We recently spoke with Jean-Baptiste Queru, who even years after leaving Be Inc., still watches the BeOS Community with keen interest. He was kind enough to share with us his thoughts and opinions in an interview.

Thanks Jean-Baptiste for your time with us and the readership. It means a lot to interview one of the many fine engineers who worked at Be Inc.

My pleasure. You know, I was just one of the engineers there, and for a relatively short period of time. I was definitely neither the finest nor the most experienced engineer at Be, I had the privilege of working with some real geniuses out there.

How long did you work at Be Inc., for the record?

3 years and 3 months (April '98 to July '01)

Where did you grow up?

In north-eastern France, within 25miles/40km of Nancy (except for a
period of just over 2 years in the south-west of France).

How important is the concept of "open source" in your life?

Not at all. I couldn't care less if the software I use is open-source or not, if it's free software or not, as long as it brings me more than what it costs me.

What is the one thing that needs to change before "open source" takes over the big boys like Microsoft or Adobe?

Actually, it doesn't matter whether the newcomer is open-source or not. There are 3 things that matter in my opinion:

- the contender needs to have benefits over the established standard.
- the migration path must be clear, painless, and must include a path back.
- interoperability with the established standard must be perfect.

What is your current computer setup and how did it end up this way?

My desktop machine at home is a dual-PIII-450 with 512MB of RAM, running WinXP. I use it exclusively for photography stuff, running Photoshop and Silverfast. I don't use it much, actually. The machine I use most at home is my corporate laptop, IBM T22 (PIII-700 256MB) running Win2k, on which I do all my e-mail, and which I use for all my business tasks.

I also use a desktop at work (Athlon 1533 1GB) running WinXP. This is the machine I use for development at work, and I connect to it through VPN and remote desktop connection when I'm at home and need to do some work.

Have you travelled much in your life, outside of California?

In the US, not much. I've not even seen much of northern California, and all I've seen outside of California is a tiny bit of Nevada, and a few airports. In Europe, I've travelled a lot in France (there are so many things to see that you could spend a lifetime visiting and still see new things every day), I've also spent a fair amount of time in UK (London and Nottingham), and I guess that I'll spend more and more time in Greece in the future!

Are you a political person? Do you believe president Bush was elected fairly? What one small thing would you change about the election?

I am not highly political. All I care about is to have a government that is fair to everyone while respecting the will of the people, and doesn't sacrifice long-term development in order to achieve short-term benefits. About the last US election, I think that Bush was elected fairly, in the sense that he was elected according to the rules.

The one thing I would really want to change is purely about the behavior of the media, not about the election itself: it would be to not publish any poll results while voting booths are open, and to only publish "hard" results, not extrapolated ones.

How has marriage affected your life as a "geek"? Do you two still spend as much time using computers as you used to, or do you spend even -more- time doing so?

Thankfully, I'm spending less time using computers. Even then, that's still too much.

Given the current landscape of BeOS, do you think the openBeOS group will ever succeed at completing their initial tasks of replicating BeOS R5 Pro?

Besides the licensing issues, there isn't anything that really prevents anyone from re-writing all of the BeOS code. It can take years (it did when Be did it), but it's not impossible. Whether the result will be successful in the marketplace is a different issue.

What were the most difficult aspects of working on BeOS, back in
the day?

The fact that we knew most of the issues in BeOS inside and out, yet couldn't fix most of them for lack of time. When the choice is between new apps, new features, new drivers or enhancing something that already works, the new stuff almost always wins.

Are there any third party developers for BeOS that disappointed you in the past?

Yes, many. Too many in my opinion found things that didn't work the way they liked, and instead of using solutions that worked, even if they were not pretty (many of which were provided by Be) they just gave up. Bezilla was a typical example.

When you heard about the famed "focus shift", what was your initial reaction? Given the amount of time that has elapsed since then, how do you feel now?

It was kinda expected. After all, it was all written down in the IPO paperwork if you knew how to read. The interesting thing is that it didn't happen right away after R4.5.2 (the best BeOS ever), and we were all expecting it to happen right after "something" (like shipping R5) but it eventually happened at what looked like a random date (I guess, that was probably right after a board meeting). I think that there was quite some sadness on the day it really happened internally.

In retrospect, that wasn't that major, I've been through worse since then (I've seen 5 rounds of layoffs since then). Looking back with a realistic eye, Be was pretty much doomed right when I started, at least from a financial point of view. Along with Benoit Schillings and Scott Barta, I was probably one of the very first Be engineers to actually work on BeIA.

In your opinion, what is the one mistake that each of the following groups have made so far, in trying to create a future for BeOS? What advice would you offer? (in alphabetical order.)

• Blue Eyed OS
• Cosmoe
• openBeOS
• Sequel
• YellowTab

I don't look closely enough to know exactly who does what, so I'll stay mostly silent. There's generic software engineer advice: have some explicit reqirements, a strong program manager, a strict review process for all changes, a proper QA process, schedules, etc...

In a more BeOS-specific way, my advice for each group would be to focus on trying to solve specific problems, on trying to solve them better than anything out there; to know who your key 3rd party developers are and to listen to them and support them well; to ship often enough with a high enough quality. Don't forget that an OS only matters for applications.

Look where the applications are today, and try to tap into those resources. X, java, POSIX sound like easy ways of getting some apps.

You said that open source is not important to your life. Do you really feel it is not important at all, or just that it has not matured enough today?

I use computers as a tool, not as an instrument of propaganda. I use whatever tools I think give me the best cost/benefit ratio (and, frankly, as a professional software engineer, the actual price of software is not a concern for most applications).

As an example, I'll use GNU make over any other variant of make because I think it is superior, and because I know it pretty well. But I'll use MS Word and MS Excel over any open-source word processor or spreadsheet because I know them reasonably well, and I know that with them I won't have any compatibility issues (there's always one small feature of those gigantic apps that doesn't quite work in the clones, and that ends up being used in a document that I need to work on).

And now, finally.. one last question for you. ;) If you had to pick one animal that best repesents yourself, what would be your choice, and why?

Without a doubt, I'm a cat. I like to be taken care of, but I like to do what I want at the same time. I look fairly gentle but if you irritate me I can defend myself.

That about wraps it up JBQ... Thanks for your time.

You're very welcome. I'll keep my fingers crossed hoping that someone can succeed where Be failed.