Today, we have something special on OSNews, something that’s actually a first-timer on OSNews. Already common on other websites, we today hand the microphone to you, so you can ask questions to someone from the tech industry. Read on for the details!
As you have already guessed by the headline, the subject of this community interview will be Bernd Korz, CEO of YellowTAB, the company behind Zeta, the operating system based on the ‘old’ BeOS. YellowTAB is currently working on Zeta 1.2.
The rules are simple: post your questions in the comments’ section of this article. If you whish to remain anonymous, then you can email me with your question(s), and your name will not be listed. We, the staff, will pick the questions we deem most interesting, and send them via email to Bernd Korz. We will add some of our own questions, too.
Only questions posted/sent before midnight UTC (the night from Thursday to Friday) are eligable for the interview. Be sure to read through the comments before posting yours, to prevent duplicate questions. I cannot guarantee when the interview will be ready, but I’d expect it to be done early next week.
Fire away!
–Thom Holwerda
Don’t you think that the Haiku project will hurt Zeta OS?
i thought they had planned on moving some of the servers over to haiku’s implementations of them once they’re mature enough – sounds like it will benefit them more than hurt
What is ACCESS’ take on Zeta now that they bought Palmsource and they are the legal owners of the source code? Will they pursue an infrigement suit or you have talked to them about it and all is good?
I good contract (handled by good lawyers) would have all that covered so it should be good. Let’s hope yellowTab had good lawyers.
More interesting is what would happen if a different third party wanted to license the BeOS source? Could yellowTab find itself competing against someone else with the same source they started with?
We need to know, and perfectly clear, that you have legal access/rights to the code. Do you?
With the increasing amount of competition from Open Source projects such as Symphony OS, Syllable, and Haiku on the hobby front, as well as continual improvements by both Apple and Microsoft on their propreitary brands, Zeta seems to be rather nicheless. How do you find yourself competing in this rapidly shifting market based around web integration, something that seems to be lacking from Zeta? What key improvements will help your product stand out in the long run and concrete itself as a competitor?
Mr. Kord, I would first like to thank you for continuing BeOS development. I recently purchased Zeta 1.1 and am very impressed with what I see. It is certainly a more useful system than BeOS R5 ever was. I have always been impressed with BeOS’ potential and was very disappointed when the company finally closed its doors. It’s great to see that your company has kept the BeOS dream alive.
Now to my question:
Once and for all, could you please clearly say whether or not you have complete access to BeOS kernel sources and whether or not you are licensed to modify all BeOS source code.
Regardless of the answer, I am very happy with my purchase of Zeta 1.1 and look forward to future releases.
If you would be willing to answer more questions:
I would like to know how you view your company’s long-term relationship with the Haiku project. Should it come to fruition, would you tend to use it as a base as Red Hat does with Fedora, or do you consider it in direct competition?
How are you financing Zeta development? We are well aware of Mark Shuttleworth’s source of Ubuntu development funds, is this similarly philanthropic, or are you backed by VC money? Do you consider the long-term growth potential of Zeta to be equal to that of Linux or Mac OS, or are you happy with the current state of hobbyist/enthusiast OS?
In an ideal, non-monopolistic world, where would Zeta fit into the OS landscape?
How do you decide which 3rd-party drivers to include? I installed Zeta 1.1 on my Sony Vaio laptop and had to pull down video and APM drivers from BeBits.com. Is there any reason that more 3rd-party drivers couldn’t be included in future Zeta releases? Is it just a case of limited resources?
Finally, to the nuts and bolts of future Zeta work: Will you be improving WiFi support? I have an older Prism 2 card that is recognized, but there is no GUI to select wireless networks. It would be wonderful if 1.2 would just pick the card up and go. Also, will you be adding any sort of IMAP mail client? I have found Thunderbird and Seabird both unusable in 1.1, and Haiku’s mail_daemon_replacement crashes. As a result, I’m stuck with webmail.
Okay, no more questions for now.
Thanks for your time and best of luck,
Ben
How well is the porting of OpenOffice going?
How will you secure backwards compatibility when updating GCC?
First, a question, and then, a plea:
Question: do still keep artists (musicians and other media-artists) in your focus, as Be inc. used to have (before they went eVilla)?
And now, for the plea (which actually would benefit Zeta as much as musicians using Zeta):
I have tried the Zeta LiveCD. I have noticed that there is a MIDI sequencer included, and that’s MeV. While MeV is -potentially- a very interesting MIDI and audio sequencer, it’s very rough around the edges and buggy at the moment. Why don’t you include Sequitur 2 instead? Sequitur is an excellent MIDI sequencer, that holds it’s place even compared to some of the non-free sequencers for Windows and Mac. It’s free and it’s for BeOS and it’s excellent – please include it with Zeta?
How is Zeta going to support such a broad array of hardware devices ?
How about 3D graphics support?
Does YellowTab plan to make some agreement with Nvidia/Ati/Intel to support their devices ?
3D support is a must these days, from games to desktop composition.
3D support is a must these days, from games to desktop composition.
Desktop composition? What in the world is that? And whatever it is, I doubt it requires “3D support” (by which I suppose you mean hardware-accelerated 3D functions).
You are wrong.
Vista uses 3D acceleration for it’s Aero Glass user interace via it’s desktop composition engine (aka Desktop Window Manager) on top of DirectX 9.0+
on Linux (X Win), XGL/Compiz uses 3D acceleration also via OpenGL.
on Mac OS X, the desktop composition engine (aka “Quartz Compositor”) also use OpenGL.
“Vista uses 3D acceleration for it’s Aero Glass user interace…”
snip
That, of course, doesn’t tell why it’s really needed…
Indeed it’s a great gift for Looking Glass Project f.ex.
Nevertheless, even Be thought about a complete OpenGL powered 3D-Desktop for further BeOS Versions – PicassoGL. But that didn’t come.
AFAIR it is dicussed in the Glass Elevator Project List (HaikuOS R2 design)
Desktop composition is a window model in which complete windows are stored in off-screen buffers, then composited onto the main frame buffer, usually with alpha-blending, at several dozen frames per second. This is in contrast to the drawing model implemented in BeOS and Windows XP, wherein windows draw directly into the framebuffer.
Desktop composition can be done without 3D support, its just that the attendent possibilities are reduced. If everything is done in software, performance can take a big hit as well, since the read-modify-write cycles needed for alpha blending are very slow when the CPU operates on video memory. Performance can be improved by using the blending ROPs on the GPU, without implementing the whole OpenGL stack, but then lots of effects like OS X’s “genie effect” become expensive because they must be performed by the CPU into a temporary buffer before being composited by the GPU.
Desktop composition is definitely the feature of windowing systems, and is going to create a very big “polish” gap between those OSs that implement it and those that do not. A full OpenGL stack for Zeta might be in the cards with a DRI port, but support for SOTA hardware is probably not in the cards. However, a lot could probably be done by using an EXA-type method, so at least the smoothness effects of a composited desktop could be realized, if not the fancy special effects or hardware-accelerated vector graphics.
Rumor has it that Be Inc. once worked on a 3d accelerated composited UI under the name of PicassoGL. What it really did and didn’t do and what happened to it, that’s a field of wide speculation.
“3D support is a must these days, from games to desktop composition.”
For serious gaming, yes, for drawing the desktop, no.
Sure, it’s nice to have accelerated and offloaded drawing but it’s not a must for the interface to be usable.
Any plans to reimplement this feature in the near future? (ie. before or around a 2.0 release)
I believe he’s referring to the hardware accelerated seen in XGL, OSX Quartz Extreme and Vista Aero/WPF.
Thanks. I didn’t know that, but somehow I suspect I could live without it.
I’d like to know what the status of relations with 3rd parties are. For example, a Flash player, Acrobat Reader, SVG plugin from Adobe, if any hardware vendors are releasing driver development documents or if any ISVs are actively developing applications for Zeta.
1.
from the time that Haiku R1 is released, how do you see the relationship between Zeta and Haiku. do you think they will become fierce competitors targeting the same audience or do you think they will enjoy a fruitful coexistence by catering for different needs?
(yes, I know this was basically the first question here, but I took it upon myself to flesh it out a bit
)
2.
in what key areas do you see Zeta breaking new ground in the coming years?
3.
with the downside of breaking binary compability when switching to gcc 4.x, how much of a performance gain would you estimate it to have compared to 2.95?
4.
you are working on several commercial applications for Zeta, is this done mostly to fill a void in the current beos software repertoire or will this continue to be a main focus together with developing the os itself?
5.
from what I’ve gathered, you are extending the Beos api, will the relevant source code be handed over to the haiku developers or will the extended functionality have to be reverse engineered?
6.
if you could choose one commercial application to be ported to Zeta, which one would it be?
Edited 2006-03-30 00:07
First, just a suggestion. I understand that you guys are currently working on eye candy effects. I just want to you to know that I think it would not be a good idea to make it a mandatory option. For a lot of people, it would destroy the nice and very simple look that BeOS has always had.
Now for my question. BeOS has always been known to be a potential gaming beast. Have you guys been collaborating with nVidia or ATi to produce some drivers that support hardware 3D acceleration? Also, if you have, have you been talking to Transgaming about a possible port of Cedega? It would give Zeta several thousands games instantly.
Edited 2006-03-29 23:53
I´ve been using BeOS for some years, and at first, I thought it was great: fast, small, media oriented, and elegant but…Windows Vista is set to be released on January with some improvements, huge software base, and even greater hardware and developer support. Linux is also improving, and is a good stablished Os in some fields. OsX is more and more the Os of choice for media applications (video editing, music production, etc)…and all of them include dozens of new technologies, or standarts which possibly would take years to see on Zeta….so,
what´s the advantage or the killer app which will make people think over switching to Zeta?
which would Zeta be able to do so better than any other OS to make us switch?
Regards (and excuse my english
)
Hiya!
From what I hear, the large number of sales that is driving the success of YellowTAB comes from home order TV advertising where YellowTAB makes arguably exaggerated claims as to the capabilities of the operating system creating clients who buy the package, but largely don’t end up using it or who wish to return it, but don’t go through with the whole thing.
Regarding this I have two quick questions: how many complaints have been filed to the consumer protection organizations in Germany regarding your products and do you think it ethical to market a somewhat defective (lack of drivers, lack of modern applications) product to an unsuspecting, largely unknowing audience?
(I realise my question is not strictly technical and not really in the spirit of this website, but I believe my concern to be valid.)
Any plans on EFI support so Zeta can be booted once again on (Intel based) Macs?
I used x86 BeOS as my primary OS since R4 and switched to Mac after the fall (well, after Dano got old) . . . it would be sweet to have both . . .
Bernd, we’ve witnessed your past work with BeOS transforming the idea of BeOS NG into Zeta. You’ve experienced quite a bit during this time, a few fumbles (and stumbles), but you’ve always managed to land back on your feet (well done!!). What an interesting ride it’s been watching you do what you truly believed in, and to see the passion you have in trying to bring BeOS back into the world.
My question is – was it all worth it (fulfilling your dream)? Now that you’re older and wiser, what would you have done differently?
I’m curious how Zeta will handle CPU scaling, sleep and hybernation modes, wireless cards, automatically dimming of the screen and other important features for laptops. What can I expect there?
Will there be any new printed books on how to program with the default IDE in Zeta and how to use the APIs for that platform? Any chance YellowTab will talk to TrollTech about porting Qt, or will YT port Qt itself?
Will it hit store shelves in Canada besides in Ontario and Maybe BC? In all the years I’ve lived in Canada I’ve never been anywhere where I could buy anything made by Apple or any Linux distributions without having to mail order them.
How flexible will the OS be, will it be usable for setting up file and print servers that are compatible with every major OS? How about using it as the OS for an HTPC?
Hopefully none of these questions sound dumb. My only experience with BeOS was within the last three or four years and it was very brief.
Haiku aside, does YellowTab see Zeta as really competing with other opperating systems, or does it see itself as offering a niche product, not to compete with others but to offer something for those who have a specific want or need. If Zeta does see itself as in competition with other opperating systems, which would those be: open source systems such as Linux and BSD, major comercial OS’s such as Windows and OSX, or small hobby OS’s such as AROS and SkyOS?
And finally, do you use Zeta as your primary OS? What other OS’s do you often use?
Will 1.2 be a free update for 1.1 users? If not, what would be the approximate upgrade cost?
Will 1.2 include OpenOffice?
Um, I use OS/2, eComStation, BeOS R5, ZETA, and a few distros of linux on occassion. I am quite happy without 3D special way neato cool effects on my desktop. They perform spectacularly well. I see no “need” for this 3D compositing you speak of. In fact, with the latest distros of linux (I’m guessing it’s X.org stuff), they have broken the accelleration and overlay my card once enjoyed, making my TV card useless. I use for the most part Matrox G400s in my equipment and they work fine.
Why would I need to offload alpha blending of the desktop to my GPU? Is there a need to put some weird background in a terminal, then make it semi-transparent to see the desktop, which has no useful info behind it for anything other than a screenshot and a “my desktop can do this”?
Really, bouncing icons are annoying, and they need no 3D acceleration to do it. Win 3.1 had bouncing icons with some things. And trust me, they had no GeForce FX 50billion cards back then.
I’m really curious as to how you plan to balance cooperation and compatibility with Haiku while still giving customers a reason to pay a hundred bucks for your product instead of just downloading Haiku. I see this becoming more difficult as Haiku matures.
Do you see future versions of Haiku (R2 onwards) and Zeta being binary compatible? Would you encourage or aid (provide sources even?) to Haiku developers seeking to implement your API changes? Have any Haiku developers expressed interest in keeping the two systems unified? If so, and Haiku was essentially open source version of Zeta, what would your company do to convince customers to pay for your product? How could you stay afloat with a free version of your system available?
Or do you see Haiku and Zeta as going off in their own directions as two seperate systems with nothing but common roots? If so, how do you expect to prevent someone from trying to create a Zeta compatible Haiku (as a fork perhaps, if the main Haiku devs aren’t interested)?
I just worry when corporate concerns and money get into the mix. I don’t one day want yT to one day be the big bad company making decisions based on making money, rather than whats best for our little BeOS community. I’d hate to see yT, for example, creating closed proprietary formats or protocols with no information on how they work in the hopes of stifling those who seek compatibility. I hope Zeta can find a way to coexist peacefully with Haiku as Haiku grows up.
Wow…long. Sorry!
What will YT do to attract more application developers to the Zeta OS?
[1]
You said you were working on a new kernel and GCC4.
Can you say a little bit morre about it ?
Is it a fresh new kernel, a haiku improved kernel or the old beos one update (meaning you’ve got sources, that I don’t think so).
A fresh new kernel seems a too huge task.
[2]
You’ve made lots of improvement on the mediakit. But this old brooktree driver is still remaining, do you plan to improve it ?
That would be nice to answer this, because everybody wonder if you have kernel sources wich I don’t believe at all otherwise fixes like memory patch / boot screen would be a lot easier to do.
With regards to Openoffice.org, do you have an estimate as to when the port will be completed? What challenges has the port presented and how well do you think it will run compared to its competitors on Zeta, for example, Gobe Productive and Abiword?
Also, does YellowTAB intend to continue to collaborate with the Haiku project? Is it possible that in the future we will see a Haiku-powered Zeta?
Will be a roadmap published? Most questions here would be answered through it easily. I know that most companies don’t do that, but it would be nice
We haven’t heard anything about Java from ages. Firstly, there were BeUnited and yT ports. BU one is almost finished i guess, and what about yT port?
Like you said, in Zeta 1.2 the OS got more attention, which i loved, but something annoys me: we still have to pay for an outdated Flash Player. Any plans regarding it?
Many thanks for your work!
Thanks for your work! Keep going
1, Has yellowTab been in talks with Opera about bringing their browser back to this platform ?
The users would love it to return.
2, is yellowTab working on Bluetooth support at the moment, or do they have any plans in the near future to?
3, with all the wired/wireless devices that people use now to store data, contact information, and media (etc), if and how are yellowTab going to bring that to the Zeta system, would a “sync kit” be an advantage to the platform? Being able to keep my phone + zaurus organised together via People files would be lovely.
4, is there a chance for a more open relationship with Haiku, so that if you’re working on a project that might benefit them, they could avoid duplicating effort?
First of all, i must say that i am not proud to be using a pirated version of Zeta at home. I live in Romania and i haven’t been able to buy it from anywhere here. Ok, and now, the important part…
1.When do you think a 3D enabled driver for Ati cards will be available?
2.Can you at least make an alpha state or whatever driver for the SIS 760 series found in most Acer laptops?
3.How on earth can u make a tv-tuner card work properly under Zeta/BeOS? I have a Diamond BT848 based card which works except for the sound and a Winfast TV2000XP BT878 card which doesn’t work at all. Any drivers planned?
PS: what can we do to help Zeta reach to Romania?
What do you think of the recently announced BNX project, which apparantly wants to try and put the Haiku kits on top of the QNX kernel?
What is the state of connectivity to CIFS and NFS file systems? Will future versions of Zeta allow for multi-user security? Will Zeta include a working, stable Samba client? Will it include access to active directory?
I seem to remember a previous video interview with haikunews.org, where Mr. Bernd was quoted as saying…
“ve half our own jawa”
Ok, so where is it?
I believe there are technical limitations with R5 keeping the beunited folks from progressing. What’s your excuse?
Are there any plans or strategy to update the default development tools for ZETA, or replace them with something newer? It’s wonderful that they are bundled with the operating system, but BeIDE is getting dated. Will it even support GCC4? More importantly, will it even work in a GCC4 compiled system? (Binary compatibility being lost…)
Die-hard coders use ViM and makefiles, but that’s not the point.
Will Yellowtab hold the OpenSource flag like Novell? Will you contribute back your own kernel modifications to BeOS to Haiku in order to keep yourself open and independent to old Beos code? Then you can market the Haiku as a commaercial product but keep open source. So people will contribute to Haiku but buy Zeta as a Haiku polished product. Hyperion INC made the mistake to keep its code far from Aros and it is in very bad position. How about you? will you merge your kernel code with Haiku? Will all the HW drivers be open? I would buy Zeta in such a situation. Otherwise I will keep my Linux and BSD.
Will YT (begin to) produce or improve audio applications this year? Or will YT support and/or market 3rd party vendors? How is your relationship with Xentronix now and how does Xentronix feature business look like?
I really need these quality/pro apps; MIDI sequencer, (improve Sequitur would be enough), multitrack audio editor, pro audio/midi driver (I know about the Echo driver), sample editor. The rest can be downloaded from Bebits.
Can we expect one or more of the above mentioned SW to be expected from YT? If you break binary compatibility by going to a new compiler, how will you deal with all these (some excellent quality) (audio) apps from Bebits?
Thanks a lot Bernd for realizing a new BeOS. Good luck.
when is Multiuser (multiple user logins/profiles) going to be implemented in ZetaOS?
They say multiuser is slated for the 1.5 Release. The next release is going to be 1.2.
As a European entrepreneur do you feel Germany and other EU countries are doing enough to encourage local emerging tech companies ? Is enough support given when starting a company that faces immediate and brutal competition with international and established competitors ?
I don’t have Zeta myself but Judging from screen shots the minimalist approach to usability used by Be is not being followed in Zeta.
e.g. compare the recent screen shot of the screen mode prefs to the older BeOS version of the same. I much prefer the Be version.
The newer prefs add more options and IMHO looks more cluttered.
To me Zeta is becoming more “geeky”, Is this intentional?
What about considering a hybrid approach which keeps the simplicity and the new options by separating them (like OS X)?
I read your story about cooperating with Opera software..
Will you plan add (port) newer version like is Opera 8/9?
(I think you’ll need port Qt..with GCC 4.x.x?)
Could you do the PowerDreams interview again, but this time actually spend some time on answering the questions and go in-depth?
I have an actual question though:
-How is the Zintro coming along (the integrated ‘Zeta set-top box’)?
What is Yellowtab doing to assure usability improvements in ZetaOS?
Are there people working on the usabilty other then programmers and designers?
Is Zeta usability tested, or will this take place in the near future?
Has Yellowtab gotten information about usability from their deal about the BeOS source, or is this something what all has to come from Yellowtab?
Feel free to add more depth to the question
Edited 2006-03-31 08:12