The next version of the Palm operating system for handhelds will be available to licensees at the end of the year, according to a PalmSource executive. The company expects to make the debut of major OS releases every 12 months to 18 months after the first hardware ships. In other news, a company named TopWave is making a handheld-game-console, based on PalmOS.
Next Palm OS Due Late 2003
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
there is no way that they built an OS from the ground up that quickly without using beos intellectual property
Notice the phrasing there. I am not saying they used beos nor i am claiming that they used a significant portion of beos code. I am saying they used concepts, some algorithms, and architecture that was learned from Beos. The ideas. now if they’d only give themselves another revenue source (yes palm that is why you are in business (revenues)) and license off beos to someone useful. There is money to be made there and i can’t really understand why palm is so adverse to makinig more money. Licensing that os would be a nominal effort.
On the other hand i just saw the SGH-i500, not to be mistaken with the SPH-i500. That is a killer phone. Palm OS five and a what looks like a small form factor. check it out.
http://www.palminfocenter.com/view_story.asp?ID=5108
no way am I getting an OS 5 palm when OS 6 is right around the corner…esspecialy when I am droping 500 bucks on the tungston c…..perhaps they will get the wrincles out and include sterio and voice recording with out a seperate mic…that will make it even better 🙂
What is the relationship between BeOS and PalmOS?
Palm bought Be Inc over a year ago.
Oh really? I didn’t know that. Thanx
I am still not convinced I need a PDA. Of course I also don’t think I need a cell phone. lol
I mean it’s great technology and i’m very impressed with what is out there.. but I still can’t justify the price. I know that for some it’s a great tool.. but for me, it’s more like a nice toy. So here is when i’ll get one (pda AND cellphone go by the same rule)
When I can pay a flat fee and be able to talk/surf as long as I want. The internet used to be a pay per the minute thing and I never used it much unless I NEEDED to. Then AOL came out with their $20 a month flat fee for unlimited hours and I finally got on the net. One day soon I’m sure there will be nationwide calling plans that let me talk on the cell for a flat (reasonable) fee a month, and i’m sure i’ll be able to eventually access the net on a PDA for a flat (reasonable) fee too.
Thing is, I pay 70 a month to MCI for unlimited LD (in the US) and Local calls and I pay 50 bucks a month for the cable internet.. so more bills don’t seem justified yet.
just my 3 cents.
For Not an early adopter: Metropcs has a flat fee per month for cell phone service I think it is around $40 per month. I did at one time have a cell phone ($100) a internet pda bill with Palm($45) etc. I dropped both it just got crazy paying the bills for them on top of the other bills I have to pay. But if they come out with say $10 unlimited a month for the pda. I would hop on board again for internet pda service. I learned to live without the cell phone. I am just lucky I live so close to everything and there are plenty of places to call from if i get into trouble. At least for now I can do without the cell phone.
I do wish Palm would license out Beos I purchased 4.5 and 5 pro. Beos had a lot of potential. It worked great for me and I do miss it. If Palm would license it out and bring it up to modern computer specs. The die hard fans of Beos would buy it. I dual boot between Mandrake Linux 9.1 and Windows now. I know there are some open versions of Beos being worked on and other projects but I wonder how good they will be. I miss Beos very much hope someone is able to get Palm to either lincense it or release it. I would prefer Palm to release it as a os to be quite frank.
Palm licensing BeOS to another company…hrmm…sounds like Zeta, maybe you should look into it. Though it’s not quite exactly that, it’s very close.
“There is money to be made there and i can’t really understand why palm is so adverse to makinig more money.”
The thing is : you *think* it may give money to Palm. But you and I don’t have enough privilegied information to conclude for sure that Palm can make money out of licensing. I bet that if it was *really* all that simple, all that obvious, they would’ve done it.
“The thing is : you *think* it may give money to Palm. But you and I don’t have enough privilegied information to conclude for sure that Palm can make money out of licensing. I bet that if it was *really* all that simple, all that obvious, they would’ve done it. ”
Look it really is that simple. You license the product and you are done with it. development, stripping out things like real player is the responsibility of the licensee. Done. You walk away. Recouping legal fees to license should be easy enough. One need not make it complicated. If there is no intention to issue a desktop os at palm then it is cut and dried, very simple decision.
The fact is that palm has been and continues to lie and that is what aggravates me. They lied about “we only purchased beos for the engineer.” yeah whatever. I really do believe you wrote an entire new os without using protected intellectual property from beos. REally i do and i also believe that i just saw the tooth fairy.
And now they are lying about the licensing issue. They won’t license it because they don’t want to. Why don’t they want to? because it is a potential asset down the road, which they also won’t admit, and they’d rather let it die “in case” it might be usuable by them in the future then to license it now and make money off of it. Its just plain dumb to act like that. They can make money now and keeping it out of the market will damage any potential to bring it back.
I have a feeling they also fear competition from beos if they were to license it. Palm wants to push their os into all kinds of new devices that extend well beyond a pda. that might be the real reason they won’t license it.
====================
Look it really is that simple. You license the product and you are done with it. development, stripping out things like real player is the responsibility of the licensee. Done. You walk away. Recouping legal fees to license should be easy enough. One need not make it complicated. If there is no intention to issue a desktop os at palm then it is cut and dried, very simple decision.
====================
It would be that simple if 3rd party apps were the only licensed content in the OS, but it’s not. The font engine, parts of the kernel and various other things are all licensed to other parties, so either one has to negotiate to ensure that the licenses on those can be transferred to the party wishing to license the BeOS src, or they have to be ripped out. Both would require considerable time and money on the part of Palm, they *can’t* just hand it over and say “Here you go, you have to strip out all the src that was licensed from other people.”
“It would be that simple if 3rd party apps were the only licensed content in the OS, but it’s not”
yes it is that simple. That is why corporations have legal teams to handle precisely these kinds of negotiations. You are telling me that negotiating is a complex problem beyond resolution. No it is not. Would it take time yes. Could be resolved. Yes. Are other technologies licensed that have lots of IP from several parties? Sure they are. Look at cdma. Qualcomm is ONE of many patent holder on necessary technologies there.
Moreover if it were “so difficult” then please tell me how yellowtab managed? Something was obviously done there that allowed them to offer zeta. The trick here is in the way you structure the license/contract or perhaps you just choose a distributor who has the right to update it. Either way if you want it out then you can find a path.
Regardless, i remain faithful to my original premise, I don’t believe palm is being 100% truthful here. I do believe that Palm OS 6 has made EXTENSIVE use of be intellectual property, which they denied, and i believe that Palm simply does not want to license or distribute the Beos because it is perceived as a potential competitor, because they’d prefer to sit on the fence with it, and because Palm OS now is probably litered with beos intellectual property.
I never said it was beyond resolution. Stop reading things in that aren’t there. What I did was simply refute your assertion that it’s somehow an effortless process. I might also note that yellowtab had a BeOS license prior to Palm’s purchase of Be. In any case, going through the necessary legal issues would require a fair amount of time and money, and it’s not clear that this would ultimately benefit Palm. As for BeOS-related IP in PalmOS 6, what you believe is just great, but it’s just that, pure conjecture, nothing more.
Finally, a thread that I actually know a fair amount about. Of course various NDAs prevent me from saying much. Let’s see what I can say:
1. The Gen-Y Palm device company is called TapWave.
2. Palm OS 6 is a major rewrite of the OS and about 50% of the team doing the rewrite are former BeOS engineers. So you can imagine that even if no code was ported from BeOS, there will be simularities.
3. Palm hardly makes any money licensing it’s OS that millions of people actually use, why would thay want to lisence BeOS?
4. There’s a very good chance (80% I’d say) that any ARM device with flash ROM running Palm OS 5 will be upgradable to Palm OS 6.
All the talk of Palm licensing or publishing BeOS is sorta pointless… But I do have a couple of points of my own:
1) How profitable was BeOS? Didn’t Be leave the OS business for fear of going under, just to chase a red herring and go under anyway? Doesn’t seem like there was really ever a large enough market for BeOS (Maybe R5PE wasn’t such a good idea
2) I too believe that Palm is being less that forthcoming with the truth on this matter. I’m sure that they did borrow a lot of ideas from BeOS, but they have an OS of their own too (sorta), its called PalmOS ever heard of it? So I’m sure they wouldn’t be doing a complete rewrite in one year, a heavy retrofit, yes. Even if they scrapped PalmOS and went with completely new code, they still have a finished API’s which would shrink dev time considerably.
3) If for some reason Palm later wanted to license BeOS 5/6 code, and didn’t want to remove all the NIH IP themselves they could include in the license agreement a clause stating that the licensee must remove & replace those parts… Is that a lot to ask? Surely not as bad writing an OS from the groundup! Be is well documented (Probably better than windows internals), and there is a pool of experienced programmers that could be scooped up. And the object oriented nature means that a retrofit would probably go quicker than a straight c implmentation
JMO though… Take it easy
— Eran
“1) How profitable was BeOS? Didn’t Be leave the OS business for fear of going under, just to chase a red herring and go under anyway? Doesn’t seem like there was really ever a large enough market for BeOS (Maybe R5PE wasn’t such a good idea
”
beos had $100 million in debt that they had acquired. palm got the same os for 11 million. Your point is spot on though. how much money could they make off of it is major question mark. Palm’s path might be best. Start with PDAs, move to cell-phones, move to larger “web tablet” type of devices and via that path you will evenutally land yourself on the desktop.
But questions still lingerie because even a small percentage of the desktop OS market is a lot of money and desktop OS’s might end up in smaller form factors (PDA’s) just the same. Ideally, palm would have maintained some sort of basic compatibility between palm os 6 and beos (palm desk) and then licensed beos to someone else to deal with. that gives you a two-pronged attack at MS and a second potential revenue stream with minimal investment. clearly though that might not be an easy task.
fyi, Be did not have any debt. The $100 million you’re referring to is their earnings deficit. It’s a bookkeeping entry that basically means they’ve lost $100 million since inception.
Palm aint gonna last, buy Palm now, m ay turn into a collectors item in a few years….
its TapWave, not TopWave