> 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.