Hello Nagarjuna,
NG> Is BeOS a free software?
Well the personal edition, that we used to make this, is Freeware. This was the case until it was bought over by Palm Inc. Now probably its Abandonware :-)
The professional edition was charged for by Be.Inc.
The PE (Personal Edition) was installable only on a Windows/Linux Partition.
But we have modified that, so it can install onto its native filesystem i.e BFS similar to Professional edition and the only difference that now remains is the included commercial software in the pro edition.
Well the effort to port BeOS to opensource is on a high pace http://www.openbeos.org
And there are commercial variants of BeOS too http://www.yellowtab.com
Various BeOS Related Projects are being co-ordianted by http://code.beunited.org
http://www.bebits.com = Freshmeat.net
But our effort is free and shall always remain so ... in the same spirit as BeOS. We shall merge more components from OpenBeOS project as and when available to complete the transition.
Best regards, Prakash Shetty mailto:pshetty@gmx.net http://crux.sf.net