Interview with Simon Gauvin of beunited.org, Part II
05 October 2002, 21:29gmt, by , Senior Journalist
From the interview-that-roxors department...

The BeOSJournal spent a solid 2 hours with Simon Gauvin, and finished up the second part of what has turned out to be, an amazing interview. Unfortunately, due to real life issues, neither Daat nor Nutcase could make it in time, so we decided to go ahead and finish up part II. We would welcome further questions from the community at large, as we're sure there will be ground we didn't have time to cover. And now.. on with the show!

Technix (TBJ): Welcome back Simon. My staff hasn't shown up yet, and Nutcase has not arrived yet either, but I think it's in the best interests of our readership to continue from where we left off last time..

Simon (bu): Right, nice to be back. Thanks for having me as a guest again.

Technix (TBJ): Does beunited.org plan to host any BeOS events?

Simon (bu): Yes, and No. We have many ideas about events, like developer conference, and BUG conference, things like that. However, there are no firm plans in the works at the moment. We are working on the web site more or less full time and want to build on the vision that we have put forth, to generate interest and build up the user base of BeOS around the world.

Once there is a real set of numbers about how many people are using BeOS, then we will go to the next logical step, which is to set up events.

Technix (TBJ): How does a person become a member of beunited.org, and also become involved in the development of BeOS?

Simon (bu): Well as we announced last time we spoke anyone can be a member of beunited.org, as it's free. To make this a reality technically, we are working on the web site to add functionality that will allow people to join, and become members.

You know, the simple form based stuff with your name, email and where you are on the planet. We need to know where you are so that members can vote for their local representatives who are on the standards committee.

As for development of BeOS, we have links to all the projects and anyone can go and join them. I'm sure they would like new people.

Technix (TBJ): How will beunited.org handle requests to work on recently acquired projects?

Simon (bu): We are open to anyone. Once we get the email request the project lead will contact them and set up their account for cvs etc.. We will also be putting up a page on the main site that lists all the projects we are working on, and the leads, so that people can contact them directly.

Technix (TBJ): Does beunited.org have any plans to create a new "BeBook", or documentation system once openBeOS reaches Release 1?

Simon (bu): Actually that's a good question, and the answer is yes!

Technix (TBJ): Can you elaborate on how you would do so?

Simon (bu): From the standards process there will naturally be a flow of documents that describes the standards and we plan on publishing this online for everyone to have direct access to. The API is certainly one of those 'main' areas of the standard, and we all know and love the present BeOS API, but this will change. beunited.org plans on being at the center of this evolution, after all, that's what we are here for =)

The present API is in 'lovely HTML' and we would continue this too, like Sun publishes the Java spec.

Technix (TBJ): What are your thoughts on how Be Inc. was like throughout it's history, the famed "focus shift", and the final acquisition of their intellectual property by Palm Inc.?

Simon (bu): I think Be Inc really believed what they were doing was the right thing at the time they were making those decisions. They certainly had more information about what they were doing than anyone else did, so it is easy to judge them after the fact.

Technix (TBJ): Quick interjection... Is this your opinion, or beunited.org's stance as well?

Simon (bu): I don't think that beunited.org can have a position on history, it just happened. I'm telling you what I think about it, as an observer, and nothing more, since I was not there at Be see things happen.

I was natually sad to see them change 'focus' from their desktop to the IA platform, since that was not my personal interest in BeOS from the start.

As for Palm. I think that what Be did in selling it's assets to Palm was the best thing for the people at Be at that time.

When we think back at what 'could' have been, you know, when people talk about the Apple deal, then the talk is all about speculation, and not about what is real. I tend to look at things realistically, and go from today forward, rather then think about the past. Certainly we need to know it, the past history, to try to avoid making mistakes, but I think the future looks really great for BeOS now, and I'm happy where we are going. =)

Technix (TBJ): Do you foresee a corporation or company stepping up to the plate and becoming a distributor of openBeOS, like what Corel did for Linux?

Simon (bu): I think that there needs to be a period where the OS needs to go through a set of tests to pass the 'public' view that it is actually solving a problem.

Once it does that, and people, or better still companies, see that BeOS is a solution to a problem they have, and more importantly provides either a ROI or a strategy that gives them an advantage (like IBM with Linux) then you will see real corporate support.

Some people may hate me for saying this... One way to do that would be to align OSBOS with the massive Linux movement, and ride the tidal wave of support and mindshare that Linux is getting in corporations and with IT departments and their CIO's.

How that is done is another issue.

Technix (TBJ): What is the driver fund, and how can people help it?

Simon (bu): The driver fund *was*, as in past tense, a donation based resource of cash for helping the development of drivers by using the funds to pay for Driver hardware for developers to create drivers.

The fund has now been folded into the larger organization, that is totally donation based, to help us not only do drivers, but also apps, and everything else that the members want us to provide.

We have recently been awarded an official developer membership to the ATI corporation, and will be looking to support driver developers for this hardware too.

Technix (TBJ): Ok, you've done a great job so far Simon, but I think we can all agree that the most important question that has not been asked yet by -anyone- is this... Why do you use the nickname vman? ;)

Simon (bu): Ha ha. Well, I'm a PhD student doing research in the area of visual programming languages and the topic of my thesis is a new visual programming language called V, hence, I'm the vman =P

Technix (TBJ): What news can you tell us about the ssh2 client or daemon, and it's relation to beOS?

Simon (bu): Sure, the ssh2 client was ported recently for our access to the OpenOffice project source. As you know Sun has approved beunited.org as the official porting organization for OpenOffice to BeOS, so we are now testing it. However, it is not in any kind of releasable form at the moment, but once we find that it works, we will provide it free on code.beunited.org.

Technix (TBJ): What about the ssh2 daemon? Once the client has proven to be stable, how much work is there for making the daemon run on BeOS?

Simon (bu): Don't know if we ever will do the daemon as that was not our focus. I think we will leave that to those that need it.

Technix (TBJ): What is beunited.org's view of the market in Japan, and how much work has gone into a relationship with companies, users, and organizations there?

Simon (bu): We think Japan is a great market, and we have spent time in the last couple of months working the area, contacting people, and building relationships. We are in contact with the larget BUG there, and are working to collect stats and rally developers and user there.

Technix (TBJ): For that matter, let's replace Japan with the "Asian Market", for sake of the question.

Simon (bu): We are also doing the same with China too. I have many Japanese and Chinese colleagues that are working the sites, and discussion groups over there. As you can imagine, there is quite a language barrier, but they really love BeOS over there and are really pumped that we are working on these new open source versions of it.

It stands to be a HUGE market going forward, as the Chinese software market is screaming for solutions that they can build their schools and business on that are not expensive. So Linux has been their choice as of late, but OSBOS stands to really make a huge impact there... We are working very hard to develop this Asian realationship with beunited.org

Technix (TBJ): How has the relationship with Sun been so far?

Simon (bu): Sun has been great. It's a big company, and like all big companies things take longer than small companies to work out. But they are really interested in the desktop and in open source, and you can see that in their announcements to support Linux and keeping their software open, like OpenOffice, and Java.

Technix (TBJ): Can you comment more on the "Open Standards Group" meeting that was recently held by beunited.org? What more can you say now that some time has passed for things to settle?

Simon (bu): Sure, it was a great moment, historic really, since it was the first time that the heads of the OSBOS projects got together under one roof to talk about the subject of standards.

Everyone pretty much agrees that these are important, and also agrees that no single group should dominate or dictate what the other group should do, so beunited.org provide a neutral forum for this discussion to happen, since we don't create standards, or develop any OSBOS distributions oursleves.

The meeting was very good, and we spent time introducing each other, and then got right down to business, starting with the standards process itself.

What the committee is working on is to approve the process standard that has been presented, and then go to the next step of organizing the categories of standards that are important. Once this is done we will publish these categories and prioritize them for people to start writing and submitting the RFCs that everyone needs.

So we have started, and the Open Standards Group is not just an idea anymore, its a real group of people working towards a set of standards for OSBOS, it's great!

Technix (TBJ): Just a small clarification from earlier, if you would be so kind... Will beunited.org be advocating a single Open Beos Standard/Distribution or will it be more of a clearing house for all of them?

Simon (bu): Each standard can have a 'proof of concept' or 'example implementation' that demonstrates how the standard is used. As standards progress, they will eventually cover all areas of the OS.

As well, each OSBOS project is required to provide beunited.org with their source so that beunited.org can determine the level of compatibility with the standards that are being published and approved by the community.

That's what makes an OSBOS project eligable, the code must be open sounce, so at some point the entire OS will be available at beunited.org as an example implementation of the standards.

This will then be free to everyone to see how the standards are implemented, and how the OS works.

Technix (TBJ): Have there been any more developments from beunited.org or a response to your documents, concerning the anti-trust hearings?

Simon (bu): No, right now the Judge is in her chambers reading all the docs and will be making a ruling some time in the fall.

Technix (TBJ): Getting back to distributions of openBeOS, What will be the mechanism for distributions that don't follow the standard? Will it be labelled as "not certified"?

Simon (bu): That's a good question. We have been working on a scheme for classification lately for this very event. We are thinking of a tier system that describes the compatibility of each OSBOS.

For example, there may be some that don't have all the source open, like Zeta, or others that don't support OpenTracker, Like Cosmoe (for the moment they use the Atheos GUI), so these projects will not be 100% compatible

What is important is for people, users, to know what they are getting with each one, and in some cases being non-compatible may be requried to target a certain segment or functionality that some users need. However, people should know what they are getting. And that's what beunited.org and the certification program intends to publish.

So if a distro wants to have the 100% OSBOS certified compatibility sticker on it, they need to follow the standards. Simple.

We hope that everyone wants to be at least for the most part compatible, since it's in their interest to be, and we have gotten feedback from all the OBSOS projects that they do. It just takes time, that's all.

Technix (TBJ): Will beunited.org be involved in possible future internationalization of OSBOS? For example, helping to create a German or even Russian version of openBeOS.

Simon (bu): No, I think that is the work of commercial distributors, like Yellow Tab, who btw have a great localization lib that would be a great starting point for a standards proposal =)

Technix (TBJ): And now.. for the big announcement that we have all been waiting for. Simon, what is it?

Simon (bu): Well I am happy to announce that beunited.org is officially working on porting the Java 2 Standard Edition to BeOS.

There have been several attempts at this in the past, and we have had the benefit of working with some of the people from these projects, but now we are very confident that we will be able to provide a complete implementation of Java on BeOS.

Technix (TBJ): That is the platform listed here; http://java.sun.com/j2se/ correct?

Simon (bu): Yes, we are working with the actual 1.4 source base from Sun, and have a full working build system under BeOS.

This is very exciting for obvious reasons...

Java is not just a language, it's a platform, and one that we think will help BeOS become far more interesting in the future.. I think we can safely say that we will have a release some time next year...

We are working with Sun on the source, and it's going very well.

One of the great things about Java, is that it is a multithreaded language, and BeOS is great at this so there is a great match for the language and the OS.

Writing apps in Java on BeOS, using the native threads of BeOS, will make development much faster than with C++, and possibly more natural for people, not to mention that there are 1 million Java developers out there already =)

Technix (TBJ): This is fantastic news, Simon! We're really looking forward to tapping into the potential that BeOS has in store for not just programmers, but ordinary users who are looking for solutions to many, many diverse problems.

Simon (bu): Yes, this suddenly opens the door for BeOS to many, many areas that it was previously unable to access, like business apps written in Java, Java in the Browser, and the educational market where 99% of schools teaching OOP use Java...

Technix (TBJ): I wish to thank you for your time, on behalf of The BeOSJournal, the BeGroovy website, the BeOS Community, and everyone who came here to read this today. You've helped to shine a light in what was once a dark room, and shown us that the door is still where it ever was. Now, it's up to everyone involved to make our dream a reality, and step through the door to the other side.

Simon (bu): Thank you very much, I would like to thank you all for the opportunity to allow me to discuss these issues and I look forward to everyone's feedback on the sites.

And I would also like to let everyone out there know... that beunited.org Standards Portal is ready to be released in the coming week, and we will be providing everyone with free membership, so come visit us at http://www.beunited.org and become a member and be united!

Technix (TBJ): Till next time, stay loose, and keep up the great work!

Simon (bu): Thanks!