systems. We are NOT OS developers, and will never be. We will, as a courtesy to our membership, provide packages of UnitedBeOS, a standards compliant compilation of all the OSBOS projects. However, we are in no way interested in developing OSBOS ourselves, as that is the job of all the OSBOS projects we support with standards, and standards, and standards…
This was not the direction of beunited.org at the time that we approached Palm. Since I have become president of the organization the entire focus and direction of the organization has changed to be a supporter of standards for the OSBOS projects.
Simon Gauvin,
President, beunited.org
Clearly they are laughing of all the people who wish BeOS to survive.
IMHO there is only one real way: OpenBeOS
Perhaps being bothered by various online news sites (ie not publications which can get investors) which will most likely bash the current product because it is not yet in a late beta stage put him off.
Reporters are as annoying as telemarketers, even moreso sometimes. Wont leave you alone, and can bash you on their soap boxes like eug does. Have some respect for people doing something others couldnt and not trying to mess it up by releasing early.
Strange that Beos Journal seems to be able to interview Bernd and to get exclusive screenshots, while Eugenia with her SUPER website is not able to get anything.
http://www.beosjournal.org/?ct=a&au=2002-12-19-zeta
Power to the little ones 😉 Size does not matter.
Interesting to see so many comments about my favorite OS.
Maybe I’m so blind but I still use this OS despite what has become of it, though.
Of course, there will be pockets of resistance, err, groups of enthusiast who will provide support. But that is just what is all there is to it at the moment.
Just keep it going, keep that hope alive and just keep on coding. It will eventually get there.
You don’t seem to get the picture – it doesn’t matter if somebody is put off or finds something annoying, if you promise, then you either deliver or not. If you don’t, you have no credibility. If I didn’t keep promises in my work, I would have zero clients fast and have no business.
I see what this thread is – an excuse to go on a Eugenia-bashing binge. That’s what it is and it stinks. She told the truth and, as usual, gets bashed.
>>>Strange that Beos Journal seems to be able to interview Bernd and to get exclusive screenshots, while Eugenia with her SUPER website is not able to get anything.
Eugenia wants to review a beta version of it, not merely showing screenshots that yellowtab provided.
Jay,
It was Eugenia who jumped on Bernd and went to great extent to detail on how unprofessional he had been with her. Which may be true, but it was gratuitious (nobody asked her), unnecessary (as in “off topic”) and, in my humble opinion, VERY unprofessional.
I say: practice what you preach.
Koki
Don’t forget she’s Greek. Women from Balkans are like that, don’t fool around with them, they’ll brake your bones 🙂
My girlfriend is just like that 🙂
But Koki, someone posted an said he wanted to see Eugenia review Zeta (I assume because of her Be experience) and that’s when she replied as to why she had not. She didn’t just pop up out nowhere with her remarks. She was responding to someone’s desire that she review Zeta and explained why she has not been able to do so.
Anyway, it still goes back to credibility. Promises are promises. If you don’t keep them, you can’t expect people to have any sympathy or empathy.
And Eugenia is right anyway – the other day Blue Eyed OS put out some updates for people to look at. It was nothing to speak of really, but you have to do that. If you don’t, people get the impression that you’re dealing with vaporware or that the project is dead. It has nothing to do with Eugenia. If I had a project like Zeta going, I would want people who come to sites like OS News to see what I’m doing. That’s why we all come here. So, to me, this great outpouring of empathy for the Zeta guy is phoney – it’s Eugenia-bashing, that’s all it is.
I’ll be ordering the Deluxe edition. Nice work Bernd and team.
…that YellowTab’s Zeta better have great English usage after the number of times I offered, for free, my services and assistance to Bernd in situations where the software he was posting on BeBits indicated he needed assistance reproducing native English. I admire his efforts massively, but the fact is that clear communication is very important.
I’ve offered this service (naturalizing incorrect English) to several developers and web sites over the last four years. Most ignored the offer, the rest said “Yes” and then never maintained communication. It wouldn’t bother me if they found another solution beyond me; I have no ego about this. Apparently they do. Or they think it is unimportant.
I don’t know if it is something personal against me, if I rubbed someone the wrong way, or if most developers just do not see the value in proper use of whatever language they are distributing their software in.
If I were making a product that I expected would sell well in a Japanese market, I would rely on a native Japanese speaker to insure that the language usage was correct. I wouldn’t rely on my Japanese speaking girlfriend. It’s just too important. (by the way, I think Japan is the ideal place to market OpenBeOS, hint hint)
Attention non-native english speakers: It is not a problem if you don’t speak native english. It is not a problem if you make mistakes. It is not a failure or a weakness to ask for help. It is wonderful that you speak multiple languages (something I lack and am trying to rectify).
It IS important to use language correctly and clearly; whichever language you choose to use. Especially if you are trying to get people to use or buy your software products.
This also goes for the many developers who cannot design a decent GUI to save their project. This stuff matters!
You only hurt yourselves by not accepting the wise council of others.
As for this endless argument about Eugenia… I happen to like her reviews because she is so hard-assed. I also think there are more “strategic” and “diplomatic” ways of telling the truth without compromizing the truth itself. Sometimes I feel that OSNews and its members could have been a little more professional in regards to how some things were said and with the use of language. Yes, it’s all done voluntarilly and uncompensated, but you still affect others deeply. Just look at the comments!
Yellowtab’s frustration has indeed been quite frustrating.. i must admit i agreed with about 90% of Eugenia’s “rant” as everyone is calling it. I’ve tried to get some form of info from them myself.. and all I get back is some badly worded email that is almost unintelligible. It is indeed frustrating for anxious users who are awaiting some new “rebirth” of beos (or continuuation for those inclined to think of it this way instead). Their website is not updated often. On the flip side, i suppose to each his own.. i may not like it.. like you Eugenia, i find it extrememly irritating and frustrating.. however, the unfortunate part is.. we can’t do much but wait.
pardon me.. I meant to say Yellowtab’s “behaviour” has been quite frustrating..
and here i am speaking of bad english (geeze.. someone slap me)
Okay,
I am a yellowTAB developer. We are a small team of very dedicated but VERY busy people trying to get a project out the door.. it is our passion and our desire to see Zeta succeed.
We are not out for world-wide domination or direct competition against Microsoft.. that would be suicide. Every member of yellowTAB has a day job. Most full time, leaving little time to develop on our beloved project.
So what are we trying to do? Who are we targeting? We want to give the BeOS community, as it is, a new lease on life. To do this all we need to do is release a new version of an OS based on BeOS and say a few words in BeShare. We will be overwhelmed with sales very quickly.
This will give time to organize and reorganize and structure and then market a fully usable OS for most purposes. We need this time very very badly.
Our “silence” is primarily due to our flunctuating feature list. As we make deals, purchase code, adapt projects, and write coding guidelines, documentation, installation routines, language translations, GUI consistency checks, and the like, we also have to deal with 500+ emails a day requesting to be beta testers, or for information, or just sometimes normal spam..
This is a huge overload for our small team. When Zeta is released, we switch to bug squashing and tech support mode. When something becomes annoying enough, we fix it. Zeta will be community-driven. It actually really already is. We didn’t write even half of the programs included in Zeta, they are written by the BeOS community.
Now, in all this irreverant bantering and ungoverned lashing of the tongue, I believe I may have at least given you some idea of what is going on.
1. yellowTAB consists of a small number of people who can devote small amounts of time working on yellowTAB projects.
2. Bernd can only go by the information given to him by those working on projects for yellowTAB.
3. yellowTAB has to gain permission for all items in Zeta before it can even send out a reviewer’s edition.
4. Marketing is not needed at this time, and would only complicate thing by further increasing communications tensions
5. yellowTAB’s developers are located around the world. From Texas to Germany and on, speaking so many language that Zeta was designed specially to work with multiple languages and locales. This increases communications strain.
6. Everything is on a volunteer basis.. or maybe that is donation basis… as it isn’t free to do what we are doing.
7. NDAs… yellowTAB as a team has to have an all-encompasing NDA until it is known what can and can’t be said. This goes back to communications strain.
8. We set our schedule, not OSNews.
–The loon (flame me.. I dare you)
Yes, but a response in the lines of “I have been trying to obtain a beta/iso from YT to do a review of Zeta for quite some time now without any success so far” would have been professional.
My point is that if you are going to preach professionalism, do so professionally.
Koki
PS: BTW, I like Eugenia’s reviews, and I think her work at OsNews.com is awesome.
Howdy,
Jace, I remember your offer very well. It was very much apprecciated, but the way Zeta is translated had to first be workd out. And it is now that you translate clips and phrases and words in a series of files.. or even one file (depending on many variables).
At this time, I believe we have three native english speakers working to ensure Zeta’s english is flawless (as it is the main market). We have Bernd and other German speakers to ensure the German is correct, and Zeta’s translations are user-correctable via the Personal Settings application.
I do not believe you rubbed anyone the wrong way, I am sure we were just caught up in one of our other thousand tasks (literally) at hand.
RC1 will be out Really Soon Now®, so I suggest you get it and you can have a hand at correcting more than just grammatical errors!
Sorry if you fell like you were left out, your not alone! I felt like I was for the first six weeks at yellowTAB. Forunately, we now have a common system, so things will happen very quickly.
By “common system” I mean we are all using the same base OS: Zeta. beta 1 was hurt by server access troubles. beta 2’s distrobution simply vanished. beta 3 was handled much differently. The entire yellowTAB team now has everything, not just peices of the puzzle. We were writing software on 5 or Exp/Dano or in some cases even in Linux/Unix for Zeta (mmmm.. posix…).
Jace, I hope you understand the situation. It was nothing intentional, and I’d like to thank you for your offer, but we I believe we can manage it at this time.
–The loon
Aint you the distrubutor of that hacked version of Dano?
If I were Bernd, I should avoid you as much as possible for legal issues.
I smell some FUD here…
(And to add some of my own: Since YellowTab is keeping a tight lid, are they working on unlicensed code? Dano?)
Sorry, but the power of the FUD is strong (heavy breathing).
Do you really need to attack someone, at least with such baseless accusations?
did anyone read that steinberg AG has been purchased by pinnacle systems for just $24 million. If THE premiere producer of music software (audio sequencing) is only worth 24 million then Be, inc did the right thing in the focus shift.
http://www.pinnaclesys.com/aboutus/NewsMessage.asp?id=1875&Langue_I…
Hmm well I passed through these comments real quick but also must agree with the Big E. I am a dev for Zeta & have found the same thing. Yes Bernd is ungodly busy but I too agree there are some very poor marketing & relations going on. I would like to be doing their PR but it’s Bernd’s show. Sadly bridges are being burned & while Zeta will bring the BeOS Community up to par on MANY levels I worry a great deal on it being forgotten as promises are broken & poor marketing prevails as a axe from an executioner. The screen shots page & the shots them selves are horrible & look like a sick mangeled cat did them – the site is ametuerish & does not represent a professional business look among many other things – Zeta will be a good purchase when it’s done but Yellow tab falls short on far too many things. Bernd is not an ametuer business man so I find it worrisome that he has not set more realistic goals if he is too busy to get this & that ready on time. I fear Zeta’s site wont be ready for another year much less the OS & by that time what relivence will it have. Hell by then OBOS might have hardware open GL & many of the features of Zeta but the poor PR & marketing stance will criple that too yes hardware openGL but with no bigname game devs on board who cares… WHOA dude 15,000 FPS on the gl tea pot… we’re doomed…
looncraz, I appreciate your post very much and I am looking forward to the release of Zeta very, very much. I can only imagine the lack of time your group has and all you have to do. But, you said:
“8. We set our schedule, not OSNews.”
That is not what the issue was/is. OS News is not trying to set anyone’s schedule, OS News was promised, more than once, the opportunity to look at what Zeta has done and was put off by “tomorrow”, “next week” and so on, breaking promise after promise. Why could not Zeta just said that you simply were not ready to release anything for review, instead of these ongoing broken promises? Why not just tell the truth and say you don’t feel it’s ready to be shown yet in any form? Why is that so hard to do? Doing what Zeta has done only leaves the image of Zeta having no credibility. Surely, that is the last thing your group wants. No, OS News was not trying to set any schedules for you.
At any rate, good luck and, as I said, I will look forward very much to Zeta’s release.
Seems something hasn’t even been touched on here that needs to be.
yellowTAB is EXPENSIVE to run. I have to estimate it at probably close to 1/4 million $US already invested.. without a product out the door.
Who is putting up this money??
Well, Bernd mostly!!
Why could BeUnited no get the code? Simple: they wanted to open source it.. meaning they wanted to OWN IT. If you want to distribute, you pay soooooo much less it might make you sick to know.
I do not know everything that goes on with yellowTAB, such as this thing with Eugenia. But all I know is that Bernd has never told me “tomorrow tomorrow” and then not deliver. We have had three betas, Bernd did the touches on all of them.
I have had many problems getting Bernd to understand things I say, and many times trouble understanding what he has said. This is the biggest hurdle in yellowTAB… the communications barrier.
Also, currently only Bernd knows the details of all of his contracts. Then only the few of us who have time with him for an hour or two to decipher what is going on can get a clue. I bet I am one of two people in yellowTAB that knows who is paying the bills!!
Beta 3 was forced onto yellowTAB devs and some external beta testers so that we can get a common base. beta 3a already has about as many changes as there were from R4.5 to R5!! Massive changes!
We finally have an idea of what we can say, hence why I am actually talking publicly for the first time about yellowTAB or Zeta. The situation is improving as yellowTAB prepares a release.
Also, the screenshots suck pretty much because we couldn’t show you half of the features without first knowing that we could keep them. We also have a few features we want to keep as surprises for those who buy it.
You may also be interested in knowing that we have caught the eye of commercial entities and have to work with them as well…
We may be trying to do too much.. what releasing three different versions of an operating system at once, supporting these, and then continuing on…
And Anonymous(<death_shed>) about that post.. well.. you mustn’t have been around very much.. because I know who you are and haven’t seen you in the yellowTAB chat server.. Maybe you should think about keeping up? We have actually started moving very rapidly.
–The loon
Why could BeUnited no get the code? Simple: they wanted to open source it.. meaning they wanted to OWN IT. If you want to distribute, you pay soooooo much less it might make you sick to know.
Actually, early on, BeUnited wanted to license it from Be and continue Be OS development. They never said one word about open source. They just wanted a new company behind BeOS. When they failed they became a non-profit standards body.
I do not know everything that goes on with yellowTAB, such as this thing with Eugenia. But all I know is that Bernd has never told me “tomorrow tomorrow” and then not deliver.
Then you shouldn’t comment of Eugenia situation than ridiculing her for trying to set yellowTab’s schedule to OSNews’. I know Eugenia well enough to know that she wouldn’t lie to bring down a product, especiall a BeOS-related product.
We may be trying to do too much.. what releasing three different versions of an operating system at once, supporting these, and then continuing on…
Well, I think you should cut the Developer’s edition. Deluxe would appeal to current Be OS and ex-Be OS users, while Home would appeal to newer users. But one thing for sure, you really need to market each edition properly towards the target market. meaning having the features they want. I personally want a good web browser, I couldn’t care less about playing multiple QuickTime files at a time.
As for Developers Edition, you should drop the idea and give out the extras for free. Later on, if you have the money, make a IDE ala Borland or VS (RAD, please :-). Right now you really need to create more developers. I know a lot of smalltime Linux developers that start out because they wanted to experiment. And if I’m experimenting, I wouldn’t pay more money for something I’m not sure I would use.
Euginia, talking in this way about your relationship to YellowTab is quite unprofessional. It wouldn’t make me wonder if you don’t get anything from them anymore.
Your talk about how Microsoft handles reviews is not relevant here. I think no one would disagree that there are some differences between Microsoft and Yellowtab.
Also, you should have a look at the BeOS market and all the leaked betas out there.
Obviously, there are a lot reason why Yellowtab handles this very strict and just because you are not on the list of beta testers, you shouldn’t handle this personal and just stay professional.
——-
Why could BeUnited no get the code? Simple: they wanted to open source it.. meaning they wanted to OWN IT. If you want to distribute, you pay soooooo much less it might make you sick to know.
Actually, early on, BeUnited wanted to license it from Be and continue Be OS development. They never said one word about open source. They just wanted a new company behind BeOS. When they failed they became a non-profit standards body
——-
yes its true they wanted todo so, but after that you twisted it on its own axis, it has always been a non-profit org. I should know.
I don’t think that the supposed flames here are flames. I think the best way to sum this is up is that some of us know more then other whats going on with Zeta, & that is having some mixed results. I think the frustration & reactions noted here are just this… FRUSTRATION. Eugina was a BeOS fan & almost all of us still love Be & DESPERATLY want to see it succeed. The problem is we are starting to see a growing trend of broken scheduals & promises & that worries us when much of our future back in the day was based on vapour ware & project that died. Just have the new media kit & stienbergs Nuendo for BeOS alone would have change things something massive as it would have given professional audio a serious alternative & also keep professionals eye on the OS. In the end there is no question about how much Zeta costs or how hard the development is. It’s a mounting fear & frustration. There are many people that thought Zeta wuold be commercially available now much less not even in a relivant enough state to distribute for beta reviews by news sites. To Looncraz no you didnt see me in the chat rooms – I used the forums most times but after a while simply did not have time to care about them & talked only with Bernd. like you said most people have some crazy jobs & personal lives & that limits whats able to be done. The end point is I thnk alot of people are freaking about too much secrecy & the PR should be pumped up now cuz it’s close to release. If it is great but it would seem it’s not ready for release o I think due to all the reasons you stated there should be a realistic assesment of the schedual & a press stament made saying a beta release will not be ready for 6 months or what have you & the commercial release for say next xmas as most people did think it would be ready for release around now or shortly after. Again if it is great. I have to admit that I know about nothing anymore as answers are hard to get & I have to drop all my BeOS related things due to work
🙁 – I am out of the loop for sure.
I appreciate your response to my concerns. It makes me feel much more relaxed about the state of Zeta to know that there are native speakers in place for each language. That’s very good! Thanks for the info!
I can tell that is most saying bullshit… i really wait to see them in action, it should be as funny as M$…
Spoke to Bernd suggesting he might want to come on here and have his say about what is happening. I was then emailed back being told why I was totally wrong and how comments on here were wrong, he then went on to say “But i see
no sense to spend my time to give statments on websites.”
Didn’t seem the most friendly person in the world to me.
Did it ever occur to you, Phil, that maybe Bernd has better things to do than to defend himself, his company and zeta from a bunch of ppl that obviously know nothing of what’s going on but just have to get their word out?
Bernd is working very hard on getting BeOS back on the track with all there is to it. Give him some slack.
He ‘s just trying to make money with BeOS, which is not a problem… but there are other way to get BeOS back !!! Like OpenbeOS, BluEyedOS, CosmOe…
David yes I understand that 100% and would have had no problem if he had just said that however he didn’t he went off at me suggeting that I had said he had done or hadn’t done something.