Magnussoft has announced a delay of a month for Zeta 1.21, a bugfix release of the Zeta operating system. The extra month will be used to improve Firefox and Seamonkey, as well as working on the driver situation.
Magnussoft has announced a delay of a month for Zeta 1.21, a bugfix release of the Zeta operating system. The extra month will be used to improve Firefox and Seamonkey, as well as working on the driver situation.
It’s the year of delays!
* Vista
* Ubuntu (now over)
* SuSE 10
* Duke Nukem Forever
* PS3
* +Zeta 1.21
What happened to the Bernd Korz interview ? ( http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=14165 )
I’ve spent a few hours searching for a trial version or liveCD of Zeta that actually works (I wasn’t able to burn the CD image of Zeta 1.1 – – why no simple ISO???). Zeta 1.2 seems to be released for some time now but there seems to be NO way to actually test the system!
How do they intend to sell an operating system that only a couple of people know about and (almost) nobody can test? Do they really think people will buy Zeta without even testing a demo version?
You can’t have an ISO image of any BeOS version becuase all of the files need to be held on a BeFS partition on the CD as the installed requires the meta data the file system contains. If you put them all onto an ISO 9660 file system you loose all of the meta data etc. without which BeOS won’t even boot
Any furthermore, you need the BeOS/Zeta bootloader to be on the CD, hence the (at least, other than the other file used to describe the CD layout), two files a lot of BeOS (and Zeta demo?) downloadable CD Images have.
In what way will Magnussoft be improving the browser situation? Or do they mean they’re just going to take the latest BeZilla release of the time?
Wondering myself, as BeZilla developer:)
Maybe they noticed those “nativity” patches on the road and wish to include those into release disk.
Maybe they hope to get native printer working in month.
Last is more interesting, but i’m bit sceptic about it.
Edited 2006-06-22 19:05
They might just wait ofr Ff 2.0 to be out and compile the 1.8.1 branch to have a stabler product than the bleeding edge compiles the bezilla team puts on bebits (but your work is nice).
Printing can’t be made in a month too much works needed.
Neither the previous news item on Zeta nor this one mentions a very fundamental fact: Yellowtab is dead. The company’s office has been finally closed. All employees have been laid off.
See this comment to the latest Zeta related new item:
http://www.osnews.com/permalink.php?news_id=14685&comment_id=127840
Now, this German article
http://www.golem.de/0605/45513-2.html
makes it very clear that despite magnussoft’s claims that development would continue, the perspectives are dire: According to sources cited in the article, Yellowtab had to pay royalties to Palm Source for each new release (excluding simple updates).
So, unless magnussoft is able to pay whatever Palm demands there will be no future for Zeta.
Edited 2006-06-22 20:18
edit: ehh, nvm.
It’s surprising to see they indeed fired all programmers. I don’t understand why they got rid of the experienced old ones to form a new team of 10 however.
Edited 2006-06-23 14:32
YT was put under bankruptcy protection; they also closed their offices. This (and then some) all point to the same direction: that YT is insolvent. So, most likely, the programmers were not fired, but they left (because YT could not pay their salaries).
I see the whole transition (from YT to magnussoft) more as an exercise to keep ZETA alive at any cost. This may sound good, but I highly doubt that it is viable.
The problems that YT had as a company, and ZETA as a software product still remain. If it were a totally different company taking over, then you could give them the benefit of the doubt. But it all looks like it is a new team under the same leadership, so it is very unlikely that the issues that existed before will be overcome.
if you want to know more details about what magnussoft want to do with zeta and so on
you can read this interview that was done with magnussoft
http://www.power-dreams.com/xoops/modules/altern8news/article.php?s…
Well, this all sounds somewhat fishy:
What connection is there between the company magnussoft and the company yellowTAB?
Mr. Weinert Except for the sales partnership of the product yellowTAB ZETA there is no further connection between these two enterprises.
Why won’t he admit to the simple fact that yellowTAB is closed? The company has shut down all its businesses. How can you have a “sales partnership” with an enterprise that has gone down the drain?
Edited 2006-06-22 21:49
This seems to be the sequence of events in the ZETA/yT saga.
1) yT is put under bankruptcy protection. All yT employees loose their jobs, and the CEO is the only one to survive. Offices are closed, and yT ceases operations (although it may still exist on paper).
2) yT gives Magnussoft the rights to sell ZETA.
3) A ZETA development team is being put together (by Magnussoft? Mr. Korz? Jointly?) to further develop the product for Magnussoft. This seems to be a separate entity from Magnussoft (and yT).
4) Mr. Korz is part of the ZETA development team.
yT is gone (and its employees with it), but ZETA and Mr. Korz seem to still be in business. This transition may help ZETA (and Mr. Korz?) survive the bankruptcy, but it is still very unlikely that it will do anything to make ZETA a more marketable product.
Too bad, because I love ZETA.
A ZETA development team is being put together (by Magnussoft? Mr. Korz? Jointly?) to further develop the product for Magnussoft. This seems to be a separate entity from Magnussoft (and yT).
As far as I see, Magnussoft has merely stated their intention to do so. The most likely reason for the delay of version 1.2.1 would be that they have still failed to get the team together – which, if correct, is perfectly understandable: If I were a zeta developer who hadn’t received his salaries from Mr. Korz for months, I would certainly hesitate to join a new team again headed by the same guy.
Edited 2006-06-23 05:55