Rubbing salt into the wound

Bernd Korz, the man behind YellowTab & Zeta, has officially announced today the end of the second commercial incarnation of BeOS. Although this brings back a lot of bad memories to me, a feeling that it was only a matter of time until this happens has always dwelt in my mind.

Throughout YellowTab's life, there were several incidents that convinced me that they will eventually fall. Financial issues and incomprehensible (& definitely totally unneeded) issues with important Haiku/Zeta developers are only examples.

I'm no business expert, but I can confidently say that the idea of commercializing Zeta could have never succeeded. The OS is clearly outdated, even by other free alternative operating systems. Moreover, I wouldn't consider it cheap either. BeOS only took off when Be released the free Personal Edition. Why would anyone buy an OS that offers almost the same capabilities years later?

It was clear that the community, especially Haiku, was the only hope. Only the loyal fan base could have saved BeOS. Because as with other alternative OSes, these people are driven by their passion about their OS, unlike someone going shopping, where more pragmatic ways of thinking would be employed.

And now he's talking about giving the source code to Haiku. As much as I want this to happen, I can only think of the terrible waste of time. Things would have been completely different if this had happened back then...five years ago!

The world is a sad place...