Yesterday we reported on GoBE Productive Software (I knew that) returning to the market with a new version, backed by an Indian firm. In addition, the source article claimed GoBE Software was closing a deal on buying the BeOS operating system from what can only be Access. During the night (as in, CET) Bruce Hammond, CEO of GoBE Software, sent me an email with a few clarifications, and I have the permission to reprint that email below. Read more for the email.
“Hi Thom,
I just saw the Gobe/BeOS story on OSAlert.
It is true that Gobe and BLG have a distribution/development deal in India and China, much of the rest of the story is misleading.
GobeProductive is not going to buy BeOS. First of all the developer of the software is Gobe Software, Inc. GobeProductive is the name of the product. Just to make things more confusing, the software was distributed by a company called Gobe Corp for several years. Gobe Software, Inc has reacquired the software and is exploring several paths to further development and distribution. Currently the Gobe.com website still reflects this distribution arrangement with Gobe Corp. That should change soon.
If there is any activity, or purchase of the source code to BeOS it will not be instigated by Gobe Software, Inc. However, what BLG and its partners in India do is another story; I can’t speak for them. I am not going to comment on this further however.
I am not at liberty to discuss any roadmap plans for GP, but there is no plan to do anything with Java in the codebase. GobeProductive is 100% a C++ codebase and will stay that way. We do have a version of the software that runs on Linux, but it was never taking to shipping quality. If we pickup and continue with a Linux team, it will probably be via a port of the code to KDE and that would get us most of the way to a Mac version as well.
The GobeProductive codebase is a remarkable platform and I hope that BLG’s marketing plans in India will allow funding for much more development of the software.
Sincerely,
Bruce Q. Hammond
CEO, Gobe Software, Inc.”
Or all of the above… it seems there’s still more of the story to unfold from all the rumors: will the other company actually manage (or at least are trying to) purchase BeOS from Access, and what, exactly, is their aim?
It seems it’s all fork()ed up, and GoBe Productive is going away from BeOS/Haiku, and BeOS is… likely going away from Haiku, if it is going anywhere at all.
Even if they buy out the rights and code to BeOS from Access, I can’t help but think that Haiku will end up being the long-term winner of the contest for mindshare, at least in the rest of the world: it seems they (the other company) are looking perhaps to sell to the Indian market, and perhaps that’ll work well, given a pre-defined set of known-working hardware for a cheap system base. But, time will tell…
Thanks for posting this, Thom.
This is the first evidence of ISV recognition of KDE4. The work the KDE guys have put into the “pillars” of their new version mean companies like Gobe (plc/inc/corp/productive/etc) can target KDE as a base, and pretty much automatically get a Mac product also.
Great news Gobe is back, though I reserve any enthusiasm until I can see and test a killer product
Are all “pillars” non-GPL ??
they are all LGPL. you can read the KDE licensing policy that covers these things here: http://techbase.kde.org/Policies/Licensing_Policy
as usual, it’s on techbase and nicely filed in the Policies area. =)
the problem with KDE is that QT the underlying components are Pay-for or GPL… only… they want the devloper license money so there is no LGPL. That’s the main difference with Gnome being LGPL that allows developers to use the structure for free in pay-for products.
Distros like RedHat and Ubuntu feel that choosing GPL-only as a desktop will cut off ISV developer support and that Gnome with LGPL makes more sense. Considering there’s the danger of the MS-Novell agreement “poisioning the [IP] water hole” so to speak TrollTech could do better if they worked the PR spin better for QT.
I think he rather tried to point at Qt than whole KDE.
Well, i googled and the old KDE libs seem to be LGPL, MIT or BSD .. so by licensing QT it seems to possible to build commercial cross platform appz using KDE ( prolly in Trolltechs interest tbh ).
There are two license models for the Qt toolkit. There is a proprietary license for proprietary software with a dollar amount attached to it. Then there is the GPLv2 licensed toolkit for open source software which is free as long as the code is open. Both licenses are cross platform.
Two links to the license matrix and overview.
http://trolltech.com/products/qt/licenses/licensing/matrix
http://trolltech.com/products/qt/licenses/licensing/licensingovervi…
I’m reading this as he meant GoBe Productive would get ported to Linux, and maybe other Unices?
, with Qt as the widget toolkit. That would in turn allow them to port Productive to OS X without having to change widget sets. I don’t think he meant that Productive was going to be tied to KDE specifically.
If he writes “KDE”, I would guess he means “KDE”… And that makes a lot of sense. I _know_ how much KDE delivers to the office suite builder on top of Qt.
Their current Linux port, the one they couldn’t get stable is based on GTK1.
Just for the record, Qt is now also licensed under GPLv3 and comes with a host of licensing exceptions.
Yes, Qt can link to GPLv2, GPLv3, or code under any of the following licenses:
Academic Free License
2.0 or 2.1
Apache Software License
1.0 or 1.1
Apache License
2.0
Apple Public Source License
2.0
Artistic license
From Perl 5.8.0
BSD license
“July 22 1999”
Common Public License
1.0
GNU Library or “Lesser”
General Public License (LGPL)
2.0 or 2.1
Jabber Open Source License
1.0
MIT License
(as attached)
Mozilla Public License (MPL)
1.0 or 1.1
Open Software License
2.0
OpenSSL license (with original
SSLeay license) “2003” (“1998”)
PHP License
3.0
Python license (CNRI Python License)
(as attached)
Python Software Foundation License
2.1.1
Q Public License
v1.0
Sleepycat License
“1999”
W3C License
“2001”
X11 License
X11R6.6
Zlib/libpng License
(as attached)
Zope Public License
2.0
I believe the KDE libraries are LGPL, or at least they used to be. I haven’t heard anything about the newer ones so I would assume they are the same.
Edited 2008-01-23 15:59 UTC
Developing with KDE4 APIs does not equate to being tied to KDE specifically. Beyond being able to run KDE4 apps pretty well anywhere these days, many of the KDE4 frameworks have no interdependencies making selecting to use one or more of them fairly straightforward and without requiring commitment to the whole kit and kaboodle.
KDE4 is not mentioned in the article, KDE in general is though.
Also it only suggests that QT might be the toolkit in use for the Mac version by pointing out that having a working Linux KDE port would bring them close to a Mac version as well – and quess this could be said for *BSD as well…
You are right. KDE4 was not mentioned.
But wouldnt it be the rational decision to use the crossplattform KDE4 libs + qt. It would mean just one codebase for Linux,Mac and Win32 and it would be the most future proof decision.
Just my .02^a‘not tho ..
KDE4 + QT = goodness. They would certainly be able to make a windows version in addition to Mac and Linux versions. The porting process has become relatively painless from what we’ve seen over at http://windows.kde.org
KDE4 was not mentioned directly, no, but then we don’t have a proper native port of KDE3. You can run KDE3 apps on MacOS, but it’s really not a particularly valid Linux+Mac native development strategy .. unlike KDE4 which is.
Either way, it’s a nice bit of news.
It was too good to be true
Let’s focus again on Haiku development, this story is over.
I think that they would be better off working with Haiku and selling a ‘commercialised version’ which bundles their office suite and support with it. BeOS is all very nice but it is very dated, will require major investment – it would probably better off working with a clean slate and modern approaches to design and implementation than trying to hack around decisions made 8 years ago.
Of course Linux is soo modern…
do you know of any other OS which has more then a 100 users which is more modern than Linux, Windows or MacOS?
Sorry but I only know BeOS and please point us what is so old fashioned about it.
Ummm…. Are you being serious here?
why can’t that be a serious comment?
BeOS was created as a totally new operating system in the 1990s; Linux is a remake of UNIX, created at the end of the 1960s. Why else did you think you have to trick Linux into thinking you’re poking away on a teletype terminal to get anything done in it?
LOL
No I’ve to applogise to Kaiwai, I did not read it entirely (my flame bait!) but I get sick and tired of everybody going “linux linux!” but when I use it myselfs it 5ucks big time.
I used to use GoBE Productive all the time on BeOS. I even bought the Linux port to it, which sadly never shipped. I would like to see that piece of software revived.
I’m also glad to hear that it won’t have any Java code in it to slow it down.
unless they do something unique, go online, go super-cross platform, something special, there’s not much there. I loved the layout and function.. it performed well for being a small program. But it was neglected after BeOS… and again since the 3.0 release. Versions of documents are incompatible between releases and the last version available trashed even 3.0.3 – 3.0.4 docs, making recovery of documents a huge hassle. At this point, NeoOffice is my new favorite, a good port of OpenOffice.org. I’d like better Visio-like diagraming functions tied to data and programming, something Gobe Excelled at was quick diagrams and easy printing.
Unless they have something really good.. and ODF support, they’re out of date now.