Haiku News ~ Related: #00352 ~ A Letter From A BeOS Disciple.

A Letter From A BeOS Disciple.

Jan 07, 2003 20:46 UTC, by Chris Simmons, Senior Journalist.
From the fellowship department...

Here is the letter from Ted that I promised would go up, as noted earlier in the webcam commentary submission. Cudos to Ted, Kancept, and everyone involved. I'll let Ted take over now. ;)

"I would like to start with a huge thank you to all the great BeOS people who were concerned about my health.

Especially those who took the time to write a letter, emailed or sent a postcard. Last but not least to Kancept for that generous offer to support me financially with his special webcam sale, and to the people who purchased them.

Words alone aren't enough but here it goes...

Thank you all very much Dudes and Dudettes, it sure helped me to gain some strength to recover.

At the moment I am at 75% of full recovery and will still be looking at several months before I am at my usual "annoying" self again.

Yet starting of today I have decided to slowly re-integrate back into the communety. It might be five minutes or an hour, maybe even a whole day, or just a simple email to one of the userlists, depending on how I feel. I hope to be more and more active during the first few months of this new year. The last 15% will be the hardest though as I need to get back into shape again; something I was very proud off. That will be the hardest, due to the training, excercise and sports I must do. My body lost a lot of weight and volume, and I must get back in shape.

In a way my family (wife and kids) were happy that I was sick, not for the desease, but rather for the time I spent with them these last 8 months. Time which was greater than the total sum I had spent with them in the previous 5 years combined.

I blame BeOS for that (in a positive way). It's addictive. I never had so much fun in computing as the glory days of the Amiga, about two decades ago.

Now as you all know these were turbulent months, actually the whole year was, for OpenBeOS and several BeOS Business initiatives. Some had to close down, some are in the process of closing and some will be gone in the future. The only good things that came from this is that new oppertuneties will arrive in future times, unfortunately and unwillingly thanks to those failures.

I hereby take this opportunity to call (yes again) all arms to help BeOS in what it deserves to become. An operating system that responds immediately to the user, with hardly any hassle or crashprone behaviour, or other narcissism. The way computing was meant to Be in the first place. No more than a normal everyday car that takes you from point A to point B.

Now in these dark ages I want to bring your attention to one of our greatest supporters of all times.

GOBE Software.

These people supported us through every bit and byte even though Be Inc. didn't and couldn't. Now Gobe faces a problem; they can't live anymore from their product(s) and they have to leave the BeOS due to facts all known to us by now.

I would like to endorse the initiatives from BeUnited.org and Simon Gauvin even more. According to many of the Gobe users in their mailinglists (which is still up btw for as long as it is) most of them are very dedicated to see Gobe Office continue in some form if posseble. So too are the employees of Gobe.

With that in mind, I would ask Kancept to redirect all the intended mon(ies) for me towards the Gobe Productive 3 open source movement. I feel they need it more than I do.

This same request goes for all the people that owe me money . If you are the least bit decent, I ask that you donate what you owe me towards the GP3 open source movement. I have still several hundreds of $ USD of outstanding bills from customers of mine abroad and I like to see that money donated to that same initiative too. So if you have a heart in your soul think of the X-mas spirit and pay off your debts.

I also call upon people who deserved the priviledge to receive free hardware donations from me. BeOS developers and productive people who deserved it due to their work they did at no charge for us all as a community, I call upon your X-mas Spirit to donate some extra money to the GP 3 open source movement.

To the Gobe people i like to wish them strength and hope, and many thank you's for those years you were here.

To everyone, I thank you, for thinking of me and my family.

Have a wonderfull Christmas and a Happy New Year.

With the outmost respect,

Ted Leeuwesteijn (a.k.a. Zathros)
BeOS Deciple, Advocate & BeForever User"