“One analyst, Charles Payne of Wall Street Strategies, cited by
Bloomberg, said Be’s software would add applications that Red Hat’s
software doesn’t offer — neglecting to realise that the two
operating systems, while structurally similar (kernel, shell,
graphical UI) aren’t compatible, and BeOS is no less proprietary
than Windows 2000.”
“That said, those very structural similarities would make
BeOS a candidate for a move into the open source world. Strip out
the existing (and handily Unix-like) kernel and slide in a modified
version of the Linux kernel with BeOS’ rather fine journaling file
system tacked-on, and you’ve got a version of Linux with an series
of media-oriented API and a top-notch GUI light years ahead of KDE
and Gnome.“
“Sounds an interesting plan, but the Linuxisation of BeOS would
be tantamount to an admission of failure on Be’s part, a confession
that it can’t after all compete with the open source OS. Be itself
is doing reasonably well an OS vendor, with a small but solid band
of supporters, and is pushing hard to make it big in the
information appliance market.”