Gobe - Apple's new office killer?

penheadd

Hi,



<a href="http://www.macrumors.com"; target="_blank">MacRumors.com</a> has a story about Apple acquiring <a href="http://www.gobe.com/"; target="_blank">Gobe Software</a> that seems a little murky to me ...



Apparently, they are using <a href="http://www.liberation.fr/page.php?Article=80718"; target="_blank">this</a> (liberation.fr) column by Jean-Louis Gassee, of Be.inc and PalmOS fame, as a source.



The way I see this is that Gassee used to work on ClarisWorks for Apple and the Gobe programmers came from the same place. Some Gobe people work for Apple now, after Gobe stopped paying wages this spring - but I don't think Apple has acquired the copyrights.



Anyway, I don't read french and, as usual, the <a href="http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=fr&u=http://www.liberation.fr/page.php?Article=80718"; target="_blank">Google translation</a> is totally useless... Any french speakers around wanna read the article and report back?



It would be a good deal for Apple, though: Gobe is under chapter 11 and Apple will be needing an enterprise grade replacement for Office somewhere down the line if they keep up their software launches

fresh

hmmmm.. If you remember Gobe went out of business last year after releaseing GoBe Productive 3.0 for windows. They were also in the process of developing Productive 3.0 for Linux. After going out of business a couple of the employees of Gobe formed a new company called Freeradical Software. Freeradical was going to buy the code and release the code as opensource. A new company called GoBe LLC was going to market and sell the windows version. A couple months after this idea was floated Freeradical was unable to raise the money to buy the code. So what has happened to the programmers and the code?



here are a couple links:

<a href="http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=1520"; target="_blank">http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=1520</a>;

<a href="http://osnews.com/story.php?news_id=2308"; target="_blank">http://osnews.com/story.php?news_id=2308</a>;



The only problem with the french new site story is that JLG suggests Apple hired the GoBe team in 2001. GoBe developing Productive until they went out business