As I'm sure you're all aware of, beunited was officially disestablished on January 4th, after several years being a part of the community. After reading Deej's post, I wanted a bit more of information, so I wrote him and asked if he wouldn't mind sharing some more about beunited. Being the nice guy that he is, he replied right away agreeing. So I got a few questions together and within a couple of days, I had his answers.

Update: Deej has just posted a comment answering some follow-up questions that were posted by our readers. Enjoy.

So without further delays, click below for some more insight into beunited. 

ICO: How was it, being part of the beunited project?

Deej: beunited was always an interesting ride. There were people that were behind the idea, and there were people that were against it. But the people that worked with us were always a joy to work with. I say work, but it was a virtual-only environment. beunited was never in more of an official status than having the non-profit organization status with the IRS and state of Colorado. It would have been nice if we could have obtained funding to set up offices and make it full time jobs for people to work on projects, but over the course of 7 years, it didn't get nearly that far.

I was lucky enough to actually meet Simon, William, Koki and Bryan in person at the first Waltercon (and Michael Phipps, of course). Those that participated, and those that supported us, were great.

ICO: When did the beunited decline start, and could you give us a bit more of an insight into the why and how?

Deej: There was always a lack of large public interest in helping out beunited, especially due to the  decline of Be, Inc. There was a few core people that wanted to see things work, and contributed countless hours to the organization and its projects, but there were never enough. Not being able to pay people for their efforts, or provide some other sort of compensation isn't much of a motivator for the general public/community. As time went on, and more people left the community, we lost some of those people working on beunited projects as well.

I would say that beunited started off with a bang, faded out a little over time, and then hit hard again when we switched focus to maintaining continuity among the various platforms that arose post Be, Inc. 

When beunited first started in 2000, it was solely because of a recognized need for certain key applications on the platform. We had a multitude of developers interested in the various projects. 

After Be, Inc. went out of business, things fell apart for the entire community, beunited included. As Haiku, BlueEyedOS, Cosmoe and other alternative platforms started to arise, the need to keep some coherance and compatibility between them became paramount, and beunited took off again, momentum-wise, to bring together all various platforms to the same table. To some extent, it worked.

But, over time, people moved on in life, and we lost a couple of very key players. Myself, I went through some pretty major life events, and couldn't put in the time or effort to keep beunited running successfully. Simon took over for me from there. But, unfortunately, it wasn't long after that Simon also had some major life events occur that took control of his attention as well. Between that, and the events in the community, beunited began a long, slow fade of activity.

ICO: And when did the final decision come to be? It musn't have been an easy decision.

Deej: Actually, it was the opposite - it was quite an easy decision. I spoke with Simon, and we both knew that we didn't have the time to continue the level of effort needed. We came to the decision to officially close beunited quite quickly given the current post-BeOS environment...

Anymore, there are really only 2 post-BeOS platforms left: Haiku and Zeta. Both are working together well, and without beunited's envolvement. As of writing this today, it seems Bill is back on Cosmoe - but again, it doesn't appear that beunited is needed to keep that relationship going again either.

The environment of the community has changed. The platforms are narrowed down to the 2, which are already working well together. BeZilla, now Mozilla, is self sustaining. Java has been taken over by both Haiku and Zeta developers. Pe is continuing development on its own. The other apps in our repository have not been touched by anyone in quite some time, that I am aware of. The Annotated BeBook was transfered under Haiku's control in an effort to help their documentation efforts.

Technically, beunited was a huge success, given these factors. So huge, in fact, that we are no longer needed for the mission that defined us for so long. If only the Linux standards group could only be so successful in bringing about compatibility between the various platforms. ;)

ICO: What do you feel were the biggest accomplishments of beunited and at the opposite side, what were your biggest disappointments with the project?

Deej: Biggest accomplishments: Mozilla. It was the primary reason beunited was started in the first place - the need for a better browser than NetPositive. That, along with OpenOffice and Java - the latter more successful than the former, to a great degree. Everything else was still important, but to a far lesser degree.

Another huge accomplishment was to make sure the various OSBOS platform developers continued talking and working together.  We provided a medium for them to interface together, and they did.

Biggest disappointments: OpenOffice. Nothing more needs to be said about that... it just never took off, both due to technical and personnel (or lack thereof) issues.

Another disappointment is obviously the lack of a need for beunited any longer. The lack of motivated people in the community that could take it further. beunited was set up as a non-profit, with a board of directors and other appointees.  Simon and I were in our respective positions far beyond what we had expected, or the Articles of Incorporation had provisioned for, but there was no one there to take our places. Eventually, the need for beunited faded away. It's a good thing, but it also is a disappointment.

ICO: Was there something special you would have liked to have done (via beunited), but for whatever reason weren't able to?

Deej: We wanted to build our own distro of a standardized OSBOS platform. We were going to use Haiku, and annouced it as such during the first WalterCon. The idea was to provide the distribution outlet for the Haiku organization and its OS, bundling beunited apps with the OS, and providing service and support for the distribution to our members. It never materialized. Time to completion for Haiku versus time to keep the beunited momentum moving forward didn't work out in our favor.

ICO: Has anyone stepped forward to take over any of the projects? Or at least shown interest.

Deej: As I stated above, most of the primary projects have been self-sustaining for some time now. Those that haven't, I would encourage interested maintainers to grab the source from our repository and continue on with it separately - our cvs server agreement is indefinite - meaning it could be there for years or disappear tomorrow.

ICO: What are your plans for the future? 

Deej: As far as BeOS/Haiku future plans, we'll have to see as time progresses... I haven't thought about changing or taking over the world with it lately, but I still think about doing something. Something BeOS related is always going on in the back of my head.  ;)

Once again, I'm going through some pretty major life events, including the search for a new job again.  My job has been great to me, but the contract is ending with the government, so my future employment is of slight concern and is up in the air a bit. This will hopefully be resolved in the next 2 months - I'm not worried about being unemployed, as happened after my stint doing BeOS development with Qubit, but the when's, where's and doing what's are the issues of concern. I probably will be brought on to the new contract, so hopefully employment is not an issue - but I have to keep my mind on it, just in case.  After that, I'll have to see where I stand time-wise. 

And about two years ago, I went back to the reason I started messing with computers back in the late 80s in the first place - music. My car accident put a hamper on that the last 6 months, but now that my hands are healed up, I plan on being more active musically again. That takes up some bit of my free time as well.

Most of the rest of my time goes to my novels I'm writing and my new fiancee. I try to force some Be-time in as I can, but it's pretty limited at this point. I actually don't plan on teaching past this current term, so hopefully that will clear up some nights I can get involved with the community once more.

ICO: Will you stay involved with/follow up on Haiku/ZETA (other than BeGroovy)? 

Deej: As Chris Herborth (cookie to those that recognize that name) once said: "I've been here so long, I can't find the door". Well, I've been here that much longer that I don't want to find the door. My heart and soul were poored into BeOS and the community for so many years (over a decade now), I can't escape from it. At one point it brought not only employment doing BeOS development, but that job still stands to today as the best job I ever had, despite the 12-16 hour days. And still to this day, I often tout some of the features of BeOS/Haiku in the classes I teach. I follow the community on a daily basis. I'll always be lurking around in some way or form - to a greater or lesser extent.

I have Zeta loaded on a PC and my laptop. My laptop also has a VM of Haiku. All my other computers still dual boot with BeOS R5. I don't use them everyday anymore, but still boot them occasionally for one thing or another - and sometimes I boot BeOS or Zeta to do something, or just to play Civ again (when I have a whole day that I don't need/want to do anything - which, unfortunately, isn't often at all). 

I follow everything happening in the community, although you probably won't see me, since I mostly lurk anymore. I've been too far removed the last couple of years to have any relevant points to make. I'm really excited about BGA's talks with Google, and have been checking his blog several times a day since the 2nd to hear something about the last meeting (hint hint BGA  ;)  ).

I always get the urge to stay involved - it's the lack of time that keeps me from it - I work full time, teach computer security in the evenings 3 nights a week, play in a band 2 times a week, and have a new love of my life to pay some attention to. Time is just at a bare minimum at this point for me to devote to the community, and has been that way for about 2 years now. 

BeGroovy is the main outlet for me at this point. Keeping a website going is not too intensive on my time, but it does take up some of my attention. I want to keep it in the community, and will always continue to do so - BeGroovy just hit 8 years old - a sort of monument to the community. I will keep that going "until the last user leaves" - literally, even if only so the BeOS Bible references to it still resolve.  :P 

But you asked other than BeGroovy, didn't you... :P

Every once in a while, I get a wild hair to program again. I actually have a few programs I've been working on very slowly on my laptop - a few ports and a couple of other ideas, stuff I need or want, mainly. Whenever I get that urge, I'll pop open the source and write a few lines. Nothing I want to announce, as they may never get finished, but still, something. It has been a long time since doing any real programming, so even when I get the motivation, it is a process for me to get in the mode again. I have a few things I really want to do, but I've been away from programming for so long, I need to find the time to catch myself up.

ICO: Though it's not easy to speak on behalf of other people, do you know if others who were involved with beunited will stay involved with Haiku/ZETA?

Deej: I know that Simon has moved on, and is devoted to his PhD thesis at this point. Most everyone else that is still in the community has already migrated over to Haiku - Koki the most notable at this point - as he is very active for Haiku nowadays. That was half the reason we discussed officially closing beunited - most everyone involved had started helping Haiku or becoming involved in another project at one point in the past, leaving beunited a virtual ghost town. 

The Mozilla guys have been doing their thing consistently for some time, and many people do not even realize that it was a beunited project for a very long time (they always maintained their own website, which lended to that impression). So they'll always stay involved.

I honestly think we've hit a low in the community, and anyone that was going to leave is already gone, and we can only go up from here. But then again, I remember saying just that before a few years ago when Be, Inc., and then Qubit, had gone belly up.  :P

Interesting thing about Qubit though, I think we were way ahead of our time - only now are tablet PCs and interconnected home devices starting to emerge effectively in the marketplace...

I wonder... some new devices based on a portable version of Haiku?...

And on that interesting note (who knows if ICO will have some information about it in the near/mid future...), I'd like to thank once more Deej for taking the time to answer ICO's questions. He has agreed to follow-ups, so if anyone out there reading this has questions for him, drop me a line (daat at ico) and I'll make sure he gets them.