March 1, 1999

COMPRESSED DATA

Tiny Software Maker Calls Microsoft's Bluff

h, the burden of proof.

In January, the tiny software company Be Inc. briefly came into focus at the Microsoft antitrust trial, when a Microsoft executive asserted that Be could soon become a major competitor to his company. No matter that Microsoft controls some 90 percent of the personal computer operating system market and Be has virtually no market share.

	Be's chief, Jean-Louis Gassée.

With publicity nine-tenths of the law, Be's flamboyant founder and chairman, Jean-Louis Gassée, has come up with a novel way to test Microsoft's hypothesis.

In a column posted on Be's Web site on Thursday, Gassée made a proposal to any computer maker willing to confront Microsoft's stringent licensing requirements: His company will license its Be operating system free for one year to any computer maker willing to install it on new machines and make it an option for buyers to select the first time they switch on the PC.

Gassée said that he had had no takers, despite several "nibbles," but that he was discussing the idea with at least one major PC maker, which he declined to identify.

The obstacles to his challenge appear to be formidable. But that may be the point.

Gassée described in his column how one computer maker has loaded the Be operating system on its computers. But he said that the manufacturer, which he did not identify in the column, has noted this fact only deep in the accompanying documentation because the company interpreted Microsoft's licensing provisions to bar non-Microsoft systems from being displayed during the start-up sequence.

"I'm trying to expose something that has been right under my nose for years," said Gassée, who ran Apple Computer's hardware business before founding Be in 1990 in Menlo Park, Calif. "Microsoft wants to smother the baby in the cradle." -- JOHN MARKOFF

Linux.com Doesn't Go to the Highest Bidder

hen Fred Van Kempen registered the linux.com Internet domain in June 1994, nobody but a handful of programmers around the world had heard of Linux -- the precocious software operating system, written by a graduate student named Linus Torvalds and released free on the Internet.

Monday, as the Linuxworld trade show opens in San Jose, Calif., the program has begun to pose real competition to the Unix and Windows NT operating systems that dominate the market for business computing. Perhaps it is not surprising, then, that Van Kempen, who now works as a network engineer for a consulting firm in the Netherlands, says he has received 500 e-mail messages in the last six months asking if the linux.com domain is for sale.

This week, Van Kempen plans to announce that he is selling the domain to VA Research, a start-up in Mountain View, Calif., that sells and supports Linux systems for business enterprises.

The company, Van Kempen said in an interview Sunday, was not the highest bidder. But then, as seems to be the inexplicable norm among many involved in Linux, money was not his main objective.

"I wanted to make sure no one could take it and make it into some commercial playground," said Van Kempen, who wrote much of the early networking code for Linux. "I don't really need the cash."

Van Kempen declined to say how much VA Research is paying. He said the company plans to make linux.com into a clearinghouse for Linux information for the growing base of commercial users. He and several other representatives from the Linux community will serve on a board that will monitor the site. -- AMY HARMON

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Related Sites
These sites are not part of The New York Times on the Web, and The Times has no control over their content or availability.

• Be Inc.

• Gassée's column

• linux.com

• VA Research

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Amy Harmon at amy@nytimes.com welcomes your comments and suggestions.

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