That’s not an easy title for me to write, but one that I’m increasingly convinced is correct. The prognosis may not be looking good, but there is still a small glimmer of life.

When I started BeClan I had one simple objective in mind – to bring the developers and users together and promote people working together! Gasp! Now I realise that this is a radical concept for the community, but it’s not a hard one to grasp (at least I didn’t think so) so I was hopeful that people would respond. After a period of some months that appears to not be the case. 🙁

The im_kit (hosted at BeClan on behalf of Mikael Eiman) has been moderatly succesful in bringing people together – but this is very much the exception rather then the rule.

The insular nature of developers on BeOS/Zeta is saddening and worrying. The small applications that are evident on BeBits are just that, small applications. Such applications are useful but users demand a lot more from their OS these days and anyone who thinks that a single developer can write the large applications that are required is deluding themselves. Larger projects need a lot of developers working together (witness the number of developers on such projects as OpenOffice or Mozilla). Even finding people to contribute to the larger “flagship” opensource projects from the community is hard.

Seemingly most developers for BeOS/Zeta prefer to work on their own small applications which they hope others will use than contributing to a larger project that, if available, would rapidly become essential for all users! Sorry, but I don’t get it…