BeOSJournal is previewing YellowTAB’s Zeta beta 5a. Read the interesting review and check their screenshots. Additionally, the web site features an interview with Mike Popovic, ex-Be employee, mostly known for his comical BeOS-related site, BeDope. Additionally, YellowTAB published information on a new set of Zeta-only applications they are developing, ZumlE. UPDATE: Learn about BeTunes!
BeOSJournal Previews Zeta Beta5a
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
112 Comments
2003-06-04 6:34 pm
Anonymous
Uhm, sorry, it was my mistake to quote you, I actually talking about the general attitude at the forum.
about the web-site issue, Since I can’t acces it atm, I can’t search for it. But this issue has been covered more than enough on all news sites (including osnews). They, unfortunately, usually don’t find time to update the site all too often except for the news section. But please remember my previous words before you jump on them (j/k). 
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This reviewer seems over enthusiastic, and far less objective than Eugenia.
I can’t say that it was a Preview nor a review. Since it’s a BeOS Fan site, they can’t be too negative about Zeta.
It’s almost as an ad for Zeta.
But it was nice to read.
Well, if nothing else, it’s nice to see it running on contemporary hardware!
Zeta’s stochastical approach to “development” can be illustrated by simplest fact – they have LocaleKit, but they haven’t even usable keymap switcher which exists for all other OS-es in the world.
That’s about Zeta “Internationalization”.
Second out-of-box problem in same aread for them will be fonts. They have use in its distribution BitStream fonts inherited by Be Inc, but those fonts supports only Western ISO-****-1 codepage, excluding Haru (which is also buggy for some of character sets).
Third thing is about i18n POSIX compatibility –
1) No evnironment LC variable switching while switching language. But it is absolutely neccessary for POSIX-compatible application ports support to use utf-8 set of locales in BeOS – like US_utf-8 or GE_utf-8 or RU_utf-8
2)as far as i know, Zeta’s version of bash is still buggy with utf-8 which is quite dangerous (while working with file names) and annoying,
So those my 20 Estonian sents
Had a look at the screenshots and I like it.
I think people expect to much from this new version of Beos. The fact is the development was on hold for several years and Zeta Team has lots of catching up to do.
I have to admit they should have fixed all the bugs first before adding new features but I’m pretty sure the team is aware of this and they are working on it.
I look forward to this release.
Hehe, about fifteen minutes ago I finished what I believe to be the final nail in the coffin of the keyboard locking bug. NumLock / CapsLock / ScrollLock are detected on LogOff / ShutDown and then reenabled based on user (future uses) logon.
We have been working with the new BASH here and there, though I am not sure as to the progress, as many have noticed, I have not been around much in the last month.
POSIX compatibility has been improved, and is the 14th item on my list for further investigation. Though the 13th is the last of the critical items.
BeOS has been doing keymap switching for a long time, Zeta hasn’t changed this.
Zeta has more than just an English input method. For instance, when I hit Alt-Space, I start typing in korean :-).
TBJ knows BeOS quite well, and is also familiar with not only my former projects, but with Zeta. The preview is gonna be skewed simply because of the extra knowledge.
And, naturally, I am glad to hear he likes my decors, thanks.
–The loon
Actually, we fixed bugs first, then started adding features. Adding the features created new bugs that must now be handled.
Most PhOS users will tell you that PhOS is just as, if not more, stable than R5 for most tasks. And networking is light years beyond R5.
Zeta is a group project in yellowTAB. We will all have our say about it before it is released. I, for instance, went on a few tangents and made certain things the way *I* wanted because it felt new, yet much as if it had ceom from Be.
Those who have seen the Updater evolve know my convictions.
–The loon (yellowTAB, obviously)
“BeOS has been doing keymap switching for a long time, Zeta hasn’t changed this.”
Maybe i’m missed something, but BeOS NEVER had keymap switcher like other OS-es.
There is third-party application by Stas Maximov, but it is bit crashy and buggy (i know it’s internals)
s_d is speaking of a Deskbar replicant where you can change keymap “on the fly” without having to go change it in the pref panels. However, it is the same thing really.
looncraz, thanks for posting here. I really appreciate your inside views from the dev process (sometimes it seems like yT totally dies for weeks at a time). A couple BeOS threads (they are really “pervasive” here, haha) back I mentioned that Zeta ought to be good because you’re on their team, and I think I’m not wrong.
By the way, thanks for making PhOS. It’s saved BeOS for me on my newer PC.
Will Gobe Productive 2.0 still run on Zeta Beta? (Dang – “Zeta Beta” reminds me of my ex wife – I got so tired of saying “sorry Ari”)
If so the 400 fonts Eugenia complained about in her review just might have some merit!
And what ever happened to the open source of Productive?
Vic
“However, it is the same thing really.”
In what sense? Do you mean that item in Preferences->Keymap?
Heh, can you imagine working in Windows that you are forced to go in Settings/ControlPanel every time when you are typing next word in your Greek-English-French environment?:)
That is what those funny people from Menlo Park suggested for as for years
On Windows is different, because going to that specific control panel and configuring it is a pain as the UI is sh*tty there. It involves a NUMBER of clicks.
On BeOS, is only 2 clicks away. Don’t compare apples and oranges here.
At all, loon’z comments and my conversations with Bernd convinced me that hardly there is any person in current team who understand those problems at sufficient level.
But they announced its localization and internationalization power with LokaleKit – so my only hope that with big hype they got in Japan Zeta will have on board someone from Asia – those asians are forced to understand such problems.
it is not thatdifferent. I had hope that as you are Greek, you understand this and will try to avoid hypocricy.
Sorry, my mistake. Especially if to remember your wovings about usability engineers and such.
And two clicks isn’t even truth – click + looooong mouse move + click on scroll + scrolling + click on keymap in list + click on “USE” button. In common
>I had hope that as you are Greek, you understand this and will try to avoid hypocricy.
I hope you take that back, you have no right to talk to me like that.
Why?
Because I DO NOT use Greek. I only use english on my computers. I HATE Greek on computers. When I am in Greece and have to use my brother’s PC, it all just looks weird. Even when I used PCs in the college in Greece, all PCs were set to english. So, no. I am not a hypocrite. It is just that I don’t care personally about internationalization. AT ALL.
Turning so hostile all of a sudden?
Anyway, all you have to do is keep the Keymap Preferences windows open. Then it is two clicks. It’s what I do to switch to Russian when I need it. Also, get a wheel mouse. Those things are incredibly useful.
Sorry, that was a reply to the original “well Eugenia,”.
Yeah, you don’t.
But Zeta is company. They wish to sell product.
So they must to take some care, but usually such thing are bit out of focus for Western companies, so i feel my obligations to point out such issues to help them on early stage.
Trying to bashing my comments as unimportant (“Windows is different, in BeOS we don’t need it especailly”) isn’t best way to help Zeta and BeOS
I have to side with Eugenia on this issue.
It is rather more efficient to have it two clicks away and keep it that way, kiss principle.
But having a taskbar replicant todo the switching with seems abit daft, i.e there are two ways todo it, blow open a full textview on click of the relevant replicant icon.
Or click the icon and bring that preference panel up.
Greg has a simple solution which I like, opening the keymap pref window and keeping it open.
and imho a keymap prefence window isnt subject to fitts law.
Well, yT is a German company, so they have to deal with scharfes-ses and umlauts themselves. Also, you’re misinterpreting her comments. She said “Windows is different, in BeOS it’s easy.” not “not especially needed.”
I think (and looncraz said) that the language settings will be better in the final. I assume adding a hotkey combination for keymap switch would be quite trivial.
I don’t wish to blame Eugenia, she seems tired of all those trolls here (not slashdot yet, but close) and hard work, but i prefer to discuss those thing on some realistic basis.
Really, you seems to have near to zero experience with work in really multilangage environment, or if, in very rare occasion. But trust me, FIRST step of i18n in ANYcomputer environment is creation of convinient keymap switcher, working from shortcuts and indicating its state in some good way, like deskbar or application toolbar resident.
I watching that at least 20 years, starting from first menu-driven text application
she may very well be, but we arent discussing peoples personallife here are we.
and this has nothing at all to do with racism my friend.
I myself have zero experience since i run my enviroment in english and if I need to write in french, swedish, norwegian, german or spanish i’ll use the proper keybinding to acess the characters I need.
oh and should’nt keyboard manufacturers factor this in aswell if we follow your reasoning…
“Well, yT is a German company, so they have to deal with scharfes-ses and umlauts themselves.”
It shows again that you simply don’t understand issue.
No problem with umlauts as is in BeOS. BeOS is Unicoded (UTF-8) OS. So having “accented characters” in language don’t provide any automatical understanding of the problem.
But even for latin-alphabet based languages there are some problems in nowadays multilanuage Europe, e.g. if you’re designing sites for international services and even if you are non-English programmer – non-english keymaps are very inconvinient for use in programming.
Look, I am RUSSIAN, I know your damn issues. When I code (rarely, but a little) I do it in English because it is important that source be readable by everyone, to me at least.
Linus Torvalds used English from the very beginning.
Not many people need to constantly switch their encoding, and if you do, keeping the pref window open does not count as an ugly hack.
“and this has nothing at all to do with racism my friend”
It is, hidden,unconscious but it is.
So offtopic – only tool which seems to be able to broke such apprach is money.
I watched it in several software (and not only projects).
In start – “Ahh that’s crap, who cares about those hieroglyphs…”
Then “Hm, i heard there i big market, but they wan’t buy our product. Maybe we should add support for those, hm, symbols?”
Then “Damn, that’s impossible, we should redesign all from ground”.
Then, “Ahh, those our competitors were artful…they have it already.”
In that sense your comments are qute useless, because this is not about BeOS usability for you, but about other potential consumers. And this is just such little thing which has very big effect
Jesli ty russkij, to pochemu ne zapolzajesh na qube.ru potrpepatsa pro BeOS?
But i suspect you isn’t. I never met any real Russian who may agree with you on this topic, sorry.
And please remember, if all has attitude like yours, and understanding like yours, you will be unable even today to ready any contemporary (with text alignment) site in German, French, Portuguese in heavily blamed here BeZilla.
I know what i’m speaking about…
I will not even comment on that level.
And no you need to see the bigger picture, money has never been an option or a problem for me.
and I have to agree with you on something though, it is’nt about BeOS usability for me, it’s about usability in general for me.
and now, modstick please?
5:00 moring here…
I use my PC to write in three languages (English, Spanish and Japanese), so I will allow myself to give my opinion on the subject of switching keymaps in BeOS.
Correct me if I am wrong, but the switch example that Loon mentions (between English and Korean) is not a keymap switch but an “input method” switch. I think this is the same as swtiching between the default BeOS input method and the Japanese input method. In this case you can switch by pressing certain key combination (ALT + SPACE, I believe), which makes it very easy and convenient to go back and forth between English and Japanese.
However, BeOS does not have a keymap switch per se.
For the same reason that you can switch between input methods (English & Japanese, for example), it should be possible to switch between keymaps with a simple key combination. Having to keep an app open (even if it is just two clicks clicks away) is just not acceptable if you are going to claim that your OS is international.
All you have to do is add the functionality of http://www.bebits.com/app/233. That will do it.
Koki
s_d, one more remark about racism and you’ll get modded down.
I never used BeOS personally, but heard good things about it. It seems that what made beOS great was a result of the original team that developed it (case in point – the 3D stuff), so now it appears that YellowTab is just trying to finish patching up what was unfinished with Dano without fucking it up too much .. but based on Eugenia’s review, they aren’t doing a very good job.
Yes, I am Russian. What do you think, I’m lying? I don’t go to Qube because a) that site seems to display flakily for me and b) I like it here well enough, because I’m interested in more than just BeOS.
I say “Deal with it” on the keymap issue because the world of computing is dominated by English. I don’t use keyboard shortcuts much anyway, and keeping the damn window open is not some sort of sacrifice.
(Blin, ty menya dostal. Nu mne vse ravno, ne tak uzh i neudobno okno ostavlyat’ otkrytym, ponimayesh? Ya po krainei mere schitayu chto oni dolzhny snachala drugie veschi ispravit’, t.k. eto ne prioritet.)
.. then we can stop complaining about locale and keymaps. *watches the dead horse continue to be beaten*
Judging by your comments at Qube, you really don’t like this site very much. Judging by some of the replies, it’s full of fanboys who can’t handle a mixed review. Perhaps that is why I don’t go there?
Seems Michael Phipps (OBOS lead dev) has a new newsletter, once again with one article on random crap and another on random crap from the computing world. I like the guy, I guess he would make a better JLG than Bernd, but what happened to the newsletter as news idea? Maybe he should call it Michael’s Minutes.
What is up with mounting drives in Zeta ? I thought on Linux had that god awful problem ?
I just hope they fix the fonts. With rendering that looks like that, I doubt I will be investing my money in this. Oh, and I -do- like the decore shown in this screenshot:
http://images.beosjournal.org/reviews/2003/zetabeta5a/KonradZeta.pn…
That just looks fantastic, I hope the default look is similar to that. I hope we can turn off the image previews. I hope they change their logo on the Deskbar so it blends in better with the gray (what’s shown in the above screenshot is an improvement to what I’ve seen in the past, but it still needs more work). I hope we can turn off the text that tells how many items reside in a directory (though I do like this feature). I hope we can scale the SVG icons to a smaller size.
Be, by default, automatically mounts Be partitions. You can also set it to automatically mount other partitions at bootup, you can set it to automatically mount CDs when inserted … but you can still mount and unmount devices.
>What is up with mounting drives in Zeta ? I thought on Linux had that god awful problem ?
that’s the trick. There is NO god awful problem with the way BeOS uses mounting. You just poing to the name of a partition and it mounts automatically. It requires no command line stuff, neither pre-configuring. It figures out by itself during booting what kind of partitions these are, for you. all you have to do is select/unselect them if you don’t want them. NOTHING else is needed.
I have a P2-400 laying around and it fits all of the hardware specs of BeOS R5 PE. Most of the articles about zeta talked about new drivers, themeing, and mutiple versions of gcc
Are there any reasons to use Zeta over R5 if your hardware is basically from the same time period as R5? I’ve heard BONE mentioned but I also saw it for download on BeBits. So I dunno if they changed anything in it.
Its not that I don’t want to buy Zeta, I was just wondering what it fixed from R5, and what it would add that would be relevant for an aging machine.
Vincent
“when the itching comes i think about the linux. it helps.” -anonymous
what’s up with Zedit?!
it looks very alien in the beos environment. i can live with theming as it’s supposed to globally alter the gui’s appearance. so i choose the one i like. but having non-standard widgets and iconbars in an app is unexcusable. and this comes from the OS maker themselves!!!
i try to like Zeta, but they are making it very hard…
BeOS should work on your machine! You can even try out now BeOS 5, download it from BeBits.
Improvements are:
– BONE (networking rewritten, much faster)
– New Media Kit
– New OpenGL kit
– New Interface kit, themes etc
– app server improvements (refresh window movement linked to v-sync)
– better hardware support (USB1/2 etc)
– native support for AMD XP series and Intel P4 with HT (vs hacked support)
– SVG Tracker
– new drivers
– many other things
– GCC 3.2 support
This release is like going from Windows NT 4 to Windows XP. This release also removes many obstacles for lots of apps.
– with BONE comes better POSIX support. Ports from other OS’s are easier. Ie. the Qt port can continue, BeWine can continue etc.
– sockets are now file descriptors. More ports possible.
– non square windows are now possible
– lots of hacked apps can now be properly ported.
– GCC 3.2 brings us faster apps than before.
The biggest issue is that BeOS continues to live. After Zeta R1, there will be R2, R3 etc. The team behind it have learned a lot about the BeOS code, now they have experience and can enhance and expand the codebase. All those developers who are sitting on the sidelines will now be able to jump back in, all those postponed projects can have new life injected into them. The BeOS community has finally bounced off the low it was in during the last 22 months.
Finally, more BeOS users reawakens support for OBOS. OBOS needs Zeta, YellowTab needs OBOS. This is a match made in heaven. Rest assured that Zeta R2 will have 30-50% OBOS code, and Zeta R3 will be based on the OBOS kernel, no doubt about it. YellowTab IS the next RedHat.
Remember, back in 1996, who used or ever heard of BeOS Preview Release. It was nowhere near as good as BeOS R4.5 (the big release in 1999). People saw what the little baby can do, how big it can grow, the platform had a future.
YellowTab is at the same point of time which BeInc was in 1996. How many employees did BeInc have in 1996? This time around, YellowTab have the advantage that they have a user base and an application base from which they can grow from. And a recognisable brand name. BeInc never had that luxory.
Thanks SmallStepForMan
Thats a pretty long list of improvements over the vanilla PE edition.
Eugenia,
I already installed PE – about 5min after the email I got from you about going with Be over QNX. I was just wondering if there was a large reason for me to “upgrade” that machine to Zeta.
Vincent
“when the itching comes i think about the linux. it helps.” -anonymous
Wow. That suddenly made me feel warm and fuzzy and optimistic about BeOS’s future. I hope you’re right…
It is configurable, easy to use and reliable. As Koki wrote, all yT has to do is integrate its Switcher’s functionality into Zeta.
Here’s the link again for those in doubt:
http://bebits.com/app/233
I just installed BeOS 5 PRO last night…what joy to come back to it.
Now, I also have dano…should I do the logical thing and “upgrade” to it? Or should I upgrade to PhOS? Or to the Max Edition…
and how about if I want to develop again…with the aim of getting something that can run on PRO and zeta?
according to the interview, there are doubts that yellowtab really has the right to use the beos-sourcecode.
i must say i really haven’t understood their claim that they’re legally entitled to, but on the other hand, i can’t believe that palm wouldn’t have stopped them already if they weren’t.
but if palm has really missed the fact until now, it would be bitter irony if they would stop it when (or not long after) zeta hits the market.
on the other hand, it somehow would fit into my perception of yellowtab.
In some screen shots the fonts and the scroll bars look pretty good.
http://images.beosjournal.org/reviews/2003/zetabeta5a/Zedit.png
http://www.insidebeos.de/sonstiges/ZumIE.png
I suggest that these scrollbars and fonts to be used as default but still I prefer the original BeOS scrollbars.
Hi!
Yes I changed the default settings in the font preferences panel to get a much better look on my fonts.
Its very easy to change the theme in ZETA so its up to you how you want it to look like.
The deskbar logo isnt finnished at all, and some themes ( including the SmokeDecor has some serious drawing bugs ). I know that and I will change this for the final release.
If you got ideas of new themes, themes from other OSes or just your own sketches, send them to me and I will look at them.
/Mikael
keyb switching: if the Deskbar applet is buggy, noone stops you to fix it and submit it to the original author. It would save us time. What _you_ do, _we_ don’t have to do and can spend time on higher priority tasks, such as fixing the ugly bug Eugenia mentionned in her review. (and get some sleep to dream, so we get more inspiration
i18n: I do care about i18n, I already looked into what KDE does, however I can’t help much on that currently. But we do have further work to put on the locale kit (to make it closer to Unix locales I think). And we have all the people from Asia lurking around on BeShare to help us
> And two clicks isn’t even truth
You don’t have to click if you use shell… just make dumps with keymap -d, and make 3 shellscripts that use keymap -l: now it’s at 3 letters away, and you don’t touch the mouse
> Well, yT is a German company
Which reminds me how much beta evolved, beta3 used the german keymap =)))
> Mount and UnMount
http://clapcrest.free.fr/revol/beos/MountList.zip ?
> I’ve heard BONE mentioned but I also saw it for download on BeBits.
Because it would be illegal, just like Exp/Dano.
> So I dunno if they changed anything in it.
Everything. It’s brand new and blazing fast compared to net_server.
> but having non-standard widgets and iconbars in an app is unexcusable. and this comes from the OS maker themselves!!!
M$ had been doing that for years :p
However I agree it breaks some usual look.
1) Better networking, both PPP and TCP/IP speed. Having used BeOS R4, R4.5 (which was a free upgrade) and R5, the speed was shocking. Has it been improved?
2) Support for Matrox G550. Why are there so few alternative who support it? considering it is mearly a faster processor than G450 and mearly uses DDR memory, supporting the chip should be relatively easy.
3)OpenOffice.org port to BeOS is a must. Whether you like it or not, an OS is basically “put on the map” when key opensource applications are “made available”. OpenOffice.org one of those. If you can’t provide a native port, how about providing X11 support to the graphical display server which BeOS uses so that X11 applications are easier to make available.
4) Will Real Player be made available? the player and a number of the key parts are already opensourced via helixcode, the only part that isn’t is the codec itself, however, that is due to thirdparty licenses from Intel.
5) Java support, another must have. As the number of Java based applications increase, and yes, they will increase, so will the demand for Java support be made available on the respective operating system.
6) Decent printer support. Please, I don’t want to spend another cent needing to buy software just so I get my printer to work. Anyone remember binkjet? yep, I bought a copy just to get my printer to work. Make life easier and adopt CUPS as the standard printing protocol then atleast the there will be two systems in the world, CUPS and Windows rather than having a third to complicate things.
7) Offer value for money. Either offer BeOS + Office Suite, or buy one copy of BeOS and get x number of upgrades free of charge (the user pays for media). I would be more than happy to purchase the first version if they promised that the next would be free to customers who bought the first release.
8) Mozilla working at an adequate speed would be a nice or even simply drop the rendering engine out of Net+ and replace it with khtml. It is already a mature enough to be used in commercial products, why not embrace it?
1) That is what BONE is for.
2) Sorry can’t remember about this
3)They were considering about porting rootless X11 server, which would make porting apps like OO a lot easier
4)dunno
5) I heard they were working on this
6) HP support is there (since you mentioned binkjet
)
8) Phoenix is usable, but of course a khtml browser would rock, but I heard they have some stuff going on abiout browsers, have no idea what it is, of if it is for R1.
> of if it is for R1.
should be “or if it is for R1.”
As for your #2 item:
http://www.bebits.com/app/3080
DaaT
http://www.beosjournal.org
synergy, there are no legal issues. YT had an arrangement with Be and Palm had to honor it.
Great to hear. I would love to see Zeta set a new standard. 100% POSIX, UNIX 95, C99 and ANSI C++ compliant. Sure, not all operating systems are that “compliant” , however, why not set a new standard? half finished standards aren’t good enough and if Zeta can prove that you can create a fast and modern operating system around openstandards then it would prove the chief nay-sayer, namely Microsoft, wrong.
As for X11 support, would it be possible to add support to the current framework so that it can sit side by side next to the native library? Sure, X11 isn’t pretty, however, at the end of the day, that is what is being used on UNIX like operating systems and unfortunately for BeOS, that is what they rely on. If Zeta can offer a easy transition from X11 to what every they use, then we should see native application soon.
Regarding threading, what does BeOS use? does it use Native POSIX Threads or its own threading?
Neat, however, it would be nice if the support wasn’t as iffy. As the author looked at the X drivers from Matrox and tried to work to create a driver from those sources?
Thank you. As for developer support, hopefully this time they’ll actually address the concerns of the developer community rather than pushing them under the carpet. Does one need to drag out the Mozilla porting issue and how Be had to issue a “work around” for a feature they didn’t include with the operating system? something that is standard on almost every *NIX/*BSD.
When the developer screams “we need [blah] to get our port to work”, then Zeta should respond instantly giving advice to work around until it can be included in the operating system, or bettter yet, issue an OS update that includes that feature.
> As for developer support, hopefully this time they’ll actually address the concerns of the developer community
rather than pushing them under the carpet.
We do listen, mind you.
> what does BeOS use? does it use Native POSIX Threads or its own threading
BeOS uses its own threading API. There used to be a pthreads implementation, but it was never finished I believe.
Shouldn’t they remove the Be logo from the Zeta partition icons?
-G
mmmmmmmmmm… iffy? Have you actually tried it? His driver is rock solid, a great piece of coding work. But, that’s your opinion, you’re entitled to it.
DaaT
http://www.beosjournal.org
What’s the status BeOS / Zeta Java support? JRE? JDK?
Glad to see that Zeta and OpenBeOS are working together to bring BeOS back!
I think it still must be emphasized that this is a beta. The loon thought Eugenia’s review was fair so, if he thinks so, then that probably means the Zeta team is aware of shortcomings.
Even when it’s released, it will still be a work in progress. Look at Mac OS X. I had the public beta but, when 10.0 came out and I thought, “Wow, here it is!”, I didn’t realize until later that, for all practical purposes, it was still beta
Isn’t the BeOS user base rather marginal, nowadays? If Be, Inc. went bancrupt, how realistic is it that Yellowtab will be able to support themselves by selling BeOS CDs? If I look at the German speaking Be newsgroup (de.comp.os.be), I see little more than zero traffic nowadays. Don’t know if this is representative, but if so, then the BeOS community is virtually dead.
Also about the legal issues – one poster said that there are none and that an agreement exists. On the YTAB web site I could not find any mentioning of a signed agreement. All they write is:
Before Be, Inc. sold its assets to Palm, Inc., we managed to close a deal allowing us to distribute the PE version and had started negotiations over the future of the Pro version. Koch Media was ready to reissue the copies of the Pro Version that they hadn’t managed to resell, to make it a part of a new distribution first called BeOS NG (New Generation), and now renamed to “Zeta”.
… so it’s all just about reselling, but not about modifying the OS.
n June 2001 while we went into the final negotiations with Be, Inc. over financing the development of a release of BeOS R6, we got the message from Be, Inc. that they were no longer able to negotiate with us. The reason was that they had a potential investor. We decided to wait to we got the name of the new investor or buyer of BeOS/IA. Once the shareholders of Be, Inc. had voted to approve the sale to Palm we established the needed contact with Palm, Inc. in November. We are most grateful for the help we have received from Be Inc., in providing us with contact information for Palm, Inc.
As I understand, there is no agreement, as far as the source is concerned. If they have the original source code for Dano, I wonder how they got it.
Pardon, but all this sounds pretty doubious to me.
Johannes
Johannes, although I think you’re wrong about the BeOS community being virtually dead (there may be enough life in it to support a 5-person private company), I agree with the rest.
At the very end of the last (looooong) BeOS thread, I posted this:
As a responsible company, they should tell their customers the truth. I assume they have.
Their site says:
Before Be, Inc. sold its assets to Palm, Inc., we managed to close a deal allowing us to distribute the PE version…
In June 2001 while we went into the final negotiations with Be, Inc. over financing the development of a release of BeOS R6, we got the message from Be, Inc. that they were no longer able to negotiate with us. [snip]
Once the shareholders of Be, Inc. had voted to approve the sale to Palm we established the needed contact with Palm, Inc. in November.
Note, that says contact, not contract.
That doesn’t sound to me like they have any source code, but rather that they may legally distribute PE binaries.
I’m not sure why anyone thinks they have licensed the BeOS code base. I certainly can’t find anywhere on their site that says so. Maybe someone here is starting rumors?
Check the OSnews forum, and please tell me which dead forum has most of the posts.
This week there have been 3 news items about BeOS ( probably more about linux ) but why post news for a dead community?
Just my thoughts!
/Konrad
I wish I could say more, but Johannes and johng, you are dead wrong. In fact, in a way, you are starting rumors (not on purpose, of course) that Zeta is not legit. It is legit.
What is PhOS, where do I find it?
What is SuperDANO, where do I find it?
I’ve heard of MAX, and several other 5PE++ distributions, but PhOS has never come up, what gives? I got a new P4 and would love to through a BeOS on it for old time’s sake. (though Debian+Low Latency+Preempt+XFce4+BeOS themes is pretty good, and much more feature-rich.)
Thanks for the info…
> As a responsible company, they should tell their customers the truth. I assume they have.
Why do people always try to teach yT something? Do you get the details of the agreements, internal/external arrangements Microsoft does with other companies? You read about it at news sites that they have reached to an agreement etc. And that is exactly what guys at yT have done for the last 1000 times.
yT is a legal company founded in Germany, YOU don’t have to worry about their legal issues, they are a company and there are other authorities to make sure that they remain legal, it is not in users’ responsibility to worry about that.
I remeber I looked at some theme screenshots for OpenBeos.
It was posted all over the net and it had different colour variations. Is a matter of fact I contacted the guy and asked him if he got in contact with YellowTab or openbeos but his email bounced. Perhaps it is worth checking out.
http://www.webhost-free.com/beadingo/
>>>Why do people always try to teach yT something? Do you get the details of the agreements, internal/external arrangements Microsoft does with other companies? You read about it at news sites that they have reached to an agreement etc. And that is exactly what guys at yT have done for the last 1000 times.
Your analogy is totally flawed —- those news stories CAN be CONFIRMED by the other side of the agreements. Microsoft tells you that they gave 750 million dollars to AOLTW. And then AOLTW tells you that they received 750 million dollars from Microsoft.
>>>yT is a legal company founded in Germany, YOU don’t have to worry about their legal issues, they are a company and there are other authorities to make sure that they remain legal, it is not in users’ responsibility to worry about that.
User is not the problem, developer is. The point is that — (i.e. even if Gobe can be saved financially, and they have the money to re-start their BeOS projects) — nobody is ever going to spend a single cent to re-start any BeOS/Zeta projects until they know Zeta is not built on illegal codes.
Those are probably the best shots Iv’e seen so far.
http://cotito.free.fr/projects/gonx+index.html
Sam you have a point, but I remember reading something about htis deal at yT WebSite (maybe it was the forum though, but from Bernd certainly) about the deal. Too bad I can’t acces the site atm.
My actual point was that people go very harsh on yT here at Osnews fora. We should give them some air to breathe and also some encouragement. They are not a company with hunderds of engineers working for it. This is their first release. They really DO work very hard, I visit their forum everyday, try to talk at BeShare whenever I can, and I am convinced that they have very good intentions and they will deliver us a good product in the end.
Those are probably the best shots Iv’e seen so far.