It's The End Of The Be As We Know It

JRAC writes "Be Inc. has replaced their web site's entire contents with information on the sale of Be to Palm. Stock holders can find all relevant info on the Stock Information page. BeOS 5 Personal Edition is no longer available from the site. Looks like it's time to hit the mirrors. Try ftp.planetmirror.com/pub/beos for files. " The official sale was approved just over a month ago.

This is exactly why we need Free software.

[phaze3000]

All the thousands of hours that have been poured into this product are now wasted.

If only Be had released the source under the GPL prior to going under, BeOS could have continued and evovled. As it is it's something of a Neanderthal - an evolutionary dead end.

Re:This is exactly why we need Free software.

[Anonymous Coward]

That is exactly the last thing Be would/should have done!

If they had GPL'd their code then they would most likely have declared bankruptcy instead of selling their IP and assets to Palm.

Opening Be wouldn't really matter anymore...

[TellarHK]

As operating systems have come and gone, one trend has been impossible to avoid. Driver support is next to nonexistent for anything other than Windows, and increasingly Linux on the x86 platform. This doesn't have anything to do with the ethos of open source, nor does it have anything to do with the quality of the operating system. BeOS absolutely kicked ass, it was an incredible attempt at exactly what the industry needs - a clean OS designed for today's desktop needs.

Unfortunately, this isn't what hardware manufacturers want to support. They want to support Windows and maybe Linux. From a conspiratorial standpoint, you could always think about it as the hardware manufacturers simply sticking to Windows because the power curve keeps increasing so often, new parts are always in vogue. From a more realistic standpoint, it's likely because the manufacturers are broke due to economic conditions, or simply too inexperienced to handle multiplatform development. Can open source volunteers make good drivers? Sure, we've seen this with xfree86, but look at what's happened to X. It's huge, considerably bloated, and with the exception of a very few window managers, ugly and unwieldy.

The Be kernel and design methodology were excellent, with few major flaws. The file system design was incredible and should be the first thing remembered if anyone does try and develop another operating system, or add support for it to Linux. Unfortunately, I just don't see evidence that the open source community can come together to create the kind of experience we're starting to see from Mac OS X, in regards to the Be effort. You need hardware, you need vendor support, and you need -rapid- development to get momentum going.

OSX's major flaw so far has been performance, because the BSD/Mach codebase it's built on it simply unwieldy without further refinement. Too much RAM is sucked up by the GUI, which at least manages to be the most functionally attractive one out there. It does what it needs to do, looks good doing it, and actually does mange to innovate, something that hasn't honestly been done since the original MacOS. Say what you will, but the windowing paradigm hasn't evolved much until transparencies became a feature of a commercially successful OS. Apple was able to make this leap by having control over the drivers, and the operating system. As a ten percent underdog, that's not the bad kind of monopoly. Particularly as Apple increasingly, yet slowly, warms up to open source.

Do I support work on OpenBe and like projects? Sure. Do I expect they'll change the world? Not at all. I -wish- they could, but if a system with as many developers as Linux still fails to impress me as a desktop solution due to clunkiness and the interface nightmare that is X11, I just don't think open source will be able to develop an interface that'll compete for user friendliness.

Will I use Linux and X11? Yes, of course. But I'm not the average home user, and that's where the battle for vendor support for an OS lies. I hope someday open source will come around and realize this.

Re:This is exactly why we need Free software.

[tswinzig]

If only Be had released the source under the GPL prior to going under

Ummm, Be sold BeOS to Palm to gain $11,000,000, to pay off creditors and try to give some money back to the shareholders that poured a shitload of money into BEOS (for example, ME).

On top of that, for the upteenth million time, BeOS could NOT have been open-sourced, because it contained a lot of code that was not Be's to give away. Obviously they did not feel putting a ton of engineers on the task of preparing the source code to be given away.

NO! Wait! This is Too Cool to Kill!

[Zzootnik]

I've only recently jumped on the bandwagon with BeOS, but I'm already Extremely impressed with the responsiveness, feel, and power of the Operating System.

I was looking forward to some kind of os updates... with the right supporting programs, this OS could be what makes me switch full time from Wi...er...that other OS...

This is absolutely fantastic...I mean...I've been using and experimenting with computers since I was 13 years old...(so...cripes...18 years???Yeesh...) And this new (to me, at least) os is making me feel like a little kid again...when hardware wasn't cheap, and coding HAD to be tailored to be fast...It's very apparent that a LOT of hard work and love went into crafting this...

Palm? Are you listening? PLEASE don't kill this... Extend it. Release it. Open Source it...Continue it...ANYTHING but kill it...

And..um...Yeah...it's pretty keen...

Re:Opening Be wouldn't really matter anymore...

[TellarHK]

I'll summarize my point for the hint impaired. It's becoming increasingly clear, and yes, repeatedly stated, that open source is stalled at any attempt to actually change the world that the desktop user sees. It's also becoming increasingly clear that the only honest-to-gods challenge to Windows desktops is going to be as it always was, Apple.

The Windows monopoly has -won-. Buisnesses need Office, suits buy what they know about regardless of quality, when it comes to computers. You can argue until you're blue in the face that Linux is a more stable, securable, and cheaper alternative but the question will -always- be asked.

"Who do we call if something goes horribly, drastically wrong? And by the way, where's Office for it?"

Maybe they can call IBM, who knows. But as to Office, Microsoft has essentially shut open source completely out. But they've made one possible mistake, and created possibly the best Word and Excel solution on a non-Microsoft operating system. THIS more than anything else is what open source developers who truly want to change the world should look at, the fact that Apple's finally rising to the challenge, with the -support- of Microsoft's Macintosh Business Unit.

If you want to change the world, make Mac OS X and the Darwin/x86 core better. Let Apple handle the GUI, let Apple design the hardware. Yes, it may cost 10-20% more for the hardware, but it's a small price to pay for the closest thing to a free chance at actually getting a truly kick-ass OS into the hands of the masses.

Instead of considering Apple a closed-source evil, look at them as a company that knows how to do three things well. They know how to design killer hardware, they know how to create a user interface that doesn't suck, and they know how to -survive-. You don't get bitch-slapped in the marketplace by Microsoft for nearly two decades and remain in business by living on your stock inflation alone.

The whole Amiga mentality

[QuantumG]

I always found it frightening to talk to an Amiga user. There were lots of reasons but probably one of the biggest was this strange opinion towards software developers. I think the reasoning went something like this: If we pay for anything and everything that gets written for our platform, companies will see it is profitable to write applications for our platform and so we'll get a whole lot of applications. This is sort of the "begging for scraps" mentality that BeOS users felt too. It makes sense in a way, but it has some undesirable effects. Firstly, a lot of fly by night companies jump onto the platform and sell really crappy software at rediculous prices and people buy it, not because it is good or even useful, but to "support the platform". Secondly, the majority of developers for the platform become commercially driven. How can I say this about the Amiga platform you may ask? After all, the Amiga was *the* platform of the enthusiast programmer. I think the gaming industry and to a lesser extent the demo scene sucked all them up by the end and you cant really include them in the equation. In my opinion, the real killer is shareware, and in particular "nagware". Firstly it baits you with the illusion that the software doesn't have to be paid for, and then it switches to a "gimme gimme" ultimatum mode that it cant really back up. Strangely, a lot of people even paid for crappy shareware. Not that I'm saying all shareware is crap, but some of it is and if after 30 days you're not satisfied then you should delete it. But that's not the way it worked. Either people would reinstall it for another 30 days or they would actually pay for it out of misplaced guilt or this idea that if you pay for crap you will get something other than crap in return. I've never heard of anyone demanding a bug fix or an extra feature before they sent in the registration fee, have you? But that's the kind of actions that really could make shareware great, I pay you, you supply the product I actually want. The same goes for Free Software, however, in this case I need not pay the original programmer, I can pay anyone to fix my bugs or add features, but does anyone do it? Anyone? No. Both systems fall short of the mark for delivering a feedback loop that can be controlled by the software consumer to deliver great software to an alternate operating system. Maybe in a few years AtheOS will be trying to woo software developers and we'll see it all happen again, but maybe, just maybe, someone will come up with a way to get good software onto the platform in proportion to the enthusiasm that fans feel towards their alternate OS. I cant wait.

Re:Opening Be wouldn't really matter anymore...

[aussersterne]

X isn't bloated, it's quite lean and can even run quickly on embedded devices. It's extensible enough to support everything that's occurred so far (touchscreen input, 2D and 3D acceleration, full-motion video, etc.) quite well and without losing backward compatibility with existing applications.

On another note, I am firmly convinced that the reason OSX is slow is Mach. Experience in my department has established that throughput on a loaded server with a microkernel-based OS (MkLinux with a Debian binary set) is a good 30-50% slower than with a non-microkernel OS (monolithic Linux kernel with the *same* binary set). That is not a performance loss to sneeze at, no matter how great microkernels are.

I personally think the reason Linux is the top competitor to Windows is simple: it's a Unix-like operating system and after 30+ years, no better paradigm for rapidly-deployable general-purpose computing (i.e. everything from office tasks to embedded systems to network serving) than Unix+X has yet been seen, regardless of BeOS, OS/2, Amiga Workbench, ad infinitum.

The "good enough" effect.

[HiyaPower]

Trouble with most folks on this forum (including myself) is that we often forget about the "good enough" effect. That is for the average user, elegance doesn't matter. All they care about is that it is "good enough" to do some simple things and that it comes pre-installed on their computer. As horrid as Windoze is, it is "good enough" for most folks. In the company that I worked for, the average mentality maxed out at less than being able to write an excel macro. Terabyte file systems, etc. that Be had to offer were wasted on these folks. It was good enough that they could click on their mail (which as virus pre-filtered for them), and run the odd pre-canned application. Any of the elegance that most of us like was totally lost on them. It was good enough that it came on the machine complements of Michael Dell.

Mark Twain went broke investing in the best linotype machine on the face of the earth. It could do anything and everything. However, people wanted the machine that was easier to get and "good enough".

RIP BeOS

[CowboyNea1]

Truly sad.

Re:This is exactly why we need Free software.

[Anonymous Coward]

Will you guys ever learn that in a PLC (Publicly listed Company) you can't just give your product away when someone else offers money for it - shareholders can sue all directors for this action.