From the Dark Side--M$ Settles with Be's Antitrust Lawsuit for $23.2 Million

plus unspecified legal fees according to this BusinessWeek article. Be, Inc. was founded by Jean-Louis Gassee, an ex Apple VP. The BeOS was a PowerPC-native operating system that literally screamed on the older PowerPC Macs before the G3 CPU was introduced. We loved it but, as a new OS, it had little application and utility software. Apple nearly bought the BeOS to be what is now the Mac OS X but Gassee and the Be board were too greedy. The BeOS was then ported to the Intel CPU and Be tried to take on Microsoft but was crushed by M$'s illegal monopoly practices according to Be. This settlement leaves only Sun Microsystems as a major competitor with an antitrust lawsuit against M$. [Dana Baggett]