Be Inc. and Microsoft Corp. today announced that the parties have reached a mutually acceptable mediated settlement of an antitrust lawsuit filed by Be Inc. in February 2002. Be claimed that Microsoft maintained its monopoly by having exclusive dealing arrangements with PC OEMs prohibiting the sale of PCs with multiple preinstalled OSes. Be will receive a payment from Microsoft, after attorney’s fees, in the amount of $23,250,000 USD to end further litigation, and Microsoft… admits no wrongdoing. UPDATE: BeOSJournal.org has an interview with ex-Be employees Dan Sandler, Baron Arnold, and Dave Brown. Interesting is also Frank Boosman’s blog on the issue:“…it would have been interesting to see the case go to trial. […] Be made some very specific allegations about anti-competitive behavior in operating system licensing, and I would have been fascinated to see the parties debate that issue in court.”
All other terms of the settlement will remain confidential. Be is currently in the process of completing its dissolution pursuant to the plan approved by Be’s stockholders in November 2001. In accordance with that plan and upon completion of its dissolution, Be’s net cash will be distributed to shareholders.
The Microsoft press release went live after the stock market closed and to ensure smaller traffic (weekends are pretty slower traffic-wise for all tech news sites).
And that folks, is the end of the legendary Be, Inc.
And on other BeOS news, the programming book (written for BeOS R4, now a bit out of date for BeOS 5+) “Programming the Be Operating System” from O’Reilly, is available as free download in PDF format.
Someone mentioned Gobe. What happened to them. They were about to release a Linux version. I tried the Windows one and liked it…I like OpenOffice too, but it’s yet too bloated, too heavy to start…
A new version of gobeProductive (3.04) is supposedly going to be released very soon. Gobe Inc. no longer supports BeOS.
Be’s CEO was an egomaniac and an idiot.
This was a money grab by a bunch of pissed off investors who lost their asses on a mismanaged company.
I was impressed with BeOS but not Be Inc.
A company that loses a couple hundred million dollars and never shows a profit isn’t anything to feel bad about.
Look BE should have continued to fight. 23 million dollars distributed out to all of the shareholders is only a tiny bit better than 0 dollars spread out amongst the shareholders.
In this settlement the share holders still lose. I don’t know the situation with the judge or be’s ability to keep on fighting but the company should have continued to fight because as it is it got nothing so it really had nothing to lose. This baby should have gone to trial.
“I keep hearing people; “Micros**t this Microsh**t that” while a windows machine sits on their desk. ??”
Because there isn’t a great deal in the way of alternatives. For example, one can’t go out and buy a BeOS PC. That’s the whole point of this article!
when you break this down to $/share you are left with damn close to nothing and MS has hardly suffered. I therefore encourage be’s shareholders to do some good with this and donate it to OBOS or yellowtab.
Be never offered the computing world anything compelling. A little bit faster multitasking is not a breakthrough.
Amiga had great multimedia years before Be. Truly futuristic stuff. And many people bought Amiga. Be never offered one compelling capability or application. It says a lot about what Be people did day in and day out — nothing.
It is good that Be is going because the whole thing was hype. There was no Be operating system, just some lame ass demoware that they put out that didn’t even work on most systems.
If I were a Be shareholder, I’d be overjoyed to get my money out of there. $23 mil is a small fraction of the total investment in Be, but it’s better than a big fat zero.
Gassee and the rest of Be management should be sued for stealing the rest of the money.
The fact of the matter is that Be was a lifestyle company. They never intended to make anything that they could sell. Their product was hype.
>>>Amiga had great multimedia years before Be. Truly futuristic stuff.
And of course, QNX pre-dated Amiga with even more futuristic stuff. By the time Amiga was founded in the mid-80’s, QNX already got out of the desktop market. For those who don’t know — QNX 2 (on 80186 “ICON” machines, it’s not a typo — really 186 machines) was used in all high-schools (and some elementary schools) in Ontario, Canada in the early 80’s. By the mid 80’s, QNX already got out of the desktop market and began designing QNX 4 which was the first QNX OS that was targetted for the embedded market.
BeOS is dead, it sucked and there isnt a Be Inc. anymore so who cares. BeOS was a terrible OS thats how come it never got into any OEM’s, find me a single person using the BeOS these days, If any exist.
Yep. Buy YellowTab and they are back in operation with a few million to continue development and slowly move over to all new code. If YellowTab has a legitimate license to the code then this could happen. Some stockholders would want out but some might want to buy the name and merge with YellowTab and put the MSFT settlement to good use.
Even JLG could probably do this on his own with his share of the money.
In fact PalmSouce might be willing to sell the code back to Be for a few million if Be Computing was resurrected after the settlement.
Hummmm….
I agree with this and i am a shareholder. They’d need a minimalist infrastructure but going further is better than keeping a fraction of a penny on the dollar. That is a better solution both from a $$$ point and as a matter of principal.
Wrong there! (you were probably just trolling, I don’t know)
A lot of people still use it (I do) even if dual booting and there is a demand to get it back. That’s why you see so may comments on BeOS related news and so many different projects to get it back running (OSS or CSS).
Don’t like it? Let it be… There’s space for everyone.
Gein
I think the investors hold the final say in all of this. 23 million and no company VS 3 bn, a win in court, and restoration of the company is a better option. It’s the best option.
Unless msft want’s to sweeten the pot a bit, in which case- the investors will have to decide upon the merits of the newer proposed amount.
But, 23 million is disgenuinly trying to stay out of court. MSFT is just hoping be will just go away and vanish.
So, let’s not give them what they want. They are the defense in the case, not the dictator of terms.
I’m right. You know I’m right.
I’M DAMN RIGHT.
MSFT is in no position to dictate terms. I know what plans Be had made, because they don’t want to jinx a court case when they said that.
But seriously- MSFT is defendant, not dictator.
Funny you should say that you doubt there is one user of
BeOS. I use R5.0.3/BONE and Dano along with thousands of apps
available on http://www.bebits.com on 8 machines. 3 dual machine,
2 single proc AMD systems, and 2 macs, and a quad. It is FAST,
it works, I do 100% of my work on it, including…
email
web browsing
selling on FleeBay
Music editing
Image Editing/Cropping
Importing Camera Images
Streaming Audio
Movie and Song Ripping and Compression
Programming (with Be API an a LOT more, Dylan, Perl, Python blah blah)
IRC Chat, IM with Yahoo via gateways.
But most of all I have one thing that M$ users and Mac users don’t
have, and that is a system SO UNDER THE RADAR that I never have
virus attacks and companies bothering me with upgrades that
actually destabilize the system more than help it.
I got news, I have never been happier without M$ or Mac, or whatever
OS is next (FreeBSD too)… There are a LOT of users like me, and
of course there are MILLIONS that have to deal with constant CRAP
releases from Apple and M$, security issues, and more as mentioned
above.
//
I never have
virus attacks and companies bothering me with upgrades that
actually destabilize the system more than help it.
//
Oh, you’re so right. I hope MS, Apple, and Linus take a lesson from BeOS and NEVER RELEASE AN UPDATE AGAIN.
Boy, you got us.
I know its “innocent until proven guilty”, but if you were really innocent, why would you settle? Especially considering MS does have enough lawyers to fight off an unjust lawsuit.
It isn’t whether Microsoft could loose of not. Microsoft would pay about the same money to Be if they had lost, which is a little less than a pinch to Microsoft. Other restrictions were already in place – stuff like Microsoft can’t force the OEM hand by threatening “no more discount”.
the big issue here is PR. I doubt this story would even make it to any major newspaper or cable news channel. They probably mention it once, maybe twice, but that’s about it. But if Microsoft lost the case, the financial difference ad marketing restrictions would be about the same – but the PR for Microsoft would be terrible.
Public relations. Another reason why this was announce on the weekend.
Oh, check out my blog entry: http://rajanr.com/index.php?itemid=246
Be Inc for all intents and purposes died when they sold everything to Palm. And BeOS FAIAP died even before that, when Be made the focus shift to BeIA. Indeed the real sign BeOS died when they couldn’t get Hitachi to dual boot Windows and BeOS which is of course what this lawsuit was about. Too little…but way too late. But what can you do? Look at everyone else who faced Microsoft on its own turf (Netscape, Lotus, Corel, etc)
BeOS (or BeIA) will have the true revenge in the form of PalmOS 6. Palm is kicking Microsoft already without any Be technology so what happens from now on will be interesting.
And yes I think the future of computing is the PDA. It’s the only way you can “compute” and still have a real life.
BeOS (or BeIA) will have the true revenge in the form of PalmOS 6. Palm is kicking Microsoft already without any Be technology so what happens from now on will be interesting.
More like the otherway ’round. Microsoft minting profits- Palm into deficits. Microsoft gaining marketshare – Palm loosing them.
I believe this is still quite important, now all the other anti-ms os developers can do the same.
Haha. The sad truth spills out. No one likes Linux or Be, everyone just hates Microsoft.
Ryan says:
“I agree with this and i am a shareholder. They’d need a minimalist infrastructure but going further is better than keeping a fraction of a penny on the dollar. That is a better solution both from a $$$ point and as a matter of principal.”
I am a shareholder as well and I will be interested to see if someone puts forth such a proposal to the shareholders. Be now has considerably more money than they had before the sale to Palm. Be Computing could buy back the source code from Palm Source for a few million and then maintain a very small infrastructure and license out the code as they see fit to various distributions or simply do their own releases.
This is an important opportunity to consider. Having a product that could grow is a lot more interesting than having .60 a share as I see it.
Be is currently in the process of completing its dissolution pursuant to the plan approved by Be’s stockholders in November 2001. In accordance with that plan and upon completion of its dissolution, Be’s net cash will be distributed to shareholders of record as of March 15, 2002, after payment of any taxes, officers’ and directors’ compensation, and other expenses, and the satisfaction of any and all of Be’s remaining liabilities.
Looking at this page on NASDAQ http://quotes.nasdaq.com/quote.dll?mode=stock&page=multi&symbol=BEO… I can see a share volume of 19’000. Let’s assume Be was going to distribute $19’000’000 to theses 19’000 shares, that would be $1’000 per share. Is there anything I didn’t get quite right?
“Be is currently in the process of completing its dissolution pursuant to the plan approved by Be’s stockholders in November 2001. In accordance with that plan and upon completion of its dissolution, Be’s net cash will be distributed to shareholders of record as of March 15, 2002, after payment of any taxes, officers’ and directors’ compensation, and other expenses, and the satisfaction of any and all of Be’s remaining liabilities.”
The operative phrase there is ‘ “after payment of any taxes, officers’ and directors’ compensation, and other expenses, and the satisfaction of any and all of Be’s remaining liabilities.”‘ I doubt shareholders will see a dime.
“The operative phrase there is ‘ “after payment of any taxes, officers’ and directors’ compensation, and other expenses, and the satisfaction of any and all of Be’s remaining liabilities.”‘ I doubt shareholders will see a dime.”
Ouch. I hope you are wrong but i have a feeling you are probably correct.
“Looking at this page on NASDAQ http://quotes.nasdaq.com/quote.dll?mode=stock&page=multi&sy… I can see a share volume of 19’000. Let’s assume Be was going to distribute $19’000’000 to theses 19’000 shares, that would be $1’000 per share. Is there anything I didn’t get quite right? ”
That was the trading volume for one day. There are about 38 million shares issued and outstanding. The actual per share distribution to shareholders is about $0.71.
Maybe the users of beos should all file a class action lawsuit against ms for killing our OS and user the money to fund the obeos project.
That would be great if the deal was legally valid.
The deal is LEGALLY INVALID.
They didn’t ask the judge to remand to mediation… the parties the lawyers were representing wasn’t present.
So, either the story is a LIE, or the deal is invalid anyway.
They still have to go to court, or it’s a charge of contempt, because the JUDGE decides this, otherwise, how else could Be more the case if a judge hadn’t decided it?
It is so ordered that the community will not accept the validity of this. And, yes, I AM speaking on the behalf of all the various factions in the community at this time.
Or else I wouldn’t waste my time, maybe?
>>>Public relations. Another reason why this was announce on the weekend.
You forgot that Microsoft announced that they reached settlement with AOL for 750 million dollars in the daytime in the weekdays. You also forgot that the price of Microsoft stock rose on that day.
Microsoft had PR staff available when they announced the Be settlement on late Friday. Interestingly, Be’s lone employee wasn’t available for comment on Friday.
It’s Be who wanted to announce late Friday. Also if Be announced during trading hours, they would have to halt trading of the Be Inc. shares because it’s a big deal for Be. (Microsoft doesn’t need to halt trading because the amount of dollars is so small for them.) Halting trading for Be would mean more lawyers and accountants fees — so they announced after the trading hours were closed.
but palm is gaining marketshare, ppc losing
http://palminfocenter.com/view_story.asp?ID=5811
Palm OS-based PDAs comprised 51.4 percent of worldwide PDA shipments, while Pocket PC PDAs composed 35.9 percent of total units. Palm still sits atop the U.S. PDA market with a 46.7 percent market share, while Sony remained No. 2 with 12.1 percent market share.
Can you imagine if linux or apple had a 50% share of the pc market? Palm has that and more and adding BeOS technology on top is just the icing on the cake
You forgot that Microsoft announced that they reached settlement with AOL for 750 million dollars in the daytime in the weekdays. You also forgot that the price of Microsoft stock rose on that day.
Netscape got Microsoft is a lot of trouble. And AOL’s suit put Microsoft in a lot of PR trouble. Announcing they are out of it was much better for them, PR-wise, than trying to keep it in the back pages. Be’s suit does nothing to affect the stock market – the amount they are asking and the amount they would get in the best case senariou is a little more than a pinch to the stockholders.
Also, you mentioned a good point regarding Be. But I thought ever since the Palm buyover, Be was no longer traded…. well never mind.
Being half right is better than nothing, right?
I too, use BeOS daily. For all of the reasons that were listed…plus one more: Bill Gates made $0 on my software purchase. In fact…I went so far as to build a FASTER PC just for BeOS.
Pertaining to the comment about “a pc so far under the radar that you are in all practicality…immune to virus attacks”…I AGREE! My wife’s new PC has been hit…all of the PCs at work have been hit…but with BeOS I just surf and laugh…and get the work done that needs to be done.
AMEN
John