Editor's Note: Welcome. This is the first of a series of Editorials written by BeOS user and developer David Reid, whom I'm sure everyone knows.

As usual, and let's see if I get this disclaimer right, his views are his own, and may not reflect those of The BeOSJournal.

Cynic's Soapbox.
by David Reid.

Earlier today I watched the first episode of a TV series that has been already been cancelled in the US, but is only just making to the UK. As I watched it I found myself in two minds about whether it was a good idea. Knowing that something you're about to invest in is already dead isn't a decision that should be made lightly. This seems to mirror the situation that users of BeOS have found themselves in for quite a while now. A lot of people who used BeOS did so because it was something different and unique. When Be stopped there was a void and until recently there has not been anything to fill it - much like TV series and the ever changing landscape they find themselves in.

Much like the avid TV viewer who has lost their favourite show Be users now find themselves with choices beyond their wildest dreams. Just like TV though, nothing is quite as it seems. None of these offerings will quite be what we lost. Is that a bad thing? On the contrary I think it's a good thing, in fact an essential thing. The future does mean that BeOS users will have to make some decisions though and these will be harder than many people seem to realise.

First off a few home truths. BeOS was showing signs of it's age even before Be closed its doors. The engineers at Be had done a fantastic job but several key components needed ripping out and replacing. While the interface that was available for programming was good, it had been in evolution for a number of years and as with all evolving systems parts didn't have quite the same feel as each other. Modern features were missing and the small development team meant these were going to be a long time coming. BeOS was like an old friend, we knew it's faults and we overlooked them. The same could not be said for developers. As people tried to bring projects to BeOS they ran across the same problems time after time. These problems stopped some projects dead and made others simply fade away.

Note I'm talking from a purely technical viewpoint here. Commercial interests will have to wait for another day :)

So now we have a number of projects looking to replace BeOS in our hearts. They all offer much that we remember but they also offer differences that we will need to accept. The path to happiness is not a straight, level road. Take a simple example. Binary compatibility. OpenBeOS has made much of it's binary compatibility intentions and the fact that they've managed to get binaries running suggests they've done well. The price for this goal is high. GLibc for the basis of libroot means accepting licence restrictions. Being 100% compatible is probably impossible but even to attain high 90% will require many of the errors and bugs that BeOS contained being repeated. the payoff is a vastly easier transition for you, the user. yellowTab will offer binary compatibility with Zeta, but they are also likely to offer people the ability to move on with newer compilers for developers that will make binaries incompatible with current BeOS versions. Inevitably there will be additions to Zeta and these may also not be portable to older versions of BeOS.

From my perspective the work being done by OpenBeOS is amazing and the concept was acceptable last year. Zeta has changed the landscape now and their approach, offering backwards compatibility but trying to move BeOS forward as Zeta is a good one and with luck they will succeed. My only question is whether they've gone far enough to warrant the interest they hope to attract. Like the TV series I started watching today the BeOS components they're using are essentially fixed in stone and therefore dead.

Will I continue to watch the TV series? I'm going to watch some more and see what plays out, much like my approach to BeOS at the present time.