[openbeos] Re: Re[2]: OpenBeOS in competition with BeOS

> All points taken and thanks for the quick reply.

Going quickly this time too, have a lot to do today.

> 
> > Basically I see those possible paths:
> > 
> > * Palm doesn't deal with you.
> > This means we were right and we will do what we planned.
> 
> 100%
Glad to see we agree.

> > * Palm deals with you and you get a licence to _use_ and
> > _market_ BeOs only Same way.
> 
> Not acceptable. If we get a licence, then that would include the
> development side too. Anything else is pointless.
100%

> > * Palm grants you a licence to market and _develop_ BeOS still
> >  keeping it proprietary Doesn't change anything for us, since we
> >  won't get anything back from the original BeOS.
> 
> Not correct. If we get a licence to market and develop BeOS, we
> are in the position to sign up developers with the aim to kick
> out all the licensed code - step by step. This would _also_ allow
> us to step by step open the code in general. Maybe not everything,
> but at least some parts.

That's why there is the next case.

> 
> You can now go into the argument "all or nothing", but that just
Maybe but that's what we want.
I didn't say "ALL, HERE, aND NOW !"
I agree that it should be made bit by bit (and I made X times this proposal,
on the BeFAQs survey, and numerous other places, just the day I heard the
buying).

> takes your eyes off the actual project, which is improving the
> BeOS and marketing it to an extent that it incentivizes other
> (commercial) developers to again put resources into BeOS
> development and (!!) also take the load off our shoulders WRT
> driver development, because as open as you may want to be, you
> can't possibly write, maintain and support all drivers necessary
> for the OS to become viable in the market.

The maintainance _is_ the primary reason why we don't want to rely on Palm
(I mean that we want to get it Free): Because even if Palm agrees to help 
develop it today, nobody knows what they can decide in the future, and also
nobody knows what will happen to them. We _don't_ want another Amiga story
with IP passing from hands to hands, not letting USERS have control over it.

That is what we want.

> > * Palm grants you a licence to market, develop, get rid of the
> >  licenced code and _work_to_finaly_get_BeOS
> to_an_Open-source_licence
> >  (anyone, IMO I'd prefer GPL, but...)
> 
> I think this is the idea in general. From what we know, Palm
> isn't interested in desktop development, so getting a licence
> means that we don't want them to mess around with our decisions.
> 
> That said, whereas you guys could happily hack the _servers and
> improve the Kits after hours, I can tell you right away that
> marketing the product in order to muster more support, get more
> users, more developers, etc. costs money. This means: BeOS will
> cost money. It will NOT be free. There WILL be a free version
> like PE, but the real product will be a commercial one. (Free =
> bankrupt, unless you are willing to pay out of your own pocket,
> but this is impossible if you think about the scale!). 

Do you know what Linux is ? Not talking about RedHat or Caldera or so.
Talking about the Linux _kernel_. This is Linux. And _this_ has been made by 
people _on_their_ spare time, _without_ being paid.

> > There I see you don't understant what we want to do.
> > We don't want to _market_ BeOS but _make_it_free_ We won't get
> > paid for that (or if you want to pay us, well I'm glad to hear
> >  from you)
> 
> Ah... "free is nice, but if you pay me, even better." Our idea is
> to pay our programmers and in return put them on some sort of a
> deadline, because projects need to be finished by a predefined
> time. Otherwise you cannot market it properly.

Our goal is _not_ to market BeOS as I said. Noone buys Linux. what they buy
is a GNU/Linux _distribution_ but Linux itself is entirely FREE, 
and NOONE owns it. just download it from kernel.org. 
What we want is not to have to rely on a structure that can disapear like Be.


> "We don't want to _market_ BeOS but _make_it_free_". The problem
> is that nobody cares about whether things are free or whether
> they cost money. People care about reliability and consistency,
> and they are perfectly willing to pay money for it, because it
> saves them hassles.

I take care on this myself. I know not every BeOS user is a programmer
(though the proportion is much higher than in Windows' world), but what I
like in Linux is that if something soesn't suit me I just have to recode/code
it and more, I can share with others what I did.

> Nobody -apart from a handful of folks- cares about a free BeOS.
Hmmm... I know lots of ppl in the Linux/FS community that are diing
to see BeOS become open-sourced :-) They just say :
"BeOS ? it's proprietary, it sux"

> People care about things that are solutions to them; that make
Sometimes solutions are those you can model yourself, without having
to pay others to listen to you and try to implement what you only really
understand.

> things easier, faster, more reliable, more creative, etc. And for
same here for _creative_.

> that they put money on the table, because they/I know that 1) at
> date X there will be a new version or an update to the code, 2)
> within 5min. I get an answer to my support query, 3) if I go to
> Shop A, they know about the system I am using and 4) the software
> vendor offers a BeOS version of their product.

Others don't have to have a vendor that knows their system, cause they know it
better than everyone else, because _they_ did it.

I don't you were wrong, just pointing out that it's not the only option, and
that others thinks differently.

> In short: 
> 
> 1) I want to open as much of the code as possible. 
100%

> 2) I want to develop and market it professionally / commercially.
OK for develop, market, well, maybe.

> 3) I want to pay the people who work for me.

I didn't say I wanted to work for _you_ I want to work for _BeOS_.
Anyway

> 4) I don't want anyone tell me "sorry, I can't finish that
>    crucial bit of the kernel because I need to find work to put
>    food on my table".

The problem is most of us (at least me, I'm still a student), can't
stick to delays, just because we have got others things to do.


> 5) I am under no illusion as to the marketing of it. Marketing =
>    money, both on the expense and revenue side. This means that
>    the product WILL cost money. Products fail because of their
>    lack of marketing, not because the net_server A is 0.003
>    seconds faster than net_server B.
Right.

Open-sourcing (GPL-ing ?) BeOS as I said will cause all the open-source
community to endorse us (and trust it doesn't reduce itself to a Finish 
beer-drinking man and a heary one that loves animals).

> > We do it because it seemed that _noone_else_ wanted to do it,
> > not because we want money back from that. It's purely ethical,
> > not political nor economical
> 
> That's cool - and laudable. But the moment you want to sway the
> masses towards BeOS, convince the press to report about it,
> THAT's where things start costing you, because there WILL be
> people, no, HAVE to be people who work on this full-time, both
> development and marketing and admin! No salary for them, no work
> from them. And at the end of the day, no, make that 4 years, you
> will still be hacking around, churning out cool features, but
I didn't (as for others) say I wanted to get _money_ from it.
As I say it's purely ethical, and for the fun of the thing.
Linux started on a 386 just because someone wanted to have fun 
doing two things at a time. See what it has become ?

> nobody knows about it - or at least not in sufficient numbers.
c.f. 2 lines below.

> And this is exactly why I put the emphasis on marketing, because
> that ensures that people use it and are willing to pay for it. In
> return, I can pay the programmers. Result: everybody happy.
I'd be glad if everything was so easy :-)
Hope it will work this way.

> Don't get me wrong: if I could take money out of the equation,
> I'd do it right now. Fact is that it's not possible, as MANY
> other free-software supporters have recently found out.

Did Linux development stopped ?
maybe RedHat and others lost some money, but not Linux.
Noone owns Linux.
As I said Linux IS NOT RedHad (just an example, could be Caldera, ...).
Linux is still free and being developped by lots of ppl around the world
durint their spare time.

> > As I already said _if_ Palm want BeOS to go open-source, then
> > I (don't want to speak for others), will be glad to join, even
> > if not getting paid.
> 
> If you join, you will get paid. May not be much, but at least
> something to cover costs or just say "thanks".

anyway the best motivation for me would be when I see that every one could 
enhance every part of BeOS they want and maybe use it elsewhere 
(that's the spirit of OSS/FS) without having to worry about NDAs or licences.

> > The first thing I want _is_ a licence to the code
> _in_order_to_make_it_free,
> > else there is no point in it for us.
> 
> Yep, and this is EXACTLY why I said "let's NOT try to have all
> these different initiatives that confuse Palm", but let's stand
> there united, but let's make it clear to Palm that our intention
> is to replace the licenced code with free code and to create a
> collaborative system on commercial basis. 

I think some won't agree on the commertial thingy, but mainly I agree.

> I don't want a BeOS that has x different distributions. I want
> ONE distribution, and that one has to be of HIGH QUALITY. So the
> thing will NOT be like Linux. It will be like BeOS, just that we
> are not tied to licenced code as part of the OS.
Open-source doesn't mean that there were forks every months !
Look to AtheOS and see how Kurt protects his baby :-)


> 
> Helmar


I hope I didn't hurt you with anything I said.
Just wanted to make clear what was my opinion (and what I think is mainly 
others' here)

See you,
François.

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