According to BeOS France (and also ICO and OSNews) now even Jean Louis Gassée, former CEO of Be inc., has something to say about the issues around Zeta’s legality.

JLG has confirmed to Remi from BeOS France that at the time that Palmsource was still the legal owner of the ip, yellowTab did not have any agreement with them. As we all know, JLG use to be a board member for Palmsource, and with his background it would likely that he would have known about such an agreement.

Update: It seems that in the hurry of posting about the above I misread something. The statements by JLG are from an earlier time, they just were never posted. JLG didn’t actually respond to the recent troubles of Zeta like the title on this post suggests. The statements are still valid though, Remi explains:

Since promoting an illegal product came to me like something dangerous for the integrity of my website (so, my everyday “work” of 4 years now), i asked myself: “And if Zeta was not legal ??? Nothing has never been clean on this !”. Cause if it was not, it wouldn’t be normal that i support it (banners, articles, …). I decide to contact JLG, the best person to answer me on this topic. He was so kind to answer me and clearly told me that AT THIS TIME (OSNews, thanks not making me say what i didn’t say !!!), so at this time, the time we got this email discution, he told me that no agreement were took between PalmSource and yT.

Click below for a translation of the text on BeOS France. All the kudos for taking the time to translate it for me go to my Belgian friend Manette, as je ne parle pas Francais…

En effet, le débat à longtemps fait rage sur la légalité de Zeta, par son
utilisation des sources de BeOS R6. Bernd T Korz, alors CEO de yellowTab,
est toujours resté flou à ce sujet, ainsi que Charlie Clark, alors
responsable presse de la firme de Manheimn.

***
Indeed, the debate about Zeta’s legality has raged for a long time now over its use of BeOS R6 sources. Bernd T Korz, former yellowTab’s CEO, has always been vague on the topic, as well as Charlie Clark, former communication responsible for the Manheim’s company.
***

Pire, et il n´est désormais plus secret de le dire, lorsque votre serviteur
avait cherché à en avoir le coeur net, yellowTab m´avait alors répondu qu´il
n´hésiterait pas à aller devant les tribunaux si certaines informations
venait à devenir public. La non propriété et absence d´accord entre
yellowTab et PalmSource (a l´époque encore propriétaire des IP de BeOS)
m´avait été confirmé par écrit par le mieux placé pour en parler dans ces
conditions: Jean Louis Gassée.

***
Worse, and it’s no more a secret today, when your host [Remi of BeOSfrance] tried to know more about this, yellowTab answered at the time that it wouldn’t hesitate to sue in trial course if some informations has to become public. The non-ownership and the lack of agreement between yellowTab and PalmSource (at the time they were still the owner of BeOS’s IP) was then confirmed to me in writing by the best placed guy to speak about it under these conditions: Jean Louis Gassée.
***

PalmSource a toujours fermé les yeux sur l´activité de yellowTab. Access
quant à lui, a cherché en entrer en contact avec yT depuis le rachat de
PalmSource, et s´est confronté à une oreille allemande bien sourde. Les
frais que représente une action en justice en allemagne et le peu de revenu
qu´aurait pu engendrer un tel procès les avait fait reculer.

***
PalmSource always ignored on yellowTab’s activities. But Access tried several times to get in touch with yT after the PalmSource takeover, and faced a quite deaf German ear. The cost of such a legal action in Germany as well as the low amount of money they could get from the lawsuit decided them not to do so.
***

Cette semaine, Bernd a annoncé être en discussion avec ses avocats et les
personnes concernées pour “libérer” les sources de Zeta au profit d´Haiku…
mais c´était sans compter sur Access, qui voit, et on le comprends, d´un
mauvais oeil voir ses sources redistribuées gratuitement sachant qu´elles
représentent en grande partie le code originel de BeOS, leur appartenant.

***
This week, Bernd announced to be in discussion with his lawyers and the involved people to “free” Zeta sources to the profit of Haiku… But it is without taking Access into account which doesn’t appreciate, and we can understand that, that the sources would be freely redistributed knowing that a big part of it represent the original BeOS code which they own.
***

Gage de leur bonne foi, Access a officiellement communiqué et répondu aux
internautes à ce sujet, et rendu gratuitement disponible le BeBook et les
newsletters Be Inc (nous en parlions hier dans l´article “Un cadeau
inattendu !”).

***
To show their good intentions, Access officially communicated and answered the Net community on this subject, and also made the BeBook and the Be Inc newsletters freely available (we spoke about it yesterday in the article “an unexpected gift!”)
***

Cette affaire n´est pas prête de finir et il se pourrait bien qu´elle
finisse d´ailleurs assez mal… le même probleme de violation de copyright
s´appliquant également aux autres distributions se basant sur BeOS R5 Pe
(Max Ed, DevEd, …).

***
This story won’t end that soon and it could even end in a rather badly way… the same copyright infringement problem may also be applicable to the others BeOS R5 PE based distributions (Max Ed, DevEd,…).
***

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