Comment How it came to be. (Score 5, Informative) 195
Some people here seem to not know, or be a little confused about how this company named yellowTAB came to be the BeOS people, and what is happening in the BeOS world at the moment. Also, I'm not associated with yellowTAB at all, this is all my observations.
yellowTAB
Bernd Korz first appeared in the BeOS community when he released a magazine named InsideBeOS. Only one or two issues were translated into english from the native German of the magazine (I purchased the first english edition!). This magazine stopped publication sometime around when Be flopped and as far as I saw, Bernd sort of disappeared again. When Be filed for bankruptcy, there were many outcries from the community for the source to BeOS so that it's legacy could continue. There were several formal proposals from people to purchase the source as well. Then came the announcement that Palm had purchased Be's intellectual propert(IP)... and were not going to continue development of BeOS. Luckily (in my opinion), Bernd was smart enough apparently to ask for a license to the source and not to purchase it. So, before Be sold their IP to Palm, they gave some sort of full license to yellowTAB to release new products based on the source code. Presumably that license just transferred to Palm's ownership with everything else.
So, here we are today, yellowTAB is about to release their new OS named Zeta (sort of BeOS R6) which contains unreleased code from Be plus new stuff and bug fixes that they have added. The article does not make it very clear, but yellowTAB is actually selling RC1 (Release Candidate 1) of Zeta now to the world. The R1 (Release 1) will be available to people who purchase RC1 for 10 Euros.
BeOS rewrites
There are a number of projects that are aiming their sights on rewriting the BeOS. Some totally opensource from conception, others planning on releasing their source after they have a public binary release under their belts. The main contenders that are around at the moment are OpenBeOS (soon to have a name change), BlueEyedOS , and Cosmoe .
OpenBeOS is taking the approach of totally rewriting the entire system. New kernel, new appkit, new interface kit, new storage kit... everything. They're not changing the basic structure of the system, in fact, they're attempting to completely duplicate the system even down to binary compatibility. As a basis for their project, they have used Be's old header files, and written API documentation. They are hosted at source forge and are using the MIT license for all their source.
BlueEyedOS is taking the approach that they perceive the Linux kernel and XFree86 as suitable for building less traditional system on top of them. They are using the Linux kernel as their Be kernel, and X windows as their display. They've released a demo CD so far that is quite interesting and appears very promising. Their code is not available to anyone but their developers at the moment because they've chosen to start their project closed. I've believe that I've heard though that they are planning for a source release later on. The demo CD can still be downloaded from their website.
Cosmoe is a primarily one man show that has taken the Syllable (was Atheos) source code and altered it to run on top of Linux and X. It's author's primary goal seems to be to give the Unix, Linux community a new user interface and the Be API. Code for this system is occasionally released under GPL and LGPL.
yellowTAB
Bernd Korz first appeared in the BeOS community when he released a magazine named InsideBeOS. Only one or two issues were translated into english from the native German of the magazine (I purchased the first english edition!). This magazine stopped publication sometime around when Be flopped and as far as I saw, Bernd sort of disappeared again. When Be filed for bankruptcy, there were many outcries from the community for the source to BeOS so that it's legacy could continue. There were several formal proposals from people to purchase the source as well. Then came the announcement that Palm had purchased Be's intellectual propert(IP)... and were not going to continue development of BeOS. Luckily (in my opinion), Bernd was smart enough apparently to ask for a license to the source and not to purchase it. So, before Be sold their IP to Palm, they gave some sort of full license to yellowTAB to release new products based on the source code. Presumably that license just transferred to Palm's ownership with everything else.
So, here we are today, yellowTAB is about to release their new OS named Zeta (sort of BeOS R6) which contains unreleased code from Be plus new stuff and bug fixes that they have added. The article does not make it very clear, but yellowTAB is actually selling RC1 (Release Candidate 1) of Zeta now to the world. The R1 (Release 1) will be available to people who purchase RC1 for 10 Euros.
BeOS rewrites
There are a number of projects that are aiming their sights on rewriting the BeOS. Some totally opensource from conception, others planning on releasing their source after they have a public binary release under their belts. The main contenders that are around at the moment are OpenBeOS (soon to have a name change), BlueEyedOS , and Cosmoe
OpenBeOS is taking the approach of totally rewriting the entire system. New kernel, new appkit, new interface kit, new storage kit... everything. They're not changing the basic structure of the system, in fact, they're attempting to completely duplicate the system even down to binary compatibility. As a basis for their project, they have used Be's old header files, and written API documentation. They are hosted at source forge and are using the MIT license for all their source.
BlueEyedOS is taking the approach that they perceive the Linux kernel and XFree86 as suitable for building less traditional system on top of them. They are using the Linux kernel as their Be kernel, and X windows as their display. They've released a demo CD so far that is quite interesting and appears very promising. Their code is not available to anyone but their developers at the moment because they've chosen to start their project closed. I've believe that I've heard though that they are planning for a source release later on. The demo CD can still be downloaded from their website.
Cosmoe is a primarily one man show that has taken the Syllable (was Atheos) source code and altered it to run on top of Linux and X. It's author's primary goal seems to be to give the Unix, Linux community a new user interface and the Be API. Code for this system is occasionally released under GPL and LGPL.
