IIRC that was one of the two/three main ways forward discussed and planned for after Be Inc went belly up.
- OpenBeOS (Haiku) - rewrite from scratch
- Option 2 (can't remember if it had a name) - was just to Implement BeOS userland on a Linux, to get free access to drivers etc. Most of the Be community was not interested, and I cannot remember if they even got started..?
- (YellowTab - Some company had access to BeOS sources and started releasing and somewhat updating the OS on a commercial basis - but don't think they actually had the rights to do that....)
This would probably have meant that the Mac wouldn't have become so popular amongst developers. At least that was the reason for me to switch to Mac because it's a "proper" UNIX with a window system that actually works ("Linux on the desktop" has mostly caught up in the meantime, but 10 years ago that was quite different).
BeOS was less compatible. There were also many improvements to it in the later versions. When NeXT bought Apple[0], BeOS was not even in its pre-release phase. Its heyday, such as it were, was really on Intel, with R5 and the Personal Edition, in the last few years of the 90's.
- OpenBeOS (Haiku) - rewrite from scratch
- Option 2 (can't remember if it had a name) - was just to Implement BeOS userland on a Linux, to get free access to drivers etc. Most of the Be community was not interested, and I cannot remember if they even got started..?
- (YellowTab - Some company had access to BeOS sources and started releasing and somewhat updating the OS on a commercial basis - but don't think they actually had the rights to do that....)