We received a message from Datatec to remind the Be/Haiku/Zeta community about the Google summer of code this year. Here is what he wrote:

Google announced the summer of code again, last year if I understand correctly there were no haiku/beos/zeta projects
because people who had wanted to propose some didn’t do it in time. Thought it would be good if we could post reminders across
all of the beos community sites to remind people to apply this year if they are interested.

more info about google summer of code is located at:
http://code.google.com/summerofcode.html
It especially would be good to at least see a haiku/beos/zeta(ideas) category on the above page.

Datatec

There was some reminders and discussion about it on the Haiku mailing list as well. Also Michael Phipps mentioned in the mailing list that he is working on signing up Haiku, so that’s good to hear.

*UPDATE: Dang it! The day after I post this I learn that Haiku was turned down. You can read the announcement over at the Haiku-OS homepage.

No, those are not scorecard scores… they are ages.

BeGroovy quietly passed it’s 7th birthday 2 weeks ago (Nov 14, 1998 - damn, has it been that long?!) - we’ve sorta all been too busy with life and holidays to have any festivities (although some are planned still). Being 7 years old in this community makes one feel old. I think le Buzz is the only website still around to consider an older brother to BeGroovy. But, being this old also brings about many younger siblings to celebrate…

Stephen B wrote in with news on his newborn BeOS News site, convincingly titled “BeOSNews“. From his submission:

I’ve setup a new site called BeOSNews.com, it’s a news/pseudo-blog site for any topics related to BeOS. It mostly just aggregates/links to stories posted by other sites at the moment, but I’m also planning to regularly feature original content such as guides/howtos and software reviews.

- Stephen

So, once again, BeGroovy would like to welcome this new site to the community. And, as always, we hope it’s not the last of our younger siblings.

Paul Artz wrote in with this [links added for html]:

Hey gang
After years of less than nothing, Digital Wandering has at last made a major change in (Maarten) Hekkelman Programatuur’s almost famous and certainly ill-fated text-editor; Pepper. They have made it available as a free download. Check it out at: http://digitalwandering.com/. Hook it up to your systems’ Metrowerks and go to town! Now I wonder what to do with my collection of licenses?

< pragmat >

PS. Documentation initialization on Macintosh OS X is as dodgy as it’s ever been. Erik Sandblom’s Pepper fan page is still up at http://www.eriksrailnews.com/pepper/. And while we’re at it and having mentioned Macs, don’t overlook Pavel Cisler’s latest work on his Carbonized Eddie for Panther & Tiger http://el34.com/index.html

Just thought you Pe fans may like to keep up with this sort of news.

A call for testers has been made by mmadia who recently started work on a bootdisk archive for BeOS R5.x users. These bootdisks are made up of all possible combinations of patches (AthlonXP, IDE Replacement, RAM Limiter or no patches, etc.) depending on the problem that prevents BeOS from booting on your system.

There are several bootdisk images available in the archive, but not all of them have been tested yet so help is needed to test all of the images to ensure they work properly.

More information on where to download the images and how to create the bootdisks is available at the blog entry made by mmadia over at the beclan blog.

If you have any questions, comments, or test results, then leave a comment at the blog or contact mmadia(contact info available at the end of his blog entry).

Thanks to tb100 for the heads up on this.

Over at the Haiku forums, Michael Lotz (mmlr) made a post about his new personal Haiku weblog.

In his blog he explains his experiments with Haiku which show that real hardware accelerated graphics work with the Haiku kernel and Be’s slimdemo sample code. These are definitely interesting results and good info for Haiku developers.

Also, if you go to his comments section you’ll find a post from Ingo with some interesting info in the following quote:

“PS: BTW, we thought about getting the app_server to run under Haiku in the not so distant future (ideally before BeGeistert), so this is just an excellent time you choose to have a closer look at it.”

Submitted by RepairmanJack (I’m posting a little late, but better than never):

Acording to multiple sources (National Public Radio, CNN, USA Today, and others), the Nation of Brazil is going to discontinue the use of the MS Windows Operating system on all of it’s government computers. According to sources, Brazil intends to switch to NON-proprietary software to better control and protect its data. This is raising a major stir in Redmond, leading Bill Gates to lobby for a meeting with Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. As if kicking the monopolistic software company off government computers is not enough, Brazil also intends to push its citizens to switch.

My editorial additive content:

I think BGA should be lobbying for a meeting with Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

I received word that the Canadian BUG BeOS EH! is back online.

Due to some problems, the site has been down for a few months. Now that the site is back up, the BlueEyedOS forum and PhosphurOS forum are back online.

For all those that have links to the Canadian BUG, please change your links with the following new web address: http://beoseh.neo-programmers.net

BUG-NORDIC, the Norwegian BeOS User Group, is now sponsoring a signature-gathering campaign whose purpose is to encourage Opera, the makers of the Opera web browser, to resume active development of their application for the BeOS platform. You may read about the campaign, and add your signature if you are so inclined, at this location:
http://www.bug-no.petterhj.net/signatures.php?what=opera
(more…)

OpenBeOS has posted a “mega-newsletter” yesterday. Contents include two (count em,) TWO CVS updates, an article about the dev process by DarkWyrm, and a chicken/egg discussion by Michael Phipps, only he replaces the chicken with the OS, and the egg with Applications. Their front page doesn’t update nearly often enough, but when it does, it’s almost always good news (except for that whole foot and knee injury thing, which was just bad all around). In any case, Go read.

Was over on the OpenBeOS site’s forums, and noticed that BeOS Max Edition has hit the Sourceforge Top 10 Downloads at number 5! Seems a V3 Beta 1 version was released quietly on the 15th of June, and it’s been getting a ton of downloads. Way to go!!!

So, title says it - Go read it!

Koki sent this in last week, and we missed it. Sorry all.

Today is a very special day for us at JPBE.net. We have word from our members in Japan that UNIX USER magazine (published by SOFTBANK PUBLISHING, the biggest publisher of computer related books and magazines) has hit the shelves and it carries a story on the Japan BeOS Network and the Zeta Technology Preview event that we held in Tokyo last month. The story can be read online here.

Although the article is relatively small, we are the top feature in the “HOT HOT HOT” section of the magazine and we see this as a very important first step towards bringing BeOS back to the public spotlight, something very much needed if we are to make this platform a viable one in the long run.

Although I would normally supply newsbits coming from Japan to one or another english language BeOS news website, this time I thought this news was worth passing to along to everyone. It is so good to see a BeOS related news back in the mainstream media, that we wanted to share our excitement with all the BeOS fans out there. BeOS is slowly but surely coming back. Exciting times lay ahead!

And sorry to Koki for not getting this up as soon as it should have been. Great news nonetheless.

Koki updates us with more info from the J-town side of the world…

As a follow up to the recent news on the WinBe project on BeGroovy.com (WinBe on Sourceforge — May 2, 2003), we wanted to let you know that an English mailing list has been setup to facilitate participation by non-Japanese developers. Those interested can subscribe to the winbe-devel@lists.sourceforge.net mailing list.

Toyoshima-san, the lead developer of the project, encourages those interested to contribute to the project to make use of this mailing list (as opposed to sending private emails). Posts to the mailing list become available to all subscribers, and they also help build a knowledge base for newcomers as well.

We also have word from Toyoshima that one of the first steps being discussed is the translation into English of license information and comments in the codebase.

Now there’s no excuse to not jump in and help.

WinBe, a project designed to provide a Windows execution environment under BeOS, is now back on track after being inactive for almost two years. According to Toyoshima, the lead developer of this project, the sources of WinBe are now on sourceforge.net and can be
accessed via CVS.

WinBe intends to provide an execution environment for Windows applications under BeOS in much the same way that the WINE project does. So instead of being an emulator, WinBe will implement KERNEL32.dll, USER32.dll, GDI32.dll and other Windows libraries under BeOS, so that applications can load Windows DLLs like addons using the libld_dll.so library.

Although the project has been inactive for quite some time now, Toyoshima reports that some games can be executed, and that a lot of DLLs that do not require a GUI are available.

Needless to say, Toyoshima could use some help from other BeOS developers. To help overcome the language barrier, JPBE.net volunteers to act as the initial contact point for those English speaking coders that would like to participate in this project. If you are interested, please write to koki@jpbe.net.

Editors Note: This exclusive BeGroovy update from the Japanese BeOS community was submitted verbatim by Koki of JPBE.net. We are working together to unite the American/European and Japanese BeOS communities simply through better communications. Koki has been going to to great lengths at this, and is making amazing progress in opening both communities to each other. If you can help Toyoshima out with this project, or can help out with anything else you hear about from the Japanese community, please don’t hesitate. Not only will you be helping a great project, but you will also be bridging a historically large gap in the community. Thanks to Koki for the great news!

Well, sortof. As Nicholas Blachford, famed BeOS audio developer of old, put it, “Be goes home”. Below is his statement that went out to the BeLoud mailing list (What?! You don’t remember the BeLoud mailing list? Shame on you!).

The summary of his post is that it is now official, there will be a port of OpenBeOS running on the Pegasos PPC motherboards! Read More for Nicholas’ post.

I still own my dual 133 BeBox, and while it hasn’t been booted in quite some time, I think it’s very exciting to see BeOS’s return to PPC. I have been keeping a close eye on Genesi and Pegasos, especially after finding out Nicholas was involved. With OpenBeOS running on that platform, it will likely end up being the second PPC box I’ve owned - however, I want dual G4’s with blinkenlights, and nothing less! Nicholas?
(more…)

Some information about the next BeGeistert has popped up on the web in the last few days. The most important information is that the location of the gathering has changed. It will be held at the Düsseldorf Youth Hostel, near the center of Düsseldorf, on the banks of the Rhine. This means an end to the pizza and the introduction of a lunch buffet. It also means that anyone wanting to go will need to register further in advance than previously. Go to the BeGeistert website to register. Registration will cost €20, plus an extra €26 or so if you plan on staying overnight. There is more complete information over at The BeOS Journal (the .org one, not the .net one) and at a seemingly no longer defunct BeFAQs. Good to see BeGirl decided to come back to play some more.

And on time. (available here) The new editor, Kevin Field, gives a nice, down to earth, “Hello” and talks about how to donate time in little chuncks. Jacques Lema gives a sermon about communities - Amen (and what about that part about no company making money from support - there went my business plans ). Michael talks about - let me put it in Star Wars terms - “Nice shootin’ kid. Don’t get cocky.” Aside that, he also preaches, the telemarketer ramble of Suicidal Tendencies (the heavy rock band) - “Send me your money.” But at least this faith can be tangible.

It’s not a technical newsletter this time, and hey, it’s without me… But it is uplifting, and it is a call for help. When I announced my intentions to leave the OpenBeOS staff, I was amazed at how many people came out of the wood-work to volunteer. More of that is needed. Ideas are needed. We are getting the spotlights and stage lined up, but we still have to rehearse for the real show. Go volunteer, and if you can’t - go pay your tithings.

Michael Phipps of OpenBeOS was interviewed today in the Wall Street Journal Online. What is cool about this is not only the amazing marketing potential of the WSJ, but also that Eric Raymond, world reknown for his leadership role in the Open Source movements, comments on BeOS, stating that it’s architecture is alluring. Eyes from high places are watching OpenBeOS, that is for sure.

Registration is required for access to the article, and it would be copyright infringement to link to it directly or repost it here, so you can either go to OSNews where it was first posted, and you might find a link in their comments, hit BeShare and see if anyone has it, or register for WSJ Online.

Hehe, I just can’t get over that title - I kill myself…

Ahem. Sorry…

The newest, and not last, newsletter for OpenBeOS is online. So why is “Last” even in the headline? The last with me as the editor. Head on over to the OpenBeOS website to read it.

…Hehe, I kill myself… [wipes single tear from eye]

While Be stuff on auction is not normally something that deserves it’s own news item (I didn’t even do it for my own auction for my webtablets) - I do this not only out of deep respect, but also for a good friend who lost a great deal because of his strong belief in BeOS.

John Fehr, CEO of the former WildCard Design, is auctioning off all his Be goods on ebay.

WildCard Design brought to the BeOS platform (and put us on the gaming map) two reknowned games - Civilization:Call To Power, and Eric’s Ultimate Solitare, among others. He was always a great source of inspiration, and his losses he took from WildCard Design are still haunting him.

If you’ve been looking for Be stuff, keep an eye on the eBay user “jfehr67″, as he will be auctioning nearly all his BeOS goods, including BeOS Master shirts, DR8 up to R5 CD’s, and more. You might be able to help him out still.

And, again, John, good luck where the post-BeOS world takes you!