Remembering The Little Guys

Back in the late 90s, there was a lot of wild and crazy operating system development projects. Linux was growing in it's early days, Windows was in it's hay-day, and Apple was floundering, but would shortly gain a bunch of strength once again with the return of Steve Jobs and the development of OS X.

But there was much more out there than what we know of as the Big Three in the IT industry... Unix was still quite common, BSD was commonly used, NextSTEP was in development, and so many others were out there.

There was a little guy out there though, one that was distributed for free yet still had closed source: BeOS.

Be was the little guy on the block. Having dealt with being only for AT&T Hobbit architecture, and later PowerPC only, before adding in x68 in the late 90s, which was when I first started using it.

The OS seemed as easy, if not easier than using KDE and GNOME in Mandrake Linux back then, so I was tinkering with it. The system was stable and there seemed to be just about everything I wanted on the system pre-installed. I was continuing to work with the software, but due to school requirements, I couldn't keep running BeOS running, especially since I didn't understand the concept of "dual booting" at that time and was unable to figure out how to do things in open source that would be compatible with my Microsoft-centric high school.

In the end, I only worked with Be for a few weeks before I headed back to Windows 98, an operating system that paled in comparison to BeOS.

There are some out there that may question me, "Well, if it was so nice, where is it now?" Unfortunately, due to their failing business model, BeOS didn't make it much past 2001. Be Incorporated folded, selling shares off for just a few dimes.

Controversy was followed, albeit a few years later. Be's source code somehow got to yellowTAG, a German company, which began re-releasing BeOS under the new name, ZETA in 2004. Zeta looked interesting to me, especially since I was nursing along my Windows 2000 machines, and I was none-too-interested in switching to Windows XP and the prospective Longhorn (later Windows Vista) seemed even worse. In that situation, I was getting more and more disillusioned with the Microsoft model of development and their ever-growing paranoid obsession with software piracy.

I never switched to Zetta, because of their custom license agreement and their closed source model... In the end, I chose openSuSE Linux.

Now, I'm pretty grateful. Zeta was only for for a few years before it was found to be legally questionable to such a degree that yellowTAB (now bankrupt) stopped all software development and distribution.

I must say, when I found out about this, I was really disappointed. When Be folded, I was really hoping that the OS would go open source, and be distributed and modified by the community, since the business had failed. When I heard about ZETA, I believed that they were close to the appropriate solution, however not being open source, I was a little disappointed, but I could understand the mentality. But to once again go through seeing Be and later ZETA go through these failures is very disappointed. There was so much potential for these operating systems... It's sad to see that business-related troubles has once again stopped development cold of a quality operating system.

Major Microsoft Change Slated --Did We Learn From History?

In July '08, Craig Mundie and Ray Ozzie will each be taking over a portion of Bill Gates' role at Microsoft, as the Chairman steps down. This will be a major change in Microsoft that may have an impact on the entire industry.

A "slightly similar" situation has happened in the past, when Apple Computer (now Apple Incorporated) Partner and Co-Founder Steve Jobs [2] was ousted from the company by the board of directors and then CEO John Sculley. Apple started to fall behind in industrial development. The Apple line of computers were slowly being phased out while the Macintosh line kept taking more and more power away from the Apple line. Unfortunately, there wasn't enough major changes in the Macintosh line, which was focused mostly on "Portable Computers," which seemed to hit it's prime with the Macintosh SE and Color Classic. Inevitably, Scully was removed from his position of CEO and replaced with Michael Spindler, who further compounded Apple's problems, including problems areas such as allowing other companies to develop "clone" systems that were not developed by Apple, continuing research into a new OS (Code named: Copland) and failed negotiations of a take over with companies IBM, Phillips, and Sun.

While this was going on in the early 1990s, Microsoft was perfecting it's Windows, improving on Windows 3.1 with 3.11, NT, and 95.

With the industry being geared toward freedom of thought and design, having one primary company stressing innovation within it's own set boundaries while also having a concept of "Think Different" [2] ended up being counter intuitive. By the late 90s, when Windows 95 and later Windows 98 were gaining market share from new computer users and Macintosh people that had converted to Windows, either by necessity or by preference, began to dramatically gain power is when forecasts of Apple's demise began to circulate, citing them as a computer company that just didn't understand modern thinking in the IT industry.

With the limited changes with Mac OS, decreasing market share to Windows, and increasing financial problems, Mac became a minor player in the industry by the late 1990s, when Microsoft's Windows reached 90% market share for the first time. In 1996, Spindler was replaced by Gil Amelio [2], Apple's shortest lived CEO.

Many people link this "down-swing" of Apple's status directly to Apple's longest running and then CEO --Scully. Mac OS 7 (1991 to 1997) was in it's final life, it's foundation (System 6) and age was making programming difficult and implementation of new hardware concepts increasingly challenging. Scully attempted to implement Mac OS 8, its development starting back during the days of System 6, however the project, known as Copland suffered from stagnation...

Eventually ignored by Apple itself, the Copland project finally dried off in 1996 as Apple began talks with the now defunct Be Incorporated for development of a new Mac OS. However, the Copland project wasn't a total loss however, its features that were favored were slowly integrated into OS 7, while the development of a new OS was abandoned for purchasing of a third party OS that would be purchased by Apple Computer.

Then the shock came. Be Inc. refused to settle for anything lower than $400 Million for Be OS, while Apple refused to pay more than $125 Million for it, by some, the cost of $125 million was considered to be three times as much as it was worth; citing bad blood between then Be CEO Jean-Louis Gassée (a former Apple official) and Apple Computer. Due to the stressors of encountering such resistance and lack of development of Mac OS 8, Amelio turned to NeXT. A NeXTSTEP OS and Mac OS merger was quite unexpected by the Macintosh industry, whom cited concern over the NeXT CEO and the short duration of negotiations between Apple Computer and NeXT Computer.

The primary concern of Apple Fanatics was the similarities between the Be negotiations and the NeXT negotiations... After Apple Partner and Co-Founder Steve Jobs was forced out of Apple, he founded NeXT, and began work on a new OS concepts and design. Based on the UNIX Mach kernel and BSD Source, the system was slated to revolutionize the OS market. However, differently from Be, and once again a failing of Steve Jobs' business model, the proprietary foundations of NeXT held the company back; NeXT being designed to only run on NeXTSTEP computers, with their high price tag (of around $10,000) limited adaption, and the company was struggling to keep itself afloat. One desperate move after another was made to try to keep the OS going, and then along came Apple... Desperate for a new OS, Jobs required Apple to pay through the nose of NeXT Computers. It isn't clear exactly how much Apple had to pay for NeXT, but it is commonly believed to be at least $375 Million, but no higher than $450 Million; however NeXT also required approximately 1 million shares of Apple for the merger, and placing Jobs as the interim CEO for Apple in 1999.

The story is sweet and simple from there on. Apple released Mac OS 9 shortly after Jobs took over as interim CEO. iMac, iTool (now, .Mac), iTunes and later OS X (based on NeXT) was integrated into Apple's line up, as Steve Jobs took over as Apple's present CEO in 2000.

It is now considered that Steve Jobs saved Apple from folding in 2000, it was an expensive and long term process, but with the salvation of Apple comes a new line of thinking for the IT industry: how dangerous is it to have a major software player have huge changes with its founders? This concept came up when Bill Gates stepped down from CEO to chief software architect and Chairman of the Board, placing Steve Balmer as CEO; allowing Bill Gates to further reduce his role in Microsoft, eventually removing from all day-to-day activity at the business. Bill Gates has slated Ray Ozzie [2] for "day-to-day management" of Microsoft and Craig Mundie [2] as "chief research and strategy officer." While it remains to be seen what will Develop for Bill Gates and Microsoft come 2008, it's ramifications won't be obvious for several years after.

This will definitely be an interesting turning point for Microsoft, and the IT industry in general.