FreeLists / haiku-development / [haiku-development] GoBe, BeOS and the Indian Connection

["Jorge G. Mare (a.k.a. Koki)" <koki@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello folks,

Please forgive me for posting this somewhat off-topic message on this 
development mailing list, but we thought it was important that we reach 
as many people in the Haiku community as possible with this message.
I am sure many of you have read by now the news about an Indian business 
distributing the GoBe Productive office suite and also being in 
negotiations to purchase the BeOS (if you haven't, head over to
http://osnews.com/story/19195/GoBE_Productive_To_Buy_BeOS_). There's 
been quite a bit of speculation about this news, and what it may mean to 
Haiku. Instead of speculating, we have gone directly to the source, and 
we'll share what we have found out so far.
We have been able to confirm the first part of the news. Bruce Hammond 
of Gobe Software confirms that Blue Lotus Software Solutions Pvt Ltd. 
(BLG) is distributing GoBe Productive in India and soon other places as 
well. In his email, Bruce also mentions that he "would love to see 
gobeProductive (v3) on Haiku" (I am quoting him here). In our exchange, 
we have briefly initiated a discussion to see if there is any way that 
GP3 can be brought to the Haiku platform in the future. Please, do not 
take this as a commitment of any kind from anyone, but rather as a joint 
pursuit to explore the possibility of creating the conditions for Gobe 
Software to be able to realize their wish to bring their software back 
to our platform.
With regards to the second part of the news -- that BLG is negotiating 
the purchase of the BeOS -- at this point we can only say that we have 
made initial contact with the company to find out whether this report is 
accurate or not. We are trying to understand what is actually happening, 
in order to figure out what repercussions, if any, it could have on our 
project and OS. We are also taking this as an opportunity to make BLG 
aware of Haiku and its potential, in the hope that there may be a 
possibility of BLG using Haiku as the base for their products in the future.
This is it for now; we wanted to reassure the community that we are not 
just watching these developments from the sideline, but that we are 
proactively seeking potential opportunities that may be positive for 
Haiku. We are not sure what will pan out from this, but we will keep you 
posted on any new developments as they become available to us and we are 
in a position to disclose them.
Jorge Mare, on behalf of the Haiku Team