Saturday, March 24, 2007

No... not again!!!

Being a member of the BeOS/Haiku community for 7 years now, has been very exciting and it has also been a series of joys and disappointments. Lately everything had been going quite well... so I thought we are out of the woods. And then this happens. I guess you have heard about Zeta and Magnussoft. They have parted ways. This is the third time this has happened with this OS.

My personal belief is that Magnussoft should have tried more. However it is their decision and we can do nothing but respect that. As for Zeta, it is a great product and I have used it since RC1. It has made great strides and works with much more hardware than any other BeOS variant or derivative.

I disagree with those who say that there is no place for BeOS, Haiku or Zeta in the marketplace. I believe that those OSes are what an OS should be. Blazing fast and simple. Neither Windows nor MacOS X have that. As for Linux, despite its success (heck, I am using it as my main OS 50% of the time), it is becoming bloated and slow, and has more hardware problems than most people would care to admit (just try getting the latest ATI or NVidia card to work with it in 3D).

However, I agree that the price of Zeta is too high. Perhaps that is a problem. I mean, with my income it is not hard to put aside 100Euro every now and then for software, but it isn't so for every computer geek.

Finally I wish Bernd and his team the best. I hope they find a new home for Zeta soon. I wish I had a few million to spare...

2 comments:

eightbit said...

You got to be kidding! Well are they going to release the code to the haiku community? I remember hearing something about this from yellowtab. BeOS/Zeta/Haiku has made my computer experience great, with it's simplicity, speed, and fun easter eggs and such. What a tragedy. I was wanting to purchase 1.5 if it ever came out in full edition (I have 1.0 and didn't want to buy 1.21 and the 1.5 upgrade). So sad , hopefully the resources and people can help benefit Haiku.

Βασίλειος Περαντζάκης said...

They can't release all the code, but some I think they can and do exchange. However they are under no obligation to release the developed code that isn't originally Haiku's.

Anyway, I have a feeling, it isn't over and of course no one has to agree with me :-)