Linux

Free as in what?

Put right

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4 years ago
by frankps in , , , ,

Seems like most things went wrong when Gobe went public announcing that GobeProductive development would reactivated. It also seems like my questions were more or less in place as well. Bruce Q. Hammond is still in charge, and has written an open e-mail to OSNEWS / Community:

“I just saw the Gobe/BeOS story on OSNews.

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. “

So Gobe is not planning to buy any BeOS code, nor do they plan to do anything in JAVA. Both make perfectly sence. Also trashing the Gnome version makes sence, but as Bruce Hammonds writes it, they should perhaps have their main focus on rewriting GobeProductive with Qt, so that they can have one code base for the versions for Windows, MacOS X and KDE? And for now just make smaller changes and bug fixes for the Windows version.

Well enough said, I am crossing my fingers for GobeProductive. It was was an awesome office solution. For a short roadmap, support for new file formats, ODF, Office 2007 and improvements in support of Office 97-2003 formats, and bug fixes. In later stages collobaration functionality is needed. I will install GobeProductive and follow the development.

Somebody didn’t do their homework!

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4 years ago
by frankps in , , , , , ,

Yesterday, my friend Daniel (DaaT) over at IsComputerOn, wrote that GoBe office solution was back. First I went wow, that’s cool, and I continued reading. It now had the support of a new company, investors and team, and it would be launched in India, by a company Blue Lotus Software Solutions Pvt Ltd. That was the first time I started laughing. The name confusion, “The Big Blue” is what IBM is often called and Lotus Software is an IBM company making office solutions. But ok, that is perhaps just me?

According to its CEO Venkat Kumar Tangirala, it is available for Windows only, almost makes sence, cause GoBe Productive was out in v3.0 only for Windows. The versions for BeOS and Linux (Gnome) were in development, and an alpha/beta of the Gnome version was available for testing. And then the CEO continued with they soon would be making it available for MacOS X and Linux, via Java and they expect to sell “in about six months (…) at least a million copies”. I was almost falling out of the chair laughing, idiots, JAVA? It would simply be a complete rewrite of a C++ software, and would probably be completely useless as most JAVA software out there and it would break with the BeOS philosophy (speed and snappiness). And there was “selling millions”. I’m sure I’ve heard that somewhere before. Hello? Wake up, even though India is a big market, you will be competing with at least two free office solutions, Open Office and Lotus Symphony, and not to forget with Microsoft Office!

We also got told that the company had 15 engineers working, and they planned to expand to about 50. Ok, that could very well be.

Then I went over to see if OSNEWS was writing something about the news, and they sure did. And it was even to be better … :

“Blue Lotus is already planning for its next foray and is negotiating to buy out the BEOS operating system from the promoters of BE Inc, which was the original owner of GoBe Productive, but were driven to bankruptcy as they were unable to compete with Microsoft.” In fact: “We are in discussions to acquire the BEOS and hope to close the deal soon.”

I am not sure why it is written in such a way, but there is some facts wrong and somethings that I disagree with. First, Be Inc. never owned GoBe Productive. As far as I know, Gobe was founded by some developers from Claris. Claris made Claris Works and FileMaker, and is now owned by Apple. And the “driven to bankruptcy as they were unable to compete with Microsoft” is not entirely true either, the company did a focus shift in to the embedded market, but “no” hardware vendor signed up with them. A few exceptions, with sales in small numbers, for instance Sony eVilla. And what do they mean with “promoters of Be Inc”? That company is as they write, bankrupt. Are they negotiating with ACCESS? Haven’t they heard of the open source alternative Haiku? What are they prepared to pay for a 7-8 years old OS (“focus shift” included)? Who would buy such an old OS, without major updates? Wouldn’t it be wiser to simply spend the money on getting Haiku to version 1.0 and perhaps push it faster to 2.0?

For me this whole news seems unbelievable. True, the computer industry never stops surprising me, but parts of the news might true, so I guess somebody didn’t their homework. Either it is the investors or the people running the company. The Gobe page has been updated:

“News: GobeProductive V3 is now being distributed in India by Blue Lotus Group. Please visit our website in India for more informaion.”

Distributed, is not the same as sold and being developed, am I right? “our website”? Why not put up a news about Gobe  Software being accuired? Perhaps they haven’t been. The site is also updated in the bottom:

©2008 Gobe Software. All rights reserved.
Gobe, the Gobe logo, GoBe Productive, gobeProductive and the All-in-One Solution are registered trademarks of Gobe Software, Inc.
Other brands and trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

But I guess we will get to know more in the next following days. And I will start to look for my Gobe Productive 3.0 CD for Windows and try to install it. The Indish web site says that Vista is supported…

My First eBooks

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4 years ago
by frankps in , ,

Yesterday I could finally pick up a Cybook at the post office, and today I visited Mobipocket:

Product Type : eBook(s)

Logon to your account to redownload and view the history of purchased products :

http://www.mobipocket.com/en/mymobi/mymobipocket.asp

The Da Vinci Code: A Novel : 6.99 USD
Eragon : 9.95 USD
The Amber Spyglass : 3.99 USD
The Golden Compass : 3.99 USD
The Subtle Knife : 3.99 USD
Eldest : 12.95 USD
———————————
Total Price : 41.86 USD
———————————

Thank you for supporting Mobipocket!

I have Eragon and Eldest in Pocket editions already, but perhaps I’ll read them in good time before September 23rd, when Christopher Paolini releases the third book about Eragon (a fourth is planned) – Alagaesia. I guess I will start with The Golden Compass in a coffee bar this weekend, and them all this winter and spring. Hopefully the first Norwegian books will be available in eBook format by next time I buy something to read.

All books have been locked to my Windows machine and the Cybook with DRM, but I can download the books as many times as I want from Mobipocket. Apple should learn something here, bandwidth “doesn’t cost” anything.

Thunderbird is dead, long live Thunderbird!

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4 years ago
by frankps in , , , ,

Finally Mozilla Foundation has decided what to do with Thunderbird, and the decision sounds like music in my ears! Read what the leader of the foundation, chair Mitchell Baker, wrote on her blog and Mozilla’s official press release.

I especially liked the sentence: “Create a better user experience for a range of Internet communications — how does / should email work with IM, RSS, VoIP, SMS, site-specific email, etc?“  I hope that Sameplace gets integrated in to the e-mail client. It is simply a brilliant implementation of XMPP for Thunderbird!

But best of all was probably that neither the blog entry or the press release contained any information about Eudora/Penelope.

Ubuntu Servers A Security Threat!

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4 years ago
by frankps in

This must be the joke of the day:

 ”Maker of the Open Sauce Ubuntu software, Canonical had to shut down five of the eight of its servers after receiving reports that they were attacking other servers.

Knowing that there is nothing worse than a bunch of chavish Linux servers looking for a rumble, or goading Windows computers with calls of, ‘Come and have a go, if you’re hard enough,’Canonical decided to pull the plug…”

Do you trust a software company that doesn’t take security seriously? Luckily I don’t run Ubuntu servers!

Read the fully story over at the INQUIRER.

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