Submitted by A long time ago, when Windows was busy crashing into walls, when the Mac OS was running around naked in the woods looking for someone to protect its memory, and when Linux was frantically jumping up and down with a lollipop in its mouth, we were blessed with the BeOS. It was new, free of legacy nonsense, fast, and designed from the ground-up to make sense (which it didn’t, but at least they tried). It could do all sorts of fancy stuff that the other operating systems could only dream of, but at the same time, trivial things like actually getting networking and the internet to work brought it to its knees. Sadly, it didn’t make it because Windows and the Mac OS were bullying BeOS, and of course it didn’t help that BeOS’ parents didn’t really know anything about the real world either. The community around BeOS, however, never really died out, and the central hub, BeBits, weathered all storms. It found a new owner today.
BeBits was founded in 1999, and was destined to become the FreshMeat of the BeOS world. Application developers posted their works of art to BeBits, either for free, or as a product for which you had to pay. BeBits offered the infrastructure so that BeOS developers could get in touch with their users via forums and email. Despite BeOS’ death, BeBits marched on, and to this day, is the largest and most up-to-date repository of software for BeOS and Haiku.
Things weren’t all roses and butterflies, though. The founders and maintainers of BeBits had trouble dedicating enough time to the site; more important matters like family, work, and school prevented them from doing so. Emails were left unanswered, technical problems arose, broken links were left unfixed. Sadly, the timing for this decline in quality isn’t perfect: Haiku is doing well, and is nearing its first lapha release. BeBits needs to be in order.
As such, the original founders and maintainers of BeBits, Sean Heber and Greg Nichols, have passed on the torch.
We’re very pleased (and a little sad) to announce that as of today, we are turning BeBits over to a new owner and operator. We won’t say at this point who the new owner is yet; he will make that announcement himself when the time is right. But we will say that he’s a dedicated and active member of the community, and that he’s got some great plans for the site. After almost 10 years, it’s hard for us to walk away, but we’re thrilled that BeBits will be in such capable hands.
It’s good to know that BeBits won’t get lost in time like all the other BeOS community websites, and that it will continue to be the centre of the BeOS Haiku community.
Long life to BeBits!
Here! Here!
Please, join me for a round of applause for Sean, Greg, and not to forget, Marvin, the good old server!
Your work was instrumental in “keeping BeOS alive”.
So long, and thanks for all the fish!
(Standing ovation)
Would that happen to be Marvin with the terrible pain in all the diodes down his left side? Or Marvin the Martian?
I gladly join the ovation. Long life BeBits and many thanks to the founders
Yes. Thanks for the time and work that went into building and maintaining BeBits.
but it’s probably Berndt.
Haha
I love BeBits. I’ve always wanted a BeBits for Linux, and am glad to see that GnomeFiles exists.
To the new owner, please don’t change things TOO much
hahah I love the statment, “I’ve always wanted a BeBits for Linux.” as BeBits itself was a Freshmeat for BeOS
.
That’s pretty funny.
Now go wash your mouth out with soap.
Yep! And he is going to use it to launch his new Haiku fork, Zaiku!
Benrd T Korz didn’t show on forums, BeGeistert, mailing-list or commits for 2 years now…
I think we can say that he is not part of the community anymore. Beside the benefic growing community effect that the Zeta project had, i assume to say that it’s not a bad thing in the end (no personnal feeling against him anyhow)
Glad to see that BeBits is being passed on, rather than fading away as many sites do. For those of us who still use BeOS occasionally, BeBits is a priceless resource.
Would logically be Dane Scott of TuneTracker fame: AFAIK, TuneTracker, along with SoundPlay, are the most commercially-successful apps for the OS that have been in use and updated (GoBe Productive has almost certainly sold more copies, I’m sure SoundPlay has, but TuneTracker is still in active development as we type, and as long as hardware exists that can run it, it seems probable to remain that way) so as such, it seems like the one with the most financial vested interest to see that the community keeps BeBits up and functional is Dane Scott, if only to assure that BeOS/Haiku retains enough critical mass.
However, I could be wrong, and it could also very well be someone we all know that runs a certain BeOS chat server where BeShare is used
I would give my voice to Karl from HaikuWare, or the BeFan guys with their new HCS label (“Haiku Community Support”).
But yeah, Dane Scott would also be a good choise, beside the fact that i don’t think he has time for that …
Get turned over to the BeOS wannabes, Roberto Dohnert of PC/OS or ZevenOS’s Lars. If it gets turned over to them, the sites done.
Long life to BeBits, heres hoping PC/OS and ZevenOS go to hell.
Someone pushing a Linux-based “BeOS” is not likely to see much value in BeBits. 1: The software published on BeBits will not run on Linux. 2: Popular Linux distros use a package manager of some kind. I think that is where you’re supposed to look first, for additional software, rather than visiting a product-specific website or a software catalogue (like BeBits).
I find it unlikely that someone would find value in changing BeBits’ focus from BeOS/Zeta/Haiku to something else. The only non-BeOS synergy I can think of would be adding Syllable as a supported platform, but this too is unlikely. I don’t think they’d be interested and they are clearly capable of creating their own infrastructure.
Edited 2008-12-30 14:42 UTC
first thing they should do is change the headlines. I get
Zeta RC1 Available for Purchase
Microsoft pays Be $23.25M settlement in anti-trust case
A New Version of BeOS Is Very Near
Those news headlines are fed in off a number of sites, including here – and in the case of those three antiques, BeFAQS.com. Which is gone, so I suspect they’ve cached the last few headlines…