Microsoft Corp. won some and lost some on Friday in its efforts to get a federal judge to dismiss antitrust lawsuits filed by Sun Microsystems Inc., Be Inc. and Burst.com Inc. U.S. District Court Judge J. Frederick Motz denied Microsoft’s motions in the Be and Burst.com case in a hearing this morning. But this afternoon, Motz granted requests to dismiss some of the counts raised by Sun, while taking others under review.
Judge Gives Mixed Ruling in Be/Burst/Sun-Microsoft Cases
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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I won’t to get my share of the lawsuit, as a Be shareholder.
It’s justice for all if Be wins- they should win, hands down. Hold on to your stock, buddy. I wouldn’t worry about a “payout”, but, there will be some umm, “Good thing” come out of this. I can’t say more.
why not?
They’ll probably give you some MS stock in place of you Be stock. hahahah
wouldn’t that be funny? Well, I’d laugh.
jamus
I meant: in place of ‘your’ Be stock…
Keep fighting on my way word OS Company there will be peace when you are done. Go Be Inc.
Be’s suit is rather weak because they are acting upon a ruling given on an unrelated charge. Judge Jackson’s ruling. They may have a case though, if they can prove that it would be different if Microsoft didn’t violate certain rules.
Burst.com’s claim should be only intellectual, nothing else. It is even funny that they make any claim on this issue at all.
Sun is a joke.
obelix: It’s justice for all if Be wins
No, it’s justice for Be diehards and shareholders.
obelix: they should win
They should loose. Be died because it lack any marketing and business and management skills. It has been failing since it was founded, way before it entered the PC market because they lack a single iota of marketing skills. Take the failure of BeBox for example, surely you can’t blame Microsoft for it.
obelix: Hold on to your stock, buddy.
They don’t really have a choice. The only way to get rid of stock is to sell them, but who would buy Be Inc. stocks?
Sergio: They may have a case though, if they can prove that it would be different if Microsoft didn’t violate certain rules.
But it would be very easy for Microsoft to prove nothing would be different using press releases, product analysis, etc.
Sergio: Burst.com’s claim should be only intellectual, nothing else. It is even funny that they make any claim on this issue at all.
Personally, I think Burst.com is taking it too much by using antitrust laws. Because if it expect the courts to limit what Microsoft can put in Windows (i.e. everything), we would be having something like DOS. Maybe less, cause there are companies that make CLI shells…
Instead of whining, they should have quickly adapted.
Sergio: Sun is a joke.
But it has more money pumped into it than the other two… goes to show how stupid Sun’s arguments are.
Be made some mistakes but they clearly did suffer from MS monopolization of the OS market and their ability to control OEMs. That a supplier (ms) can control its customers (PC makers) is utterly absurd and a clear sign that something is quite wrong. I don’t know why some of you think Be has a weak case. They were clearly injured by someone that is a monopoly.
That said. There is way too much litigation in the US. Though i consider myself an independent, and do not much like the current republican rule in the US, i’ll say that if they accomplish tort reform then the rest of the damage they incur might be worth the high price.
Be made some mistakes but they clearly did suffer from MS monopolization of the OS market and their ability to control OEMs.
Actually, they can avoid their suffering if the company and their resources are influenced by marketing. Just say Microsoft never had control over OEMs, and OEMs are free to bundle a dual boot system with Windows and BeOS. But notice Be was trying to give free copies of BeOS to OEMs – how would they make money out of that?
Another thing is that they lack is large ISVs. If there weren’t any OEM restrictions, and they get a rather large market share (say, 5%), would applications come to BeOS? No, cause ISVs know that those using BeOS have Windows too.
Could they have succeeded with good marketing even with Microsoft brutally trying to kill it? Yes. Could they have succeeded if Microsoft wasn’t a monopoly and didn’t have restrictions on OEMs? No.
Besides, I just found a few books at a bookshop that might be of interest to everyone.
“Antitrust: The Case for Repeal” (Dominick T. Armentano)
and
“Winners, Losers & Microsoft” (Stan J. Liebowitz, Stephen E. Margolis)
and
“The Microsoft Antitrust Appeal: Judge Jackson’s “Findings of Fact” Revisited ” (Alan Reynolds)
Hope I got the titles right, these books should be on Amazon.com, they have everything there after all. Note: prepare yourself for statistics, numbers and even more statistics.
Be tried it’s darned best to promote BeOS, but the OEM deals wouldn’t come up. At one point they even offered BeOS for free, and STILL there were no OEM deals, save for the few eGeek (or what the foot were they called) and Fujitsu-Siemens models.
Purely on BeOS’s merits as a desktop OS, I reckon it’s ludicrious that it didn’t succeed.
… seems to have been the best and the worst thing they could have done for their case. It proves that OEMs were coerced (MS came down on Toshiba), but since they were willing to give awya their product it hurts their chances of getting money.
Ah well. It will be interesting to watch.
..because it’s clear that the offer was a way of promoting BeOS, a common practice in all fileds of the industry and economy. The judge will have no problem grasping that concept.
“Actually, they can avoid their suffering if the company and their resources are influenced by marketing. Just say Microsoft never had control over OEMs, and OEMs are free to bundle a dual boot system with Windows and BeOS. But notice Be was trying to give free copies of BeOS to OEMs – how would they make money out of that?”
Have you actually read Be’s filed complaint? In it, they describe how when they were having initial talks with Hitachi to bundle BeOS with their computers (nothing was final). Hitachi was required to notify Microsoft of bundling another OS, and they did so. The next day Microsoft had executives in the headquarters of Hitachi (in Asia) threatening their top executives. Similarly, Compaq basically told Be that they couldn’t bundle their OS because MS would retaliate against them. The fact that Be couldn’t even give their OS away to OEMs only further supports this.
MS clearly abused their monopoly, and anyone that blames Be’s marketing department for their inability to get an OEM deal is just naive.
It’s quite obvious – all the marketing in the world wouldn’t shift an OS with Micro$oft’s monopoly.
If any people have heard of an alternative OS more than any it’s Linux, but even that – although gaining ground slowly – would have gone under if it was a commercial product.
The BeOS was a commercial product – not Open Source. This makes all the difference – Linux is struggling despite the fact that you can get loads of free software and a free OS. From a commercial point of view nobody stands a whelks chance in a supernova (HHGTTG), except for Mac – and that’s purely because they’ve been around for long enough.
If OEM’s had been able to bundle BeOS without Gate’s thugs knocking down their doors BeOS could well have survived. People would have noticed it booted up much quicker than Windows. They would have said “Hang on… this is fast, nice, and makes my machine useable. Sod this M$ sack o’ sh**e!” …. And there you have it – one more FAT32 partition to be removed a disk.
I just wish Palm would take their acquired Be engineers and say – here! code! make BeOS 6! and then we could all live happily ever after.
Could they have succeeded with good marketing even with Microsoft brutally trying to kill it? Yes. Could they have succeeded if Microsoft wasn’t a monopoly and didn’t have restrictions on OEMs? No.
LOL… I laughed my ass off at this for awhile. Ok first of all they could have succeeded either way. The only problem is that when you can’t actually ship your product with a computer system and you don’t have the resources to market your product, it’s fairly hard to gain market share. Everybody knows this!
Listen I’m not supporting Be’s position, but I’m sure as hell not supporting anything Microsoft driven, if you are a private company developing innovative software your biggest fear is Microsoft, since you basically know that they’ll screw you, you cannot innovate on the Windows platform without one day losing your product to a competing Microsoft product, or just getting bought out. Plain and simple.
Man, what a bunch of fly-by-night dot com scam artists! Basically, ‘bursting’ streaming media == slightly lower encoding speed than the end user’s bandwidth + buffering on the client.
No joke. BUFFERING STREAMING DATA. That’s what burst.com is all about. Yeah, that’s innovative.
Be’s case, I believe, should definitely be examined if the rumors of possible OEM deals that were suffocated by Microsoft are to be believed (Toshiba, Compaq). Hell, JLG actually said that they would GIVE THE OS AWAY to OEM’s just to get marketshare. BeOS had it’s faults, but for $0 who can believe that it wouldn’t be compelling for OEM’s to even offer as a build-to-order option?
>>>>BeOS had it’s faults, but for $0 who can believe that it wouldn’t be compelling for OEM’s to even offer as a build-to-order option?
Support costs money, that’s why OEM’s wouldn’t touch it.
You are talking about the same big OEM manufacturers who are refusing to pre-install WinXP’s service pack 1 onto brand new computers because the current xp (without sp1) is stable enough that they can fire a bunch of their own telephone support staff. So they are not going to risk it by pre-installing SP1, even though they (and you, the individual consumer) already paid Microsoft for it.
I don’t know if you have any serious mental problem but if you are a small company, you don’t get scared of Microsoft only, you get scared of all big companies. You have to be sort of an idiot, seriously an idiot to say that the small companies get scared of only Microsoft if they are working on Windows platform. It is even more stupid to say that Microsoft will screw you. There is no logic behind that statement.
There are hundreds of companies building products for Windows, and they are not screwed at all. Actually it is those companies which make Windows Windows. They earn a lot of money. On the contrary, we hear that companies on other platforms, like Apple, want to produce for Windows, because they are screwed by Apple, for example Watson. Just use a Palm. Documents To Go for example, mainly supports Windows. They have an excellent technology, Microsoft is one of the companies which licensed the technology. Those companies which you claim Microsoft is screwing produce and work with Microsoft. They earn a lot of money.
I think your comments screw this board. No insight into anything, just simple plain stupid claims. Another troll.
mario: Be tried it’s darned best to promote BeOS, but the OEM deals wouldn’t come up.
It is because BeOS never actually made a product to sell, rather it tried to sell a product that it made. The difference being that BeOS while revolutionary in many ways didn’t have want potential-customers want.
Even if Microsoft didn’t place restrictions on OEMs, I doubt much of the OEMs would continue to bundle BeOS because it cost much more to do so (support, installation, writing drivers, etc.)
For a small company, Be should have targeted a small distinct market. For example, it can take the video market. They could take initiatives like porting major third party software ala Loki Software. But did it do that? Nope. The problem is that they were trying to run before they can crawl. Small companies with small capitals should target small target markets instead of taking on big companies like Microsoft.
They started failing even before they had a PC version. Take BeBox for example. It had so much potential. Had they have a proper small distinct market and marketed BeBox towards that market, BeBox wouldn’t be a resounding failure. But did they do that? Nope. Hardly anyone would buy a BeBox merely because it is fast and cool because they can’t do their work on it. BeBox could have successfully killed Apple and take over their market. Did they even tried? Nope.
mario: Purely on BeOS’s merits as a desktop OS, I reckon it’s ludicrious that it didn’t succeed.
If people can’t do what they want on Be OS, though matter how cool it is, it hardly have any merits on the desktop. For example, the last OS I would recommend to my mother is BeOS mainly because of the lack of any good Internet browser.
Anonymous: Have you actually read Be’s filed complaint?
Yes, and I’m not denying that these events took place. However, Microsoft should have the right on how their products are bundled with a overall system.
Let me give you an example. A new wine producer started marketing it wines saying it uses high quality French grapes from a certain valley in France. However, in the wine itself contains cheap Australian grapes, shouldn’t the French suppliers have the right to withdraw their grapes from this producer?
Anonymous: MS clearly abused their monopoly, and anyone that blames Be’s marketing department for their inability to get an OEM deal is just naive.
If Be had a better marketing department, it would have been able to rise about these OEM business. In fact, it would never have to depend on these to succeed. Besides, what Be wanted was a shortcut to stardome, to be bundled with every PC along with Windows. In other words it didn’t want machines running BeOS only because they know nobody in their right minds would buy it.
Besides, if you read my comments, you would notice that it is my opinion (and opinions of many economist and businessmen) that Be would still fail even if it had secure deals with these OEMs unhindered by Microsoft.
MGD: It’s quite obvious – all the marketing in the world wouldn’t shift an OS with Micro$oft’s monopoly.
Well, the only company in the past one decade that actually made marketing a huge part of their product and PR decissions that competes against MS is Apple. Notice they are profitable. But their market share? Well that is the fault of their business model, no amount of marketing would fix that.
So in other words, it is not obvious.
MGD: If any people have heard of an alternative OS more than any it’s Linux, but even that – although gaining ground slowly – would have gone under if it was a commercial product.
It may have gone down if it practices similar marketing decisions as Be Inc. and many of the Linux companies. But it survives because its existance isn’t based on any company.
MGD: except for Mac – and that’s purely because they’ve been around for long enough.
Atari, Amiga, etc. have been around for a long time. Why are they dead. Their own fault. The Mac, almost everyone predicted, would be bankrupted by the turn of the century. Fortunately for Apple shareholders, Steve Jobs reverse this by actually following marketing simple rules.
MGD: If OEM’s had been able to bundle BeOS without Gate’s thugs knocking down their doors BeOS could well have survived.
How sure are you? Be was offering it at a price close to $0, and when they got too desperate, they gave it away to OEMs for free.
Would most people use BeOS over Windows if it came on their PC? Doubt it. Would major Windows ISVs write software for BeOS? Doubt it.
MGD: People would have noticed it booted up much quicker than Windows.
And then they would notice that their productivity apps don’t run on BeOS, they would notice their webbrowser can’t render most sites, they would notice that they would be better off spending 60 seconds more booting Windows.
MGD: and then we could all live happily ever after.
“we” doesn’t include Palm users (that wouldn’t find any benefits from BeOS 6), Palm shareholders who would loose money (and sleep) because of it and Palm employees when Palm goes deeper in red.
jbett: The only problem is that when you can’t actually ship your product with a computer system and you don’t have the resources to market your product, it’s fairly hard to gain market share.
True, that’s why they shoudl target small distinct markets. Just say they target the print market, they would advertise in media targeting that market, they would have a PR team making sure the media targeting this market mentions them, etc.
Marketing isn’t something that is easy. It may sound easy, but never easy.
Anonymous: but for $0 who can believe that it wouldn’t be compelling for OEM’s to even offer as a build-to-order option?
Notice when the courts make sure there isn’t any OEM restrictions, Linux only picked up in markets where is it popular, namely the corporate market. And even before the courts freed up the OEM market, Linux was a build option for some of Dell workstations to the corporate market.
Now with no restrictions in OS bundling, why isn’t there anyone bundling Linux with Windows even at $0?
Sergio: Another troll.
I wouldn’t call jbett’s post a troll. A troll would be a comment with no argument. jbett have his own arguments and belives and opinions. Having a different opinion doesn’t make it a troll.
Well according to what jbett says, if you are a private small company you should be scared of Microsoft because they will screw you. Ok, it is a different opinon which I assume based on some facts that jbett knows.
Can you or jbett list the number of companies which are screwed by Microsoft, and explain how come the given examples should make us conclude that private companies should get scared of Microsoft. Also how about the companies which are not screwed and actually very happy to work on Windows platform? Don’t they logically constitute the examples that will work against the “opinion”.
Assuming that all in all, jbett just expresses his/her opinion, I am having a quite hard time understanding exactly how he can say that Microsoft is screwing all private companies and thus private companies should scare of Microsoft. How come also there are so many companies which make money out of Windows platform without being screwed. jbett’s “opinion” in my mind is a troll claim unless one can explain me the connection with the facts. Otherwise I can also claim that jbett is actually hired by Oracle and he/she is paid to post false claims against Microsoft. Does that make sense to you? Well, if jbett’s statement is an opinion, can you also consider this as an opinion.
rajan: BeOS was targeted at pro audio for a while.
It looked pretty promising, with Steinberg porting
apps and high-end audio card manufacturers announcing
drivers.
Then suddenly they switched to internet appliances.
I’m pretty sure they simply found out that a nieche
market like pro audio wouldn’t be able to sustain
BeInc’s costs of 20 million dollars per anno.
If they targeted pro-audio, why is only one app available for it? What about other apps? Used by the majority of users? What about apps like Cakewalk or Sound Forge or Cubase or other stuff? Why sound guys like Darius don’t have any interest in audio?
Steinberg is a small catch compared to the number of ISVs and IHVs that make up the market.
Besides, I never said that porting apps would be a single solution. PR and advertising have to play a big part, there is no use having everything in place and nobody knows you.
It is his opinion that private companies are scared. It is your opinion that they aren’t. DId both of you provide any proof in terms of statistics and surveys? Nope. Does having your software made for Windows mean you aren’t scared of Microsoft? Nope. In other words, under your defination, you, jbett, me and just about everyone here is a troll.
Or whatever these tablets things are called now. It seems to me that, among other things, Microsoft couldn’t tolerate BeOS being the OS for webpads three years before MS had their products ready for release.
I’m pretty sure Bill Gates is a terrorist. We should send in the rangers.
From what I understand from Webpad (from what I read from National Semiconductor) is that it is a PDA with a large colour screen. Tablet PCs on the other hand is laptops with either a hidden keyboard or no keyboard at all. Besides, there are tonnes of products like these in the Korean, Chinese and Japanese market that runs Linux. I don’t see anywhere Microsoft trying to undermine it.
Besides, the WebPad is a trademark by National Seminconductor Corp and was unveiled before Be even concieved the idea. Later NSC decided to use Be’s software. I don’t see how its failure have anything to do with Microsoft. Besides Be, the WebPad originally ran QNX, and had support for Linux.
It was a Internet Appliance, and IAs overall failed.
Does this Everyone vs. Microsoft really need to be rolled out again? honestly.
Regarding burst.com, I don’t know the finer details, so I won’t comment.
Regarding Be. I was a hardcore BeOS fan many moons ago. When BeOS R4 was developed, I pre-ordered a copy, when BeOS R5 was released, I pre-ordered a copy. During this time, I had high hopes for BeOS, hoping that one day there would be StarOffice and Mozilla running on it etc. etc. After getting R4, I realised that as I looked further into the abyss, the more negative the situation was.
Mozilla, Apache and anumber of other ports were held up because the lack of, IIRC, nmap and other UNIX/POSIX capabilities. Then add on top of that the lack of any quality commercial applications. Heck, looking back, one only needs to see what Linux had aka, StarOffice 5.1a and what BeOS had, Be Productive, so see how BeOS was never going to get off the ground.
For several months I was looking at the situation through rose tinted glasses with the assumption, “sure, once the software producers see how great BeOS is, of course they will port their applications”, this optimism kept up till the release of BeOS R5, when I realised that they were doomed.
Each year they received money from Venture Capitalists, and each year they wasted that money maintaining a PowerPC version that only worked on obsolete hardware, and worse still, most Apple users were quite happy with MacOS as the release of MacOS X was just around the corner. One year, IIRC, they received 30million in funding. Where did it go? thats a mystery in itself.
With all the money they were given, one can’t help asking these questions:
1. Why did BeOS make an OS from scratch knowing that the cost of developing one outweighed licensing code from a current operating system company, such as Windriver (BSD) and tweaking it for desktop use?
2. Why didn’t they foster development, that is, approach Adobe, Macromedia and Corel and say, “we want your software on our platform. What is the cost? and well will pay for the porting”.
3. Who started this zealot hatred of all things “legacy”? the “screw C, lets exclusively use C++”, “No we’re not UNIX like” and “oh, lets not fully implement POSIX compliance” rants that would come out of Be Inc.
Regarding the issue of small software producers and Microsoft, I know a person who is a programmer at a small software company, their main area is producing a product similar to Macromedia Director crossed with Shockwave and Flash.
Here are some facts people forget:
1. The company receive massive discounts from Microsoft for development tools, subscriptions and support.
2. They develop for Windows because it has the largest market share, if something else had a large market share, they would develop for that. Most companies would consider developing for an alternative platform, however, unless they have a decent market size to cover the cost of the investment into porting the application, the risk isn’t worth taking.
No no. 2 x 2 = 4. Can you prove it? No, not really. The fundemental fact that you omit is that, there are things which we call common sense. Can you claim that someone is a murderer if you can’t provide enough detail of why you believe that. No, however I can not really prove that you are completely wrong either. It is the common sense that trolls don’t have. If I see that someone says which has nothing to do with common sense and an obvious lie, or a just some made up stuff I call it a troll, which is actually what everybody else does and what common sense dictates.
If you think that it is his opinion, and that the “opinion” which says Microsoft scares every small company out there developing for Windows, it is also very reasonable for me to make up lots of stuff, including the claim that this guy is paid by Oracle, and actually his secret goal is to post lies into web public forums. Can you prove that I am wrong? No. Not really. Can I prove that I am right, no, not really. So under your definition, I can make any claim I want, and still not be a troll. So overall you can regard that claim as an opinion, which I disagree and I say it is simply a troll made up stuff without any common sense. I have read many complaints against Microsoft, but this is the first time I see that Microsoft is accused of scaring small companies. I don’t know what you consider as a troll. It just seems to me an open invitation for a stupid discussion where one side can throw out claims without any common sense and still be considered a normal reasonable person. Well anyway, I already called it a troll, and I am still going to call such posts a troll. This is my opinion.
I’m no lawyer but here’s 2 cents.
I once took a small course on interviewing. One point that was stressed was to ask job related questions. For example, ask about experiences with customers, but do not ask how many children does the person have.
We were shown a video with two interviews.
In the first, the interviewer asked many questions that shouldn’t be asked, such as do you like the geographical location of the place, what is your favorite food, and other stuff; and asked very little job related questions even though he did ask.
In the second, the interviewer was more focused. The person interviewed had submitted a much more clear and professional interview, and answered the questions very well and with confidence. This person earned the job.
Taking out all improper questions, it was clear that the second case would have won anyway.
The person interviewed in the first interview sued. The argument was a poor interview. Should she win or not?
The answer is yes, she should. The reason is simple: the argument was that of a poor interview NOT that she was not chosen. Had she tried to use the fact that she did not earn that job, she might have lost, as the other candidate was better.
So… something to remember. There are many things. Do not mix them. If you go to court, make sure that the arguments you choose are right for you.
Yes, part of Be’s mistakes were poor marketing and so on and so forth. But part of it was that it couldn’t introduce itself in the OEM arena, etc. (you know the story.)
Should they focus on the OEM thing, they have a good chance. Should they claim failure because of it…
People don’t seem to know or understand that monopolists have more restrictions to what they can do to stiffle the competition than “ordinary companies” do. The reason is obvious: if there were not such rules, the whole economy (or economy at one sector) could end up being owned by single company which no-one would have resources to compete against. This would be effectively a much same as communism, only the selection process of the leaders would be different (but that is a tiny difference in the end really). But maybe this is what many people wish secretly in their hearts: strong & unbeatable leaders? 8)
Microsoft don’t scare developer’s into coding exclusively for their platform. The simple fact is that Microsoft has a monopoly on the desktop market to the extent that companies only stand a good chance of surviving if they focus on windows.
I no longer user BeOS as 4 OS’s on one machine is a bit much. I’m using windows for my university project – otherwise I would not be able to work in uni as well. Once this project is finished I will do my best never to install a microsoft OS again.
I use Linux as my main OS, and I’m playing around with FreeBSD.
But not one of these has the ease of use of BeOS, or ease of installation for that matter. I am aware that you can now get Mozilla for BeOS (Bezilla) – and there are plenty of productivity packages available – what’s wrong with AbiWord?
The main problem BeOS had was hardware support – and that is due to companies not wanting to spend money developing drivers and not wanting to release details of their products to the Open Source community.
As for the arguement about BeOS 6 being no help to palm users…. Palm OS 5 uses plenty of BeOS ideas – even some code apparently. I use a Palm and the more BeOS in it the better.
Hey, I liked your comment about everyone here being trolls… that’s kind of funny…
The US government is impotent and stupid in technology cases such as this. They just cannot move fast enough, with the right information, in any legal action involving MS because of the artificially accellerated pace of the industry.
They’re STILL talking about browser tying. Six years from now, when there is a completely different landscape, they will only then begin to discuss the Boot-loader license restrictions that were the real problem. It will be too late, again, for it to matter at all.
Even JLG agreed that it’s a good idea to bundle a web browser with an OS (albeit, one that can easilly be exchanged for ANY other browser that the USER WANTS to exchange it for).
Petition Be then, if loads of people do it and they find their mail server crumbling due to high traffic then it might prove a point, its not as though Palm don’t have mindshare.
If not that why don’t Palm just opensource Be and support the OS effort?
pro audio was not going to pay the bills for a couple of reasons. One, it just was not that big of a market. Proof, steinberg was purchased for just 24 million.
two. The audio companies were strapped. They had limited cash to develop and market be software because they also had to upgrade for OSX and for xp/WDM. That took a lot. Just look at what happened to steinberg. When they could not get an IPO under favorable conditions, they had to sell. Emagic was also sold.
three, Be’s investors had already sunk serious cash in there and wanted it back. Internet appliances were hyped beyond belief and there is probably a market there, just one that will take years to happen and probably will emerge through phones and pdas.
Would Be have made it without MS intervention? Eh, I really don’t think so.
I know a lot of people were big fans of BeOS , but it seems to me that its biggest supports were those people who think that the speed at which an OS boots and/or how elegant the OS is determines its usefulness, but the rest of us just didn’t care.
When it comes to the applications department, it appears that the pickings were pretty slim, even by Linux standards. Sometimes, I wonder what the hell some of you do with your computers .. I can just see you there editing a config file or playing with the ‘elegant’ interface with one hand, while pounding your pud with the other.
It seems to me that Be has a legitimate case. I’m really unsure though if that will mean anything to shareholders. I don’t think “they” care about the shareholders and are liable to settle for a small amount of money then split the money with the lawyers, leaving the shareholders (again) with nothing.
It must be tough to run a company, a software company especially when the competition (Microsoft) enters into contracts to keep you out of the market. Yet, they should have found a way to do it.
I hope companies never let the management team of BEOS on a board of directors again.
I remember reading history of Be Inc that JLG was once offered a position at Amiga, but was turned down.
Be inc clearly was in the same niche as amiga
i am surprised JLG didn’t take amiga, which was selling 68k machines and had a solid revenue stream, and continue to imrpove on it, as opposed to building be inc from scratch with no proven revenue source and amounting to nothing
Darius: “Sometimes, I wonder what the hell some of you do with your computers …”
I am an independent animation creator. I have been using BeOS for the better part of 2 years now. I am a few months shy of putting out my first animation on DVD. All animation (stop motion and 3D), graphics, sound efx and music were all created with BeOS and programs created just for BeOS. So, I’m not sure where some people get the idea that there a “no” apps for Be. As for other things, I play/rip/edit my MP3s, I create webpages, edit video, I learn to program, I watch TV and record my shows, I have webpages and text files read to me by my computer, receive/send emails, etc. All the wonderful things that any Windows/Mac/Linux person does with their PCs.
my point was that most companies in the past that have actually come out with great innovative products are either no longer in business because Microsoft bought them out, they are a fairly small company because Microsoft found a way to mimmick and reproduce the product, and the last scenario is that your a private company with innovative software being developed for another platform. Well a lot of the reason I come and post here is because I learn a lot from the reply’s now passing me off as a troll and telling me there are living examples that go against my theory doesn’t really tell me anything. Did you know that there are martians in outer space? lol.
I don’t want to hear about video game companies, or Real Inc. cause nobody is sure whether they are doing great or alright. And it can’t be a company that makes generic burner software, I wanna hear about a company with a great software innovation that atleast has a good hold on a market, success to me is not measured by profits and such, market share also has a lot to do with it.
Here is why what you say doesn’t make any sense at all. You just seem to stuck with this idea, you don’t think. It is better if you are a troll, otherwise it just means that you are not really smart.
Macromedia’s flash, adobe photoshop, quicken, adobe acrobat, gotomypc.com, dreamweaver.
The fact that you express as Microsoft’s buying out a company as a scary thing is stupid enough. If the sellers are happy, why the hell you are complaining. I wish I can build a company which Microsoft buys. What the hell does it mean that selling your company to a big company mean a scary thing. It is not a scary thing, it is a very very good thing.
The fact that you didn’t give one single example for other cases is a clear proof that you are trolling here. I am not even sure that you know what you are talking about. It just seems so random claims. Yet you demand example from me.
The fact that you single out real and game developers is also quite funny, because you know they are innovative and they are profitable on windows.
The fact that you want us to show proof is also stupid, because you are the one who accuse Microsoft. You need to show us why you think that Microsoft is scaring small companies. As I said, it is too obvious that you are trolling here, otherwise I found your ideas and claims pretty much worthless.
Why do you insist on bringing up the same tired old arguments every time, even though we have proven you wrong on many of them. I have answered the “Why didn’t any pro audio apps exist for the beos if it was aimed at the pro audio market?” question twice now I think, and still you ask it although you have been proven wrong. You know I live without the “ok, you are right”, but what I can’t stand is that you still refuse to change and go with the facts, it just shows how stupid you are and that I wouldn’t try to argue with you again unless it wasn’t in a public place like this.
It seems to me there are very few issues before the court in this case. The use of the Judge Jackson Findings of Fact has already been decided I believe and the findings are admissable. This establishes many difficult and expensive evidenciary facts to the benefit of Be Computing.
It means MSFT has been found to be a monopoly and this establishes that they must abide by the many and severe restrictions burdened on all legal monopolies. Any company that intended to compete with a monopoly and was barred from competing by the actions of that monopoly will have a case that they have been damaged by illegal activities on the part of the monopolist. Case closed pretty much. Monopolists must in essence welcome all competitors and compete strictly on the features of their product. It seems MSFT wrote restrictions into their contracts that have already been judged to be exclusionary as I view them.
Be will win that part of the case handily unless MSFT suddenly reveals some amazing evidence that they neglected to introduce in the DOJ case (unlikely).
The only interesting issue is the amount of the damages. I think this will be substantial but it is impossible to predict. You have to consider that Be’s access to financial backing became nill when it was realized that MSFT had contractually excluded them from the most important distribution channel (preloads). Had Be computing been able to access financing or been able to refund through the equitiy markets they would have been able to fund application development, drivers and have options to methods like paying SONY to include a copy of Be with every firewire digital video camera sold.
These options were denied Be such that their ability even to exist was taken away by the smothering tactics used by MSFT as I see it. The court will have to decide the damages (call in the statisticians ) and then they may be tripled on top of that.
The issue of the dicisions of the executives (good or bad) is almost irrelevent since the monopolist was going to crush them one way or another. It may make a difference in the damages but Be seemed to look over almost every possible way to survive.
10x rain, i had intention to write similar posting (i’m watching his activity here for long time with permanent surprising about such persistance), but avoided it for 2 reasons
1)my poor english
2) nature of person you described – no sence to appeal (and complain) to comnon sence and honesty of person who for sure will “ingore” also such posting in long-term.
Go take a breath of fresh air Rajan. Your comment are always overlong and over winded. To qoute an old song
“Your mind is on vacation while your mouth is working overtime.” (or in your case your typing fingers)
Sergio: No no. 2 x 2 = 4. Can you prove it?
No, I can’t really prove it, but some matematicians can. So in the case of 2 x 2, it is actually 2 + 2. Or 4 x 2 = 4 + 4. Or 4 x 4 = 4 + 4 + 4 + 4.
It is pretty easy to prove that.
Sergio: The fundemental fact that you omit is that, there are things which we call common sense.
A thousand years ago, it was common sense in India to burn the widows with their dead husbands. It was common sense in England to burn their children if there is no rain for awhile.
Besides, your’s and mine opinion are just that, opinion.
Sergio: No, however I can not really prove that you are completely wrong either.
I can’t prove jbett completely wrong either. Why, has either of you done surveys among small third party developers?
Sergio: If I see that someone says which has nothing to do with common sense and an obvious lie
Then sometimes I am a troll, are you telling me that? Sometimes I get my facts confused.
Sergio: including the claim that this guy is paid by Oracle
Well, that would be your opinion and would be a complete troll. I have been called a MS employee a lot of time (actually I don’t mine being a MS employee, as long as I get paid… which I don’t now as a student).
Sergio: Can you prove that I am wrong? No. Not really.
No, he can prove your wrong because he is the person in question. But are you both owners of third party software companies?
Sergio: So under your definition, I can make any claim I want, and still not be a troll.
No, under my defination, a person is a troll if their entire argument is to attack a individual in the debate, rather attacking his arguments. For that reason, I don’t see individuals like appleforever and jbett as trolls. On the other hand, if they attack me because they can’t attack my arguments, then it is a troll.
Sergio: It just seems to me an open invitation for a stupid discussion where one side can throw out claims without any common sense and still be considered a normal reasonable person.
Ahh… no. That doesn’t mean I don’t see the person as a complete idiot. I won’t say who, but you know what I mean. Besides, look how easy was it for me, you, Matthew Gardiner etc. manage to end jbett’s argument?
Let’s give another example, Rayiner Hashem and me. His common sense say that GPL is good for consumers. My common sense say that GPL isn’t good for consumers if it takes over closed-source software.
MIkko Mäkelä: People don’t seem to know or understand that monopolists have more restrictions to what they can do to stiffle the competition than “ordinary companies” do.
People don’t seem to know or understand that the reason why Microsoft is a monopoly is that all its competitors either have business models that limit them to a small market share (Apple) or no marketing sense at all (Be Inc., a large number of Linux companies esp. Mandrake).
MIkko Mäkelä: The reason is obvious: if there were not such rules, the whole economy (or economy at one sector) could end up being owned by single company which no-one would have resources to compete against.
No, wrong. Anyone can fight against Microsoft if they like. Would it be futile or not depends on how good that person markets his products. And let me tell you something: marketing isn’t easy, it isn’t just a bunch of ads, or PR statements. It is a whole lot more than that.
However, if Microsoft was a government-sponsored monopoly, like the US Post Office, than even forming a company is a futile attempt.
MIkko Mäkelä: This would be effectively a much same as communism, only the selection process of the leaders would be different (but that is a tiny difference in the end really).
You have no reason what’s communism, right? China, Cuba, N. Korea, etc. are all not communist countries. They really really different from Marx rather Utopian theories.
MGD: I am aware that you can now get Mozilla for BeOS (Bezilla)
Yeah, and watch it crash away!
🙂
MGD: what’s wrong with AbiWord?
Let’s start from the most basic feature… no tables? No footnotes and headnotes?
MGD: As for the arguement about BeOS 6 being no help to palm users….
My argument that release BeOS 6.0 wouldn’t help Palm owners.
MGD: Palm OS 5 uses plenty of BeOS ideas
No, it uses the same codebase as OS4. OS6 would be the one with the main difference.
CrackedButter: If not that why don’t Palm just opensource Be and support the OS effort?
And do what? Help their competitors take advantage over Palm? It is much easier to license it to another company, but no one seems to have enough money to license the whole thing.
The audio companies were strapped. They had limited cash to develop and market be software because they also had to upgrade for OSX and for xp/WDM
That was only much later after Be Inc. died. Besides, Be Inc. could have ported these software for them ala Loki.
my two cents: It must be tough to run a company, a software company especially when the competition (Microsoft) enters into contracts to keep you out of the market.
Did Microsoft sign deals to keep BeBox out of the market? No. Did Microsoft sign deals to keep BeOS out of the Mac market? No. Did Microsoft sign deals to make every IA company to axe their BeIA-based products? No.
or Real Inc. cause nobody is sure whether they are doing great or alright.
Like most tech companies, Real is in the red. However, they still maintain their lead in their market, quite remarkable they manage to do a feat Netscape couldn’t.
jbett: And it can’t be a company that makes generic burner software, I wanna hear about a company with a great software innovation that atleast has a good hold on a market, success to me is not measured by profits and such, market share also has a lot to do with it.
Success to me is a lot about profit. If they never got profit, yet still a monopoly in their market, I would call them stupid rather than clever. Besides, as for generic burner software, I don’t know the market share, but Nero is earning a lot (Roxio only licensed some features to Microsoft in order to sell their products).
rain: Why do you insist on bringing up the same tired old arguments every time, even though we have proven you wrong on many of them
Because none of you proved me wrong.
rain: go with the facts
The facts say that Be had pro audio software? The facts say that BeOS was liked by pro audiophiles guys?
anonymouse: they must abide by the many and severe restrictions burdened on all legal monopolies.
Meaning they must not be able to compete with any of their competitors until their market share goes below 70%. That is *soooooo* fair.
Not.
anonymouse: Be will win that part of the case handily unless MSFT suddenly reveals some amazing evidence that they neglected to introduce in the DOJ case (unlikely).
Actually, in the DOJ case, they only introduced proof against Netscape arguments when Jackson was judge. After the appeal, it was proof against Sun and Be. Personally, I think they didn’t give their best in debunking Be’s case because the court case wasn’t about them.
anonymouse: You have to consider that Be’s access to financial backing became nill when it was realized that MSFT had contractually excluded them from the most important distribution channel (preloads).
Actually, their venture capitals stopped because they never reach a single point of profit in their decade long history. They had many failures before they tried the PC market, including BeBox and Macs.
The amount of venture capital that was funded through Be, there is no question that they could have succeed.
Besides, now Microsoft cannot restrict OEMs for OS bundling, but why isn’t anyone major making dual-boot Linux and Windows machines (even though Linux has a lot more going for the desktop than Be)?
s_d: no sence to appeal (and complain) to comnon sence
All my arguments are based on common sense. If you, or rain don’t agree with my opinion, tell your arguments. So far, there isn’t any arguments against it that stands in my mine (as I am always able to answer them).
s_d: honesty of person who for sure will “ingore” also such posting in long-term.
I have been completely honest here. I think Be could have made it if they tried harder and used marketing principles.
Anonymous: Go take a breath of fresh air Rajan. Your comment are always overlong and over winded. To qoute an old song
I don’t think so, I enjoy being here. Besides, as for my arguments being long, those are normally my replies back to everyone (posting seperate comments would flood this place, after all). If each article can have seperate threads, it would be a lot easier…
Be Inc were in negotiation with Hitachi and Compaq (and possibly Dell, but i’m unsure on that one) to have BeOS installed either exclusively or as a dual boot along with Windows. Be Inc were not giving away the OS for free to these companies.
Microsoft then stepped in and we know that story, so i wont repeat it again.
So Jean-Louis Gassee (JLG, CEO of Be Inc.) then offered a challenge to any PC maker that he would offer it to free to these companies if they would install it either exclusively or in a dual boot situation.
No-one took up JLGs challenge which shows you the fear of Microsoft and their retalitory actions.
Unlike some of the posts on here these companies were not going to be providing support or writing drivers. Be Inc. would write the drivers with help from the engineers at those companies on an as needed basis.
Support would be provided by Be Inc and their licensed distributors.
The only reason that Microsoft got off lightly was because September 11 came along during the court case and understanably the law enforecment agencies and judiciaries had the more important security of the USA to concentrate on.
Be Inc tried very hard to win some market share. The reason they jumped to the IA market was because they saw an opportunity to create *some* revenue for their shareholders – remember they were on NASDAQ now and had the responsibilities and laws which being IPO’d has.
I’m disappointed with how things turned out. I still run BeOS on 3 of my computers. Two of them are 24/7 connected and running. BeOS does everything i want and has thousands of apps. Just check out BeBits.com and other sites like that.
We have a future with OpenBeOS ( http://www.openbeos.org/ ) and the soon to be released Zeta ( http://www.yellowtab.com/ ) and i look forward to buying Zeta.
cheers
peter
>>>So Jean-Louis Gassee (JLG, CEO of Be Inc.) then offered a challenge to any PC maker that he would offer it to free to these companies if they would install it either exclusively or in a dual boot situation.
>>>No-one took up JLGs challenge which shows you the fear of Microsoft and their retalitory actions.
>>>Unlike some of the posts on here these companies were not going to be providing support or writing drivers. Be Inc. would write the drivers with help from the engineers at those companies on an as needed basis.
>>>Support would be provided by Be Inc and their licensed distributors.
Get real, just look at how many OEM’s are NOT pre-installing service pack 1 in brand new windows xp computers.
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-957077.html
The big OEM’s figured that xp is stable enough that they can fire many of their 1-800 telephone support staff. So why risk it with pre-installing sp1 — even though SP1 is FREE. That’s how the real world works.
You think that the tiny Be Inc. can afford a bunch of support staff if they are not getting a cent from these deals. You think that your local distributors (like GOBE) who wouldn’t have gotten a cent from Hitachi and Compaq, would hire a bunch of people to hear phone call support requests. You think that Hitachi and Compaq customers would care if they should call Be and its distributors — hell, no — they are going to call Hitachi and Compaq. That’s extra telephone support staff and long distrance telephone charges (companies pick up the 1-800 tab).
Sam, you missed the point. JLG offered the challenge to prove his point that Microsoft was intimidating these OEMs. No-one took up the challenge and thus he proved his point.
I can’t remember exactly what support Be Inc had as i never had any problems except in R3 x86 with a SCSI driver and the Be engineer emailed me, asked what the issue was, and sent me a beta driver for testing. It worked, it was QA’d and appeared in a later release.
I think it was email support initially. GoBe also had some sort of customer contact which was also email based.
Comparing BeOS support with Microsoft support is a little over the top. It’s like comparing a bonsai with a Jarra.
Generally the BeOS news groups comp.sys.be.* and BeOS mailing lists were where the majority of support happened as a lot of the Be engineers hung out there and then some online forums kicked off and performed a similar function. The same as most of the Linux questions get answered these days.
cheers
peter
oops.
http://www.blueplanetbiomes.org/jarrah.htm
>>>Sam, you missed the point. JLG offered the challenge to prove his point that Microsoft was intimidating these OEMs. No-one took up the challenge and thus he proved his point.
I challenge everyone on this board that they are all “mama’s boy” intimidated by their mothers who wouldn’t let set fire off on themselves a la tv show “jackass”. No one took up the challenge and thus I proved my point that everyone here are all “mama’s boys”.
OEM’s are here to make money for their shareholders, not like a teenager on a street corner taking challenges. If such a company should accept these useless challenges, their shareholders should sue them.
Proving 2×2 = 4 means that you implicitly use an axiom. Axiom, or common-sense whatever you call them are the ones that the whole logic is based on. When you say it is pretty easy to prove that you assume that I agree on the axiom which you take granted. However you seem to disagree on my view that the idea should be reasonable.
If it was common sense to burn children, women long time ago does it make common sense less of a value in your mind? Obviously you can argue that, however you will end up in chaos, since I can easily say anything I want here and still be correct according to you, including saying anything. Since it is the common sense that dictates us not say certain thing, behave in a certain way. You can definitely argue that these are not correct, but then yourself can not argue anything at all too. You basically say that everything you say totally worthless, because allmost all of them is based on the common sense, common way of thinking and so on.
Why, has either of you done surveys among small third party developers?
Sure you can make a survey whether those third party developers are scared to death from OsNews too. That would be pretty stupid though, isn’t it? Those developers may also be scared from APple too. Do you believe we need to conduct a survey for that too. If you believe that too, then I see quite redundant to writing anything further to that post.
Then sometimes I am a troll, are you telling me that? Sometimes I get my facts confused
No I don’t call you a troll. If I did think you were a troll, I would say that already. I couldn’t understand the purpose of this question at all. Confusing facts is different than making a claim like small companies are scared from Microsoft. There is no way you can have that fact, right? He doesn’t present a survey, he doesn’t explain exactly why that may happen, he didn’t even think about it. If you are a small company working on databases, if you be scared of a company which company that would be.
Well, that would be your opinion and would be a complete troll
You seem to restrict the definition of a troll to only cases where you personally attack a person. That’s a very narrow and incorrect definition. You can make a survey on the internet who is called a troll, and who is not. According to your definition, if I claim that Microsoft is secretly building nuclear bombs and will attack the world soon after they complete a space ship, you will take it as an opinion, and may defend it, or may actually lay out facts against it. I know for sure that troll is not that narrowly defined and it is an incorrect definition. You can search the internet to find out that you are wrong on that definition.
No, he can prove your wrong because he is the person in question
Nobody can exactly prove that he is not an paid for that, even him. It is not that he can prove anything, it is the fact that I didn’t lay out any fact to support and convince people that he is a paid Oracle employee. If you say that he should or can prove my claim is a wrong point of view.
No, under my defination, a person is a troll if their entire argument is to attack a individual in the debate, rather attacking his arguments
This definition is totally incorrect. Go to any irc channel which has a dictionary and type troll and see the definition.
Besides, look how easy was it for me, you, Matthew Gardiner etc. manage to end jbett’s argument?
I don’t think we managed to end jbett’s argument. The only reason why I think his argument ended is that it even didn’t start.
It is not necessarily the arguments, for a certain issue there may be more than one point of view. You may argue that GPL is good or GPL is bad. None of them makes you a troll, as long as one can easily understand what you mean. But people are scared of Microsoft? Hmmm, that is a far stretch of common sense. You can’t even argue against it easily, other than pointing out that the guy doesn’t give any clue why that should be the case. If it is pretty obvious that you can’t rely understand anything behind a claim, that’s a troll for me.
End of story for me, it just seems unnecessary to discuss this.
once again you missed the point.
forget to take your medicine again?
READ what i wrote. Be Inc were in negotiation with Hitachi etc etc to license the distribution of BeOS on PCs shipped by these companies. The key word here is LICENSE.
It was NOT a free deal.
These companies were keen to try other OS’s other than MS. MS then inimidated them blah blah blah you know the rest.
That is when JLG issued the challenge.
I don’t know whats more upsetting – the inane and childish content of mosts of the posts in this forum, or the fact that I actually read them…
Proving 2×2 = 4 means that you implicitly use an axiom.
This is because the mathematician who invented (or found) the term multiplication made it that way. However, if we were to follow the dictionary to the word:
1 : to cause to move round and round : ROLL
2 a : to sing the parts of (as a round or catch) in succession b : to sing loudly c : to celebrate in song
3 a : to fish for by trolling b : to fish by trolling in <troll lakes> c : to pull through the water in trolling <troll a lure>
intransitive senses
1 : to move around : RAMBLE
2 : to fish by trailing a lure or baited hook from a moving boat
3 : to sing or play in a jovial manner
4 : to speak rapidly
Now, troll is used by Usenet posters close to a decade ago to describe; “An electronic mail message, Usenet posting or other (electronic) communication which is intentionally incorrect, but not overtly controversial (compare flame bait), or the act of sending such a message. Trolling aims to elicit an emotional reaction from those with a hair-trigger on the replykey. A really subtle troll makes some people lose their minds.” (Dennis Howe’s The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing)
So really, in other words, can you prove jbett’s comment as incorrect? Any surveys or statistics? I believe it is wrong, but I can’t prove it. So therefore it is a opinion. I can’t call jbett a troll because of the difference in opinion because neither claim have any scientific proof behind it.
Sergio: If it was common sense to burn children, women long time ago does it make common sense less of a value in your mind?
My point was common sense is very relative to a person’s idelogical, religious and moral conviction.
You basically say that everything you say totally worthless, because allmost all of them is based on the common sense, common way of thinking and so on.
I’m not saying that. I’m just saying that it is an opinion. You have every right in the word to disagree with it. But unless you can proove your arguments is scientifically correct, jbett is as right as you are.
No I don’t call you a troll.
No you didn’t. But using your defination of a troll, I can be considered a troll.
Confusing facts is different than making a claim like small companies are scared from Microsoft.
My point is that unless you can prove someone comments as wrong with pure facts rather than another opinion, it isn’t a troll.
You seem to restrict the definition of a troll to only cases where you personally attack a person. That’s a very narrow and incorrect definition.
My other definations of trolls are those who keep on telling lies, like “Mac has 50% of the market” or “Apple has more money than Microsoft” or “Eugenia is actually a guy”. All of which can be proven wrong scientifically.
My opinion on jbett’s comment is a flamebait. But then again, most of my posts are flamebaitish (can’t help it) in nature.
Flamebaits are making a statement that isn’t status quo.
According to your definition, if I claim that Microsoft is secretly building nuclear bombs and will attack the world soon after they complete a space ship
No that would be a troll, because it is easy to prove that is wrong. If that is true, it certainly didn’t appear on their SEC filling.
And SEC would be suing.
This definition is totally incorrect. Go to any irc channel which has a dictionary and type troll and see the definition.
The most common defination is fishing from a boat that is slowly moving.
Be Inc were in negotiation with Hitachi and Compaq (and possibly Dell, but i’m unsure on that one) to have BeOS installed either exclusively or as a dual boot along with Windows. Be Inc were not giving away the OS for free to these companies.
From what that is said by OEMs in the court, the ban on other operating systems only apply when it is a dual-boot with Windows. Be and these OEMs know that offering exclusive models with BeOS would met with failure.
if you read press releases and interviews with key Be Inc. figures when Be Inc. first entered the PC market, you would realize their main aim was to get their userbase bigger to get third party developers to develop for BeOS. Their main business model is to make money from the developers, and is seen from the times to BeBox right before Be entered the IA business.
I sincerely doubt Microsoft cares if you have a BeOS-only model, cause Dell for quite some time (before Be’s antitrust allegations against Microsoft) sold machines with Linux to the corporate market and to Asian markets.
Besides, to point out again that Be was at first willing to license BeOS at a very very low price (compared to Windows already cheap OEM licenses, accoarding again by interviews and press releases by Be then). If they manage to get Compaq and Hitachi to bundle BeOS it is hard to see Be being able to pay off its debts.
Microsoft then stepped in and we know that story, so i wont repeat it again.
And just to point out, Microsoft is just using the same deals it once had with Compaq when the clone market opened. Little have changed.
They didn’t placed more restrictions than it had before Be. Their lawyers just reminded Hitachi and Compaq about their deals.
No-one took up JLGs challenge which shows you the fear of Microsoft and their retalitory actions.
I once challeged my brothers to strip naked to prove that they are indeed males, none of them accepted it. Are they females? Most OEMs couldn’t care less if a small tiny weeny company challegde to proove something that they don’t care about.
Besides, the only way to proove Be’s allegations right or wrong is to share trade secret, something illegal.
Be Inc. would write the drivers with help from the engineers at those companies on an as needed basis.
If Be indeed manage to get the Compaq deal, could they cope?
Support would be provided by Be Inc and their licensed distributors.
Their licensed distributors only support retail packs they sold. Besides, if I just bought a Compaq, and decided to boot beOS instead of Windows, would I call Compaq or Be? And the fact that Be only have email support, how would Compaq support staff redirect my querries to Be when they don’t have a phone support team?
Compaq would still have to pay money to train their support team to know which are Be problems and Compaq problems, and because support lines are normally don’t have toll charges, Compaq would have to foot the bill for these calls.
The only reason that Microsoft got off lightly was because September 11 came along during the court case and understanably the law enforecment agencies and judiciaries had the more important security of the USA to concentrate on.
LOL, the most stupid comment I have heard, no offence. We don’t see the department of justice complaining that they lack enough judges and time? And how much judges have been involve in the judiciaries related to the war on terrorism? And lastly, since when law enforcement came under the courts?
Be Inc tried very hard to win some market share.
If I open a business (which I plan to do, BTW, to create something competing with MS Office), I would care much more on profit than on market share. So what if I had a large marketshare when I can’t feed my family?
Two of them are 24/7 connected and running. BeOS does everything i want and has thousands of apps.
Well, BeOS doesn’t do anything I want and that thousands of apps are completely 100% useless to me. This can be said to all the people I know personally, and therefore it is save for me to assume that this is true thorough the world.
Most people don’t use computers to have fast boot times or having a responsive UI, but for work.
We have a future with OpenBeOS ( http://www.openbeos.org/ ) and the soon to be released Zeta ( http://www.yellowtab.com/ ) and i look forward to buying Zeta.
YellowTab doesn’t look all that promising from the business point of view. If they have a good product, great! It won’t guarentee their success, though.
Sam, you missed the point. JLG offered the challenge to prove his point that Microsoft was intimidating these OEMs. No-one took up the challenge and thus he proved his point.
No one was stupid enough to do so. The only party that can accept his challege is Microsoft, but why would they?
Generally the BeOS news groups comp.sys.be.* and BeOS mailing lists were where the majority of support happened as a lot of the Be engineers hung out there and then some online forums kicked off and performed a similar function.
Yes, I can just imagine Ma and Pa going to these places only known to Be users to get support for their Hitachi machine that came with BeOS.
Childist behaviour is like
“Yes”
“no”
“Yes
“No”
“Yes
“No”
“Yes
“No”
“Yes”
“Wahhhhh, troll!”
Oh wait, I get your point.
>>>>Sam, you missed the point. JLG offered the challenge to prove his point that Microsoft was intimidating these OEMs. No-one took up the challenge and thus he proved his point.
<<<<No one was stupid enough to do so. The only party that can accept his challege is Microsoft, but why would they?
Thank you.
BeOS fans kept on talking about how Be got deals with this OEM and that OEM. Those WEREN’T much of a deal. ZERO DOWN PAYMENT, ZERO PURCHASE COMMITMENTS, NO MINIMUM PAYMENTS. Those “deals” weren’t worth the paper they wrote on, they were just press releases to fool the poor shareholders in the go-go 90’s. At the very least Columbia House’s “11 CD’s for a buck” deal forces you to buy 5-10 regular priced CD’s.
According to your definition, if I claim that Microsoft is secretly building nuclear bombs and will attack the world soon after they complete a space ship
No that would be a troll, because it is easy to prove that is wrong. If that is true, it certainly didn’t appear on their SEC filling.
And SEC would be suing.
Are you trolling or kidding or what? Seriously? I am saying it is secretly building and you are saying that SEC would be suing. I wouldn’t expect such an answer from you.
Are you trolling or kidding or what? Seriously? I am saying it is secretly building and you are saying that SEC would be suing. I wouldn’t expect such an answer from you
I would still call it a troll because if the US government can know something is not right in Iraq and North korea, they can know something is not right in Microsoft (with the amount of inspection and regulations against it). Besides, Microsoft don’t have the money to build a nuclear bomb and a space ship, assuming of course the space ship is similar to shuttles used by NASA.
In other words, it is impossible for Microsoft to build some weapons of mass destruction, a space ship and have a world dominate plan.
On the other hand it isn’t impossible for small companies to be afraid of Microsoft.
Dear Mr R, I love you and I would like to send you one or two billions of good old American Dollars, but being clever as you are you know it is not so easy.
Dear Mr R, you have said in one of your messages here something that went straight to my heart. With your permission , I will quote you (I am anyway ready to buy all your IP):
People don’t seem to know or understand that the reason why Microsoft is a monopoly is that all its competitors either have business models that limit them to a small market share (Apple) or no marketing sense at all (Be Inc., a large number of Linux companies esp. Mandrake).
I am considering you as a real friend, and that is why I will tell you my most intimate thoughts. Not only do I agree with your vision, but I go further, because I have solid evidences that they did it on purpose.
Yes, Mr R. Sun, IBM, Netscape, etc, those put us, by their malevolent acts, in the uncomfortable position we are today. Those are the true culprits.
I am going to sue them.
B. G.
FUnny that Bill Gates be using a French ISP while being in the US.
Now Sergio, this is a real troll. Of the finest specimen.
As for their assertions, they are not based on Judge Jackson’s comments- Unless you mean that everyone is speaking generally, then specificially.
Burst and Be have legitimate claims, Sun may have too, but believe me, Be *especially* has a heck of a case against msft.
I have read the briefs, and I know how much work was done, how many times ranjan’s cousin came around, to make deals and filch em- because msft forced breach of contract.
Hey, buddy, that’s just the TIP OF THE ICEBERG. Read it and weep.
In other words, it is impossible for Microsoft to build some weapons of mass destruction, a space ship and have a world dominate plan.
How do you know it is impossible, did you conduct a survey, do you have a proof that it is not the case? You think it is not possible, but you didn’t prove anything yet.
How did they do that? I know, we all know. YOU TELL ME so we know you know.
I give one hint. COMPAQ.
>>>>Burst and Be have legitimate claims, Sun may have too, but believe me, Be *especially* has a heck of a case against msft.
They have good enough of an allegation to survive the dismissal hearing, that’s all.
>>>>I give one hint. COMPAQ.
I just re-read the claim. It stated that “Compaq repeatedly assured Be of its enthusiasm for the project, and stated that only BeOS could meet the project’s technical, cost, and delivery timeline requirements. Compaq
assured Be that Windows CE was not suitable for the device.”
Of course, the reality is that if you ask Sony about their experience with evilla. That they are slow, buggy, cost over-run because of project delays.
Basically, no one knew about BeOS. I think there was one person in my entire college that used BeOS during its hay-day. Of course he went running around like a chicken with his head cut off, as most BeOS users still seem to do today, saying how great BeOS was. Usually while showing off some “really complex app” that looked like the starfield screensaver on windows.
Face it BeOS and BeOS Inc. died because:
1) They didn’t market it well enough for enough people to know about it. (BeOS ppl live in thier own little world so this is hard for them to grasp.)
2) Most people, once they saw it, didn’t really care. So I can run starfield in a window… can it run Office? Can I edit the word files that 99% of the other users send me? Does it have a decent web browser? …Well at least I can watch the starfield thing.
3) BeOS (mis)managment wasn’t all that talented, except at navel gazing. How exactly do you burn thru 30million dollars in one year while simultaiously getting nothing accomplished? Well ok, they got one thing accomplished, JLG “challenged” everyone to be stupid but they said no – but starfield still looked good.
4) BeOS didn’t make a product that people had a need for. Lets make an OS all in C++, with as minimal POSIX support as possible. Then we will make a fast UI and quick boot up time. Finally we will include Starfield as a program you can run in a window with options. That is what people really need. Not this Adobe Photoshop, Golive, Illustrator garbage, nor this Office junkiness, not to mention a browser that works. That will all come later, after we go bankrupt if at all. Right now we need to focus on our killer app – Starfield.
5) Hardware Hopscotch. Today I think I’ll run on PPC. Hmm… ok now lets try Intel processors. Maybe tomorrow we can do Sparc. Next week Mips. While we’re at it lets change our name to NetBeOS
🙂
For the third time, big(in the pro audio market) companies like Steinberg, emagic, nemesys and BIAS were porting their applications to the BeOS. Steinberg’s Nuendo was actually close to release when BeOS made the focus shift. It was even showed in public IIRC.
So if that doesn’t prove that there was a lot of interest for BeOS in the pro audio market then what does?
Sure, the apps never saw the light, cause all of them froze their ports when Be started focusing on BeIA, but it really doesn’t matter here. If Be had stuck to making BeOS, then those apps would have been released and BeOS would have gotten a lot more attention in the audio production world.
Can you see my point?
The question was whether BeOS was aimed at the pro audio market, and if anyone did care. The answer is yes and yes. That is a fact.
Ok So every audio company and its grandmother was in the process of porting it program over to BeOS so that I could be on the yellow brick road to stardome and riches. Happy?
You also said, that all that came crashing down when BeOS changed directions. That doesn’t sound like anyone else’s fault but BeOS Inc.’s. You can’t go sue Microsoft after the fact and say – they made us change focus just when we were going to hit it big.
This was a reply to rajan r’s question why there weren’t any pro audio apps or interest in pro audio apps for the BeOS if it was aimed at pro audio. It is slightly off topic, and is not directly related to the suit against microsoft. I agree that it’s Be’s fault that those companies froze their ports, they could have done the shift a lot smarter. It’s one of their biggest mistakes ever IMHO.
They could have decided to stick to BeOS until it’s death or officially develop both BeOS and BeIA at the same time. But they didn’t. It was their decision, not Micrsoft’s and only Be is to blame for that.
But we can assume that if BeOS had a chance to get into the x86 market, it could have made Be some money and that would have changed history a bit. But they didn’t even get that chance. Though, that was never the point I was trying to make with my post.
Well, BeOS doesn’t do anything I want and that thousands of apps are completely 100% useless to me. This can be said to all the people I know personally, and therefore it is save for me to assume that this is true thorough the world.
Ok on BeOS, like most OSes, you can do….
email, web browsing, programming, irc, share files, emulation, games, animation, database stuff, art, ……100% useless…???
What is it that you use your PC for then? you obviously post on here…. 😉 so that’s web browsing covered….so now we’re down to, what 35% useless? seeing you spend the majority of your time here….you could do that on BeOS.
Why is it safe to assume? It is *your* view and is disputed by many people on here throughout the world so it can’t be true. Well that’s how your logic works isn’t it?
Oh no you said all the people I know personally. So that’s you AND your mother. So that should be This can be said for both of us
?
you seem to judge every BeOS user based on how the guy you knew in collage was. let me tell you, we are not all the same
(ok, take a moment to breath and recover from that chock)
1.) Most people in the BeOS community are aware of the fact that Be didn’t market BeOS enough, and that’s why we felt like we had to go out and promote it for them. But seing it from the perspective that BeOS was aimed at the pro media creation market, they would need third party apps before they could promote it, or else they would have gotten a bad reputation.
2.) Eh, ok.. 9 people out of 10 that I’ve showed BeOS to was amazed by it, most of them wanted to switch, but the lack of apps kept them from it. They instead told me to tell them when there was enough apps for BeOS that it would let them use it. They liked the fact that it was easy to use, light and fast, something they had not experienced in windows. So they did care.
3.) agreed, I never understood how they could waste that much money every year. It probably has a lot to do with where the office was located. I think it would have made more sense to keep it in europe for economical reasons. But then again, I’m not sure about that, it’s just a guess.
4.) See 2. How many of the successful products on the market today are products that people felt that they needed? 1-2% perhaps? That’s why companies has to create a need for their product before people starts wanting it. But actually, there was a huge need for a product like BeOS in the pro audio market, cause Microsoft didn’t care about them. They needed an OS with low audio latency, BeOS provided it. The only problem was that the apps were not ready yet. In fact, almost every media creation pro I talk to knows about BeOS and get very excited when I mention it. They ask me what has happend to it and if it will be possible to use it in the future. So from the looks of it, there is still a need for it. (and since I have experience with pro audio recording in windows, I can really see why)
However, if there isn’t a need for BeOS in the world, there isn’t a need for MacOS or linux either, heck, there isn’t even a need for Windows.
and btw.. how many useful apps does windows ship with? the stars app is just a demo, and it’s not impressing on its own, but when you fire up a dozen of other apps, that’s when you start to realize how nice multitasking in BeOS is, and that is impressing.
Sergio: How do you know it is impossible, did you conduct a survey, do you have a proof that it is not the case? You think it is not possible, but you didn’t prove anything yet.
No, with the very fact Microsoft doesn’t have enough money to make a space ship, and make nuclear misiles. They may have a world domination plan, so that’s your opinion.
So look at it this way, there is no right and wrong in this argument over the defination of a troll because the dictionary defination is way way way off what we use the word for.
Besides, that first post you replied to by jbett wasn’t a troll by my defination, but his other post was, and same with many of his posts her (esp in the latest mac vs. PC thread).
obelix: How did they do that? I know, we all know. YOU TELL ME so we know you know.
Okay, what are you refering to?
Vince: but starfield still looked good.
I disagree, I found it rather ugly. 🙂
rain: For the third time, big(in the pro audio market) companies like Steinberg, emagic, nemesys and BIAS were porting their applications to the BeOS.
I don’t consider Steinberg big because all of the audio guys I know personally (my brother and his friends) never heard of Steinberg. And they are into pro audio, they have their hands in some gospel albums and they manage a church of close to a thousand members’s sound system. Did they heard about Steinberg? No. They know Steinberg makes mixers, cause our church once had one, but I don’t see how that is related to BeOS.
And the fact that Steinberg was sold for 24 million bucks shows its size. Besides, I don’t see any of their apps available for BeOS in the first place (I would know, my brother is a emagic customer. nice german company..)
Sure, the apps never saw the light, cause all of them froze their ports when Be started focusing on BeIA
That was my point! BeOS never succeeded because it lacked apps! I’m not talking about apps that never got released! Why did it took them so long to get support like this? And what makes you sure if Be stayed with BeOS longer these apps would see the light of day? Adobe once ported Acrobat to Java, did it see the light of day even when Java was rather successful?
Besides, I don’t see anywhere that there were the ports in the making. I searched Le Buzz (argubly the best source for pro audio news on beOS) for any related stories: none.
The question was whether BeOS was aimed at the pro audio market, and if anyone did care.
If anyone did care, they wouldn’t have waited a decade to port their apps to BeOS. Plus, shoudln’t we blame Be Inc. for changing markets when they was about to hit stardom?
rain: This was a reply to rajan r’s question why there weren’t any pro audio apps or interest in pro audio apps for the BeOS if it was aimed at pro audio.
My point was the most biggest pro audio applications in term of market share wasn’t available on BeOS. Even the apps you mentioned never was on BeOS. How could you expect the OS to succeed? BeOS itself was more of a idealistic OS rather one made totally for the pro audio market.
peter at work: email, web browsing, programming, irc, share files, emulation, games, animation, database stuff, art, ……100% useless…???
Yes, 100% useless. I do some database stuff via Access – is there any altenative for it? I don’t do much programming other than with Qt and Python, and if I would, I would pick up the biggest market (or use Qt and pick up the three most biggest markets) instead of using beOS. Then for web browsing, I won’t use BeOS because all the browsers there are either traggicly outdated and useless or incredibly unstable (and I use webmail). As for games, which I sometimes play, I don’t see any of the games I play available on BeOS.
I don’t do animation, but I wonder what you mean by that (3D? web animation? Flash?)
peter at work: Oh no you said all the people I know personally.
People I know personally for me means I know them in real life, know really what they do, what they use, etc. Not somebody posting via the Internet or a mere acquaintance. That includes my rather large family and my friends.
rain: Most people in the BeOS community are aware of the fact that Be didn’t market BeOS enough, and that’s why we felt like we had to go out and promote it for them.
Promotion isn’t the same as marketing. Marketing starts at the drawing board right down to the sale. It is very hard to market, and even big companies like Microsoft and Apple often make mistakes (but not to the extend of Be).
rain: They instead told me to tell them when there was enough apps for BeOS that it would let them use it.
Wasn’t that his point?
rain: and btw.. how many useful apps does windows ship with?
Well, the one I used most is WMP (which is really really really useful), while my family use IE the most. Meaning there are some useful apps bundled on Windows.
My brother indeed knows Steinberg, they make Cubase (Apple bought them, IIRC). I guess it was with the way I pronounced it, which was totally not the way my brother did. Sorry in advance. 😀
This is embarresing.
And to add to that, Steingberg never made any mixers, I confused that with another company.
This is getting more confusing.
well i’d have to say to you rajan that Mozilla on BeOS is far more stable than on Windows.
I’m not sure when you last used BeOS but i’ll concede that when R5 came out in 1999/2000 the NetPositive browser was rather lacking and Opera showed some promise but faded.
Although having said that, it was good not to get all of those annoying pop up ads from javascripts on web sites coz hey Net+ didn’t have it.
Things have changed since then with Mozilla coming along very nicely.
From what you say you don’t really do that much on your PC (that’s just an observation, not an insult) and really i think BeOS would be perfect for you using your logic 😉
I really think that if something works for you then why change? I use BeOS to do commercial software development in C/C++ using gcc and the Sybase APIs (FreeTDS), PostgreSQL APIs and Snort (Instrusion Detection Software) all on BeOS. I run Sybase on Mandrake Linux (i’m not totally biased) and PostgreSQL 7.31 on BeOS and Linux.
Snort runs on BeOS and sends its’ data to 2 PostgreSQL database servers and a Sybase database server.
(yes i have BeOS BONE).
Why bother with BeOS and the above? Because if it works on BeOS it will work on any posix platform. That way i can be sure that my apps will work on Solaris and Linux with just a simple recompile.
If you’re saying that it’s useless to you because your current OS is fine then cool, i can understand that.
“Horses for courses” as they say.
Anyway i’m done with this thread as i’m off OS for a holiday.
cheers
peter
well i’d have to say to you rajan that Mozilla on BeOS is far more stable than on Windows.
Well, three weeks ago, Bezilla 1.2 crashed endlessly. And to that, it just crashes on me, everytime it is a different error message. And I’m apparently is not the only one experiencing problems with it, if you go to BeBits, you would see more complains than praises.
Besides, I don’t use Mozilla on Windows, I’m using Opera 7 Beta 2 which haven’t crashed on me yet.
Although having said that, it was good not to get all of those annoying pop up ads from javascripts on web sites coz hey Net+ didn’t have it.
I think I prefer just blocking those ads ala Opera or Mozilla than to get rid of JavaScript altogether.
From what you say you don’t really do that much on your PC (that’s just an observation, not an insult)
Actually, I do a lot. I’m currently in a team designing my schools webpage in XSLT, XML and PHP. I also do a lot of tinkering with Linux. I play a lot with Photoshop. I write a lot in Word, and do a lot of homework with Excel. And I surf the web a lot. All this I do much better on Windows and Linux.
(yes i have BeOS BONE).
Great…. is it legal?
If you’re saying that it’s useless to you because your current OS is fine then cool, i can understand that.
I’m saying it is useless to me not because my OS is fine, but because not one app on BeOS do what I want. I would dump Windows before you can say “Die Windows!” if all these apps were available on BeOS or have altenative that does what I want and do it well.
Besides, not too many people are like you that find BeOS useful. That’s why Be Inc. never made a profit.
Anyway i’m done with this thread as i’m off OS for a holiday.
After all that typing…