If I recall correctly BeOS code was bought by Palm then it changed hands inside Japan. Do they put it inside a drawer? Are they using the API or the Kernel for something?
BeOS Max includes the patched kernel I mentionned. The official BeOS release will not run on SSE2 machines. This patch was not written by Be, inc. but released later by someone else, so it isn’t part of the BeOS sources you could get from Access, Co.
Remember that BeOS Max is a rather late release of BeOS, with many patches, including some components either backported from Haiku, or 3rd party things that were later on merged into Haiku. Plain BeOS R5 is not as good as you can remember it if you used BeOS Max or one of the other derivatives.
The current state of Haiku is really cool. Thank you for your answers.
It is in all likelihood dead … shelved.
Palm doesn’t own the code any more a company called Access Co. does. It went something like Be Inc -> Palm -> Palm Source -> Acess Co.
Palm really bought Be for it’s engineers… which when own enhance Palm OS 6 which incorporated multimedia extensions that were at least BeOS inspired. But Palm is dead and the tech is so crufty at this point no one wants to touch it.
How is the original kernel compared to the newOS kernel. Would it be useful if Access Co. release it?
Probably not. The BeOS kernel didn’t run on SSE2 machines and needed a lot of patching. It also didn’t support more than 2GB of RAM. It was written in C, now we use C++ and have a more modern design.
Remember that the BeOS code is now 15 years old for the most recent parts. Some parts of BeOS were also rushed into development so they could ship in time. While it was great for the time, it didn't age very well. Quite likely it wouldn't even build with an up to date C compiler, and the internals may not be as clean as you would think - or at least that's what I heard from people in te Haiku project who worked on Zeta before and got to see some of the BeOS code.
The Haiku project would not have much use for it, at least. I don't know about others. It may be an interesting piece of BeOS history.
The inner are probably not that great. What would be nice addition are drivers and perhaps some kits part… But more as a reference than adding them.
That SSE2 part isn’t entirely accurate… I ran BeOS Max on a Sempron 3100 which has SSE2 … the video controller only did black and white on that box but it did boot and run.
The code is not as useful as the trademark. It would be great if Access would relinquish the rights to the BeOS name and branding to Haiku.
What would we do with that trademark? The Haiku name and logo are at least as nice as the Be ones. I think it’s better to leave the nostalgia in the attic and go forward.
Far from that… logo and name perhaps… but anybody who believes that Haiku OS and its trademark is known apart from a small number of IT enthusiasts is just dreaming… Do not get me wrong… you guys working a lot and doing a fair job considering the possibilities… but marketing wise…
Could not agree more…
I have been an admirer of BeOS/Haiku for many years but don’t have any direct investment in the company or project. My opinion is that BeOS is better than Haiku from a branding perspective. Also hypothetically, a branding transfer could come with commercial support from Access.
BeOS had some 3rd party code in it, which means that lawyers would have to get involved if Access wanted to sell or transfer the code. And this would cost them money.
Then access shares the code that does not contain 3rd parties. As others have said, the code is C whereas Haiku is C++ so it may not be of much value. The branding is the real prize.
i never heard of beos or the bebox or anything like that before hearing about haiku, and most folks i know from indie film and music scenes throughout california never heard of it, either. it never got that big. even be, inc. threw its hat in the ring to get apple’s branding at a time apple was losing money like crazy, so even be didn’t have that much faith in the beos name. what’s important is the design, which is exactly what haiku’s contributors have been reimplementing.
Auditing the code and removing the 3rd-party parts would also cost them money. And that’s assuming they still can locate a backup of code no one looked at for the past 14 years.
Regarding the logo and name: the "BeOS" name is still owned by Access Co, but apparently the trademark for the BeOS logo was cancelled in 2005: http://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4803:gy7l6u.2.1 / http://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4803:gy7l6u.2.2
I could not find a trademark record for "Be, inc" (hard to seach for such short words in the upsto database), and the www.be.com website is now owned by a French magazine (which is probably what most people in France will think about if you ask them about "Be").
This correspondance about BE Inc and its trademark, logo, fame is without any merit… Opinions differ…
regardless, be went down fifteen years ago and now we’ve got two generations of media professionals for whom “the media os” was always osx. haiku can stand on its own and be wouldn’t add any influence to that.