Well, BeOS Journal has the scoop… Palm has officially said that there will not be any continued development of BeIA - in response to the other news item - Sony is buying back all eVilla systems and has discontinued it, due to the fact that it has not performed well, and supposedly has nothing to do with Palm acquiring Be’s IP. Head over to BeOS Journal to read the stories and get the relevant links.

Well, at least they didn’t say BeOS - yet. And to answer Ryan’s question if anyone bought Qubit’s BeIA devices… the BeIA devices at Qubit never made it to market before being replaced with CE ones. I can say that BeIA, for what it’s worth now, was one peice of cool technology that could’ve been, but never was.

Gobe announced today that they are releasing Productive for windows and linux. This shouldn’t be a surprise for anyone who has been following the community for a while, but now its official, and being pushed. The best part is the word that the ports are based on the Be API’s, but built on windows using custom gobe libraries. This means that BeOS versions should be up to date and consistent in the forseeable future. The downside is that I can’t seem to find a mention of BeOS in the press release. Even worse, their FAQ says the following when asked about the beos version:

There are a lot of changes occurring with BeOS, and we do not know where they may be leading. After we have completed the Windows and Linux versions we will evaluate whether it is appropriate to complete the BeOS version.

At begroovy, we agree that the future of BeOS is shaky at best… But there are a group of us making a serious effort to save it, and if we are successful, it will be back stronger than ever. We like to think that Gobe will be there with bells on.

OK. Some of you (probably a lot of you) noticed that we have been down for nearly a full week. This is the fateful tale of what happened this time, how it was fixed, and why it wont happen again any time soon (hopefully.)

Well, all the downtime before was due to a dying harddisk. We didnt pick up on it in time, and last wednesday, it actually did die. This was obviously not a good thing, and it was even worse considering that I was due to get in my car and go on a sort of “BeOS Road Trip” on Friday. Well, the trip is ongoing, and it is great (To those of you I met.. thanks for the hospitality! You know who you are!) Anyway, while I was away, Site5 put in hours of weekend work, and installed a completely new hard disk for us. They then remounted what they could of the old one, and salvaged almost everything. The only thing that was lost is our email config. This normally isnt an issue, as I can rebuild as I go. But our server also hosts BeMail.org. Needless to say, those people probably arent very happy.

For those of you who use bemail, and havent quit because of the downtime, It should be back for good now, and very stable. It may take some time for the new emails to kick in and get you back up to speed. But things should start flowing by tommorrow for sure.

Anyway, thats the sordid tale of the BeGroovy server. We arent going anywhere, if we can help it.

Oh yeah, in a nearly completely unrelated note, I have to give “mad props”(tm) to BeOSJournal for stepping up to bat and getting tons of news up to keep things flowing. And of course, their is BeFaqs who run a BeOS server, and thus dont have our kind of problems (they have all new kinds. )

Anyway, we are back, and should be ramping back up very quickly now. Thanks for bearing with us.

So, it must be said - get over it - BeOS is dead. Palm didn’t buy Be, they bought Be’s IP. Even if Palm decides to do something with BeOS, it won’t likely be called BeOS.

The King is Dead. A number of people and groups have stepped forward with actions to back words… Michael Wulff Nielsen wrote up an editorial on his opinions on what to do. It’s in the “Read More” link at the bottom. Along those same lines, Michael Phipps has started a mailing list at the prompting of many on the BeDevTalk mailing lists. They are looking to replace components of BeOS with open source modules one at a time, or a complete work from scratch - which is still a bit unclear to me as yet. If you would like to join, you may do so by sending email to openbeos-request@freelists.org with ’subscribe’ in the Subject field.

There are also three petitions now set up to help convince Palm that BeOS is worth continuing - Here, here, and here. The first being especially important, as Palm is actually waiting on the information retrieved in that one. Go sign them.

There are numerous people talking with Palm now about possible solutions to keeping our beloved OS alive and well. Palm is very open and receptive, it would seem, to these ideas. Keep your fingers crossed, and stay active in the community.

Long Live the King!
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Our server crashed on wednesday, and due to a comedy of errors (mainly my fault), we werent able to get it restarted until today. Sorry about the downtime. Despite the recent bad news (see below), We aren’t going anywhere. We are going to keep fighting the good fight, trying to keep BeOS alive any way we can. We will let you know if we come up with anything. In the meantime, keep using it, spreading it, and promoting it. Its likely beos is dead. But if not, its gonna come back stronger than ever.

Palm has purchased Be, Inc for $11 million dollars. (Press Release: Palm | Be) Several articles (C|Net 1,2, ZDNet) are around the net about it, and ZDNet says that Palm has no intention of developing BeOS as a stand alone OS. That means, no more BeOS. All that possibility is going to be stuck on a small handheld screen powering a datebook. Admittedly, an impressive Palm should show up in a few years, and I will probably want one. But not as bad as I want Be (or now, Palm) to finish the QA on the almost completed, completely skinnable, BONE, OpenGL, and new media_server having, R6. This announcement is prety big, and I am sure we havent heard everything yet, but it leads pretty quickly to a conclusion that many have been trying to avoid for quite a while.

What can we possibly do to keep BeOS alive? Well, in all likelyhood, nothing. Be sold for next to nothing to Palm, who are going to rip apart the best stuff ever, and use it to get a lead on the competition (which, surprise surprise, happens to be microsoft, just like in everything else.)

Maybe a letter writing campaign to palm is in order? Just start firing away about how much we want them to keep our OS alive? They could probably GPL the whole non-licensed part of the code without damaging the palm business at all. Or maybe they license it openly for use (not selling) on non-handheld devices. All of this is fairly doubtful.

Whats our best option? A group of people who license the code from Palm, and use it to continue development of the desktop OS as a GPOS, with the side effect that palm gets free maintenance of their OS development platform. This also is relatively unlikely in the current market, but could happen. In fact, I really hope it does. OS/2 found new life (sorta) in eComStation. Why can’t BeOS?

We at BeGroovy have always said we will stick around as long as BeOS does. It looks like that day may be coming much sooner than we thought. We are going to hold out as long as possible, and see what happens with the OS, before we go. Who knows, this could end up being the start of a whole new thing. I think we will have to wait and see. Thats something we have been doing for quite a while already.

What are your thoughts on this huge announcement?

Allow me to quote directly from an email that just appeared in my “News Submissions” folder:

For those of you still interested in BeOS multimedia, 3ivx just released the latest (3.5) version of their MPEG-4 video codec. According to the docs, it now encodes about 10 TIMES faster than previous version! Download here: http://www.3ivx.com/download/beos.html

Clear, Simple, to the point, and imho, newsworthy. Go download it and let them know their BeOS support is appreciated.

Just had this page at mercury news pointed out to me. Of special interest is the bit under the “Internet” subheading. It says:

SiliconValley.com, the online partner of the Mercury News, will host an online round table discussion on the present and future of Apple Computer. Participants will include former Apple Chief Executive Gil Amelio, industry analyst Tim Bajarin, Mercury News reporter Jon Fortt, former Apple product division president Jean-Louis Gasseé and former Macintosh product manager Jef Raskin. The discussion will begin Monday at 9 a.m. and end at noon Aug. 16.

Probably doesn’t mean anything, but it could sure be a lot of fun to watch/read/whatever.

Michael Lumb submitted a short editorial for us (also submitted to leBuzz). It points out how, even in current times, the pro audio industry is still behind BeOS _AND_ BeIA, and shows that devices such as the eVilla aren’t the only things that could keep BeOS alive. Hit the Read More link for the editorial.
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Tons of little items to report that have been building up in my mailbox for some time… brace yourselves…

The article about potential buyers of Be on OS Opinion, later posted to Yahoo! and linked to from BeNews.

Helmut Hauff of Siegfried Soft is searching for beta testers for their upcoming software product Siegfried Backup. Email him with specs on your system (specifically “streamers”) if you are interested.

Samuel Hart wrote in to let everyone know about the release of Tux Typing v1.0. Tux Typing is a typing tutor game. There will be an IRC party to discuss the future of Tux Typing today. Click the Read More link to find out more about it.

TnBug, the Tunisian BUG, has found a home for the French version of their website on Profuzion. An english version, for their planned projects, will be uploaded to their account on BeUnited later (the same french version is there now).

And speaking of BUGs, Dlazlo at i-BUG is going to give away some BuzzCDs from leBuzz to the first 3 public library or public school technology directors that email him. There’s a proactive person at getting BeOS out there. Kudos to him for it!
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BeGirl on BeFaqs beat us to this one, but it’s still worth mentioning - OneShare has told David Huff that if they recieved more than 10 requests for Be stock, they’d consider it. If you want to own only “one share” certificate, to say, frame and hang next to your BeOS computer, email them and let them know. I think I’m going to… it would be something cool to put right next to all the Be books and software boxes I have sitting around.

Everyone and their cousin sent in links the register article claiming Be has found a buyer. The article mentions Sony in relation to BeIA, and says the recent layoffs were a condition of the merger. One reader went so far as to submit this link to a Palm press release as support for his theory of a Palm takeover. This wouldn’t be too far fetched, since Sony already licenses PalmOS for it’s Clie… why not the eVilla too? And JLG is on the 3Com Board of Directors, which Palm was previously a subsidiary of. That said, there is a chance that Sony could buy Be directly, as they would be the most affected by their closing. And if you want to talk about speculation, let’s talk about Nokia and Apple. I have heard pretty convincing explanations about both of them. The potentials have been gathered for a while. Soon it will be time to see which of them actually won.

Ok. Everyone buckle in. This could get interesting. Dave Johnson, former Director of Sales and BeOS Product Manager at Be, Inc., has now joined Gobe as the new Vice President of marketing. Yes.. you read that right. So now the man at Be who was supposed to lead BeOS to glory, but was laid off instead, is now working at Gobe, a company that still seems to want to lead BeOS to glory. Hmmm. It could be something as simple as hiring the man because he is good at his job, and Gobe had an opening. Alternatively…. well.. I will leave the speculation to all of you. Read on for the full press release. UPDATE: - I just want to clarify that Dave was not laid off in the most recent round. He was laid off in April. What Be has been doing w/ BeOS since then remains a mystery. Either way, congratulations to Dave on the new job, and congratulations to gobe for getting a new vp.
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realtech VR has posted an update to their directx wrapper page announcing that it will support R5 without requiring Be’s updated OpenGL kit. This is not only good news, but it is just amazing technically as well. Admittedly, it will be difficult to use, since it will not be hardware accelerated, but it is pretty nice anyway. That said, Be will either eventually release OpenGL (looking less likely these days), or it will leak its way around the community. By some accounts, the leaks are already out there. In any case, this wrapper will be able to help. Way to go realtech!