Buy BeOS rights

hello

can haiku inc. ask hp how much the rights on BeOS costs? so we can develop haiku faster.
its to slow evolving, i would be a old person, when its finished, something must gonna change.
it can become faster, we need money, kickstarter, advertisement, investors how google had it at the beginning.
haiku dont have no html5 webbrowser which i can buy online stuff, watch videos, watch websites, it has no appeal for new users, it must have the features a simple netbook browser-based os has.
or is the problem, that so long haiku is not the final version, thats impossible to write software, because it would destroi the software with every new alpha state, so its not appealing to make an app?
when thats the biggest slowdown, we need only the money for more programmers.
we need a steve jobs in the haiku community…who is our leader…who says how haiku should be evolving, what we should do?

arigatou!
key

dell inspiron 5100

As far as I know, the whole of BeOS Rights and IP were sold to LG in the last year. So, HP would not even have these to sell. If I’m wrong on this, someone please correct me.

In any case, rights to that kind of IP would be very expensive and not really necessary. Haiku has already recreated (almost) everything that was BeOS R5 and then some (packaging, up to date Web Browser, etc.).

On that note, a large infusion from a corporate benefactor and full time leadership (People need to be paid) would be a hell of a boon. I don’t know what form that takes and still have Haiku, Inc. remain a 501c3. That’s for a smarter business person than me, for sure.

Sure would like to see companies building HaikuOS computers as a commercial venture.

Hi,

I'm not sure the rights on BeOS would be very useful. It's an OS from the 90s, and it was not developped in the cleanest ways. They had to get the product on the market, and do that fast. Our codebase is much cleaner, and already way past what BeOS did for many things.

Haiku isn't really that slow, we are a small team, and in 13 years we have a system that works quite well. Linux is 22 years old, and Windows is 29 years old. They both have much more resources than we do (both money and developers). It's just that Haiku is younger, and has to catch up. But we're making progress.

I'm currently working full-time on improving the web browser, have you tried the nightly builds at www.haiku-os.org? The browser is now much better than what is available in Alpha 4. The next release will include this, solving one of our biggest issues.

Most of the developers for BeOS are now working on the OS itself, that means there is less time for writing applications. When I work on my own applications, I often hit a bug in Haiku and go hunting it. The time spent working on the OS is time sent not working on applications.

We don't have a leader, instead we make decisions in the developer team by discussing until everyone agrees, or when that's not possible, we have a vote. This worked well so far. We need money, indeed, but what would a good kickstarter campaign be? It must be more specific than just "let's make Haiku happen". Currently, the preferred solution is everyone can donate money to Haiku, Inc. This is then used to pay for developper contracts (I've been working for Haiku for the last 6 months thanks to this), allow us to be present at various open source software conferences (FOSDEM and RMLL in europe, and others around the world I don't know about), and a few other things. But if you think a kickstarter is a good idea, start a campaign, use the money to hire a coder, and join the fun. No one has full control on the many ways money can get injected into the project.

Agree pulkomandy

Here is a probably cheap way to boost things, and that is buy or lease the copyright to the BeOS name. We look to be too far down the road to have ownership of BeOS itself to do much good. If we could just use the BeOS name again that might speed things up some. We could call it BeOS Pheonix then, as in rise from the ashes. Who knows, if LG now owns it or whoever does, then we might be able to get a free waiver to use BeOS in combination with another name, as long as it is not used alone. Maybe even get Google to get it for us and tell them we are thinking about BeOS Glass, for cross promotions for the next version LOL

I am already an old man from waiting, so don’t listen to me LOL

BeOS has been a released OS. Haiku still has alpha state.

thank you all for your posts!
i have contacted Jean-Louis Gassée on facebook and LG through email.
so curious :-3

@codewrangler
you are right.
LG bought the whole webOS division from HP in 2013
LG has BeOS
do you know if LG has much opened their software to opensource like google and other companies?

@pulkomandy
i have the alpha4 i fear nightly builds, i couldnt work anymore on my android smartphone with nightly builds.
can i update haiku alpha4 to the nightly builds?

thank you so much for the browser!!! i am now curious how it behaves.
i think its web positive you meant? what have you changed? html5? blink like opera and chrome or webkit?

umm…i am totally new in that business, dunno yet how to start a kickstart campain, but i have written to Jean-Louis Gassée (facebook) and LG and trying to find a rich IT person to help haiku.
sadly i dont understand programming :frowning: i only know about aesthetics, users behaviour in GUI’s, psychology.

@all
so i should ask these companies and persons to help haiku:

LG (i have contactet them)
google
Jean-Louis Gassée (i have contactet him)
ashton kutcher
steve wozniak
you know other venture capitalist?

or making kickstarter campain

but what should i tell them? ask them? how to make haiku appealing to them? and how to find out the email?

greetings from far far away
key
running haiku alpha 4 on dell inspiron 5100

As PulkoMandy has already said, there’s not much point in buying the BeOS rights right now, as Haiku already surpasses the BeOS in many aspects. Also, remember that Haiku used to be called OpenBeOS. :wink:
IIRC, Jean-Louis G. already knows about Haiku, and has even been to this website and seen screenshots and he also participated in a presentation kind of thing where the topic was Haiku with Bruno, Michael and Axel and even some ex-Be engineers were present, and that was back in 2007. (!)
So, what can you, the Haiku user/enthusiast do?

  • Contribute to the Haiku project in any way you can: whether donating, translating Haiku, fixing bugs, bringing patches, fixing/making 3rd party software, marketing, etc, you name it.
    Just make sure to keep Haiku running.
  • Bug 3rd party software makers to support Haiku, e.g. ThinkFree Office can be an alternative office suite for Haiku while we wait for a native solution.

– louisdem

WebOS is originally for handheld devices. Work on it began at the re-constituted Palm Inc. about five years ago, then Palm was bought by HP, largely abandoned WebOS for a period and eventually licensed it to LG for use in televisions.

BeOS was a 1990s desktop OS, which went from Be Inc. to Palm Inc., then it was given to the unsuccessful spinout PalmSource Inc. which was absorbed by Access Co.

They don’t have much in common, different core components, different purpose, is there some reason you think there’s a connection?

@nohaiku
now i am not sure anymore, its hard to find out who solt what tho whom, gosh!

BeOS is now at LG (korea) or at Access (japan) :-/
so BeOS is in asia.

i have the information from a comment on this website (http://www.webosnation.com/lg-purchasing-hps-webos-division-licensing-webos-smart-tvs)

«And so the saga continues!
Palm, founded by a gang of three to create handwriting recognition software, created the PDA, bought out by US Robotics, which turned into 3Com, the founders left to start up Handspring, spun off into its own company with an IPO, bought out BeOS, spun off Palm OS with PalmSource (later to be sold to Access), merged with Handspring to become palmOne, renamed to Palm, funded by Elevation Partners with a certain rock star founder, sold to HP, spun off as Gram…
…and now sold to LG.»

but on wikipedia its written (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Access_Co.):

«In September 2005, ACCESS acquired PalmSource,[4][5] the owner of the Palm OS and BeOS. The company has used these assets and expertise to create the Access Linux Platform, an open-source Linux-based platform[6] for smartphones and other mobile devices, with some proprietary parts including the user interface and some middleware.»

openBeOS sounds better for the world than Haiku, sadly its forbitten to use it, haiku sonds like a poetic writing system and only poem lovers or asian people are interrests into that exotic word.
also the word open is common in the open source scene, so all people would imediately see, its open source and worth watching and it is BeOS and they know and feel the culture of the old OS. i dont think that all the people who used back then BeOS know, that Haiku exists, that its the same thing, but also could be a bit strange to hear the usa company is now an asian word, they hear only one time in a year. but ok, i know haiku was used in BeOS, but the corporate identity is not the same Be, with it you can make different stuff, identify with it, Be what you want, Be different and so on, with haiku what do you want to write on Tshirts and so? only write haiku is not a slogan. its only the word for a poem, people think its poem. you must think like a marketing expert and common every day users, who arent intellectual or OS researchers.

@louisdem
@all

how much money does Haiku/openBeOS need to become final version in 1 year?
1 milion? 10milion? 1bilion?

how hard is it to port a GNU/linux or BSD software to Haiku/openBeOS?
and is it possible to make a fully functional Simulator for Haiku to install the Linux software?
its good, the new browser can use web 2.0 applications but its not enough.
how should i use Haiku in my company, when i cant manage cash register, modern email software, OpenDocument format and word and excel format.

what would be the stimulus for libre office or capitalistic companies to write their sexisting software to haiku? is it faster? experiment? humanistic? advertisement? extremely more stable to write long books for an author than on windows? no NSA code, no Virus?
what would be the stimulus for https://www.papyrus.de/ to make their professional but not well known author software for haiku?

for whom is the operating system called Haiku?
to whom would a marketing expert sell it to? movie makers? authors? every day users? corporations?
at the beginning we must choose one target audience, not all at the same time. it must start tiny. apple sold his OS made it for educational use, gave it free tho Schools, thats why it became so popular, when they use it in School or at Work, they use it also at home.

sorry, i am not english. but i try.

Whoa.
That’s a lot of questions!
First of all, to understand Haiku read the FAQ: https://www.haiku-os.org/about/faq
Some of your questions are already answered there.

Right now has Haiku needs all the money it can get, whether a dollar, fifty cents, 100 mil or even 1b.
But the most important thing that we need is: to get more developers.

PulkoMandy has already answered to you about that, too.

Come on, man. Read the FAQ.

(Sorry if I sounded rude, not my intention).

– louisdem

beos is already pretty thoroughly associated with haiku, the latter coming up at the top of inquiries about the former. haiku is the last of the beos clones and reimplementations still in active development. there isn’t any additional benefit to buying or licensing the name as haiku already has the name of beos, however informally. for anyone interested in continuing to work in beos, they’ll find haiku; for anyone looking for an alternative to the big 3 that is specifically desktop oriented, if they aren’t already familiar with beos there wouldn’t be any additional benefit to calling haiku by its name. it’d be a waste of haiku, inc.'s already limited funds that could be better spent on further development.

[quote=PulkoMandy]

Hi,

...We need money, indeed, but what would a good kickstarter campaign be? It must be more specific than just "let's make Haiku happen"...

[/quote]

A good kickstarter campaign would be to ask for donations to “kickstart” R1 into high gear. Haiku Inc. could offer various rewards based on how much they donated. The reward could range from a Haiku T-shirt to a Haiku Box! Haiku Inc. could negotiate with various companies such as System 76 (a good one in my opinion) to build a limited number of Haiku PC’s after the kickstarter campaign is completed. One must be carefull to not set the goal to low as to make Haiku seem not important enough to fund, but not too high to be unrealistic! This is what ubuntu did with the “Ubuntu Edge”!

Then after the release of R1, and if Haiku Inc. desires to continue to offer Haiku boxes, they could negotiate a contract with whomever they choose to make their boxes! Profits made from sales of official Haiku Boxes could further the development of R2 and set the stage for finalizing a new UI and UX for R2!

I for one don’t want Haiku to have the same UI and UX forever. That said, I think keeping the spirit of BeOS is a good idea!

I disagree. BeOS is associated with Haiku by those who already know a lot about Haiku, and those few die Hards who stayed with the BeOS community for years after it was canceled by Be. Those who didn’t don’t know about it and all those who heard about BeOS or tried it out don’t usually know a thing about Haiku, except maybe that it is Japanese poetry.

This was originally name Open BeOS because that name fit and described the effort, and we could keep all the advertising and goodwill BeOS had built up over the years. It was dumped solely for legal reasons of copyright.

Haiku= poetry and you are not going to change that. BeOS means the greatest operating system on the planet, and that has cash and advertising value.

Remember too, I said the use of BeOS might be gotten for free at this point especially, if just part of the new name. We are 14 years out from BeOS being canceled. I think we would be a lot further along, with a lot more support and investments, if had been able to keep BeOS in its name.

Not to take anything away from the hard work we have seen with so few with so little.

Why would the Haiku project risk being sued by using the BeOS name?
Doesn’t make sense to me.

[quote=FAQ]Where does the name Haiku come from?
Haiku is named after the classical three-line Japanese poetry form. Haiku poetry is known for its quiet power, elegance and simplicity - among the core qualities of BeOS which we aim to recreate in Haiku. BeOS included some haiku in its user interface, in the form of network error messages displayed by its web browser. […]
While there are no current plans to include poetic messages in Haiku, we consider this another subtle way of proudly cherishing our BeOS roots.[/quote]
More here: General FAQ | Haiku Project

–louisdem

At this point in time, the BeOS source would be worthless and would not allow Haiku to proceed any faster. Its been 15 years since R5 and the functionality of R5 has already been cloned. Note that what’s holding up R1 are things that BeOS didn’t have.

It took Be Inc roughly 10 years to develop BeOS R5 from nothing, with the money, developers and resources of a commercial company. IMHO that took a long freaking time.

Haiku, on the other hand, is nearly 100% compatible with R5, has more features than R5 (HTML5 browser, wifi, vectorised app icons (seriously, is Haiku still the only OS with this??)) and it’s taken them 13 years to get there. That, in the world of OSes, it actually very quick. Of course, Haiku is nowhere near feature-complete, but it’s damn near it. I’d give it 6 months to a year before we see the first Beta, and another 3 years after that before we get a stable release. Haiku will undoubtably be consumer-grade software by 2020.

Of course, that’s assuming people still use the WIMP metaphor by then, and the whole Haiku user-experience isn’t woefully outdated. I highly doubt it, but it’s not impossible.

here is a test you can try: load up a live distro of your choosing, connect to the internet through whatever means are available to you, visit several search engines of your choosing (taking care not to sign into any of your online accounts) and search for “beos”. ten times out of ten, haiku comes up in the first three results.

How do you figure that? Over a decade to not even ship a beta of their operating system. In what sort of fantasy land is this “actually very quick” ?

@ddavid

KolibriOS got £5,000 at kickstarter.
it is 10-year old system.

as a backer you would become things like:
£1 - Thank you for helping
£10 - Access to beta-test
£25 - 4GB USB flash disk with latest version
£50 - T-shirt with logo
£100 - same voting rights as Project Team members
£500 - your Banner on our website

or

we could offer haiku with a tiny pc with an intel x86 smartphone cpu