mendax.org

I can’t say I quite understand the alternative OS crowd. As keen as I am to point out how I’m a fan of BeOS, and how Be, Inc. made an incredible product that got way too little recognition when it was commercially available, I’m still a realist at heart, and quite frankly, the boys at YellowTab have me worried.

It’s been weeks, if not months now, since my buddy johnnyace contacted the folks developing Zeta to get a preview release so I could throw in my two cents for an Ars Technica preview article, but all we got was a “Wait a bit, and we”ll have something for you.” We’re still waiting.

The funny thing is, that’s the same message they’re giving everyone. At first, I believed them when they said they were busy hammering out bugs so they could ship a flawless product, and I excused their occassional convention appearances since I knew they wanted to get more word out about the heir to the BeOS lineage. However, I didn’t think that’s all they were doing. Unfortunately, as one can see on their web site’s front page, they’re busier making OS demonstrations than they are building the damned OS in the first place, or so it would seem.

Considering their team is only a half-dozen people, and that they expect to bring people over from MS Windows and who-knows-what-else, I don’t see enough doing, and see too much talking. It’s like the opposite of Be, Inc., which had a dedicated team of developers who wrote good code, but didn’t market it at all. Of course, I blame that latter point mostly on Gassee, who couldn’t run a company if it had legs and wind pants.

As it stands, I’m tired of waiting. With the developers more interested in working on a port of FreeCNC than they are somthing useful like, say, VNC, I don”t see Zeta becoming a feasible OS to work with anytime soon. With ancient game ports instead of productive applications receiving focus, the YellowTab team sounds more like a group of CS undergrads with a pet project than they do a company with a clear business plan.

Don’t get me wrong - I want Zeta to be the best it can, and I’m sure YellowTab does too, but without proper management, there’s no way YellowTab can compete with the big boys and become anything more than a cute OS with a cult following.

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