Gobe Software, Inc was a software company founded in 1997 by members of the ClarisWorks development team that developed and published an integrated desktop software suite for

BeOS BeOS is a discontinued operating system for personal computers that was developed by Be Inc. It was conceived for the company's BeBox personal computer which was released in 1995. BeOS was designed for multitasking, multithreading, and a graph ...

. In later years, it was the distributor of BeOS itself.

History

Gobe was founded in 1997 by members of the ClarisWorks development team and some of the authors of the original Styleware application for the

Apple II Apple II ("apple Roman numerals, two", stylized as Apple ][) is a series of microcomputers manufactured by Apple Computer, Inc. from 1977 to 1993. The Apple II (original), original Apple II model, which gave the series its name, was designed ...

. After leaving StyleWare and creating the product later known as ClarisWorks and AppleWorks, Bob Hearn, Scott Holdaway joined Tom Hoke, Scott Lindsey, Bruce Q. Hammond, and Carl Grice who also worked at Apple Inc., Apple Computer's Claris subsidiary and formed Gobe Software, Inc with the notion to create a next-generation integrated office suite similar to ClarisWorks, but for the BeOS platform. It released Gobe Productive in 1998. When

Be Inc. Be Inc. was an American computer company that created and developed the BeOS and BeIA operating systems, and the BeBox personal computer. It was founded in 1990 by former Apple Inc., Apple Computer executive Jean-Louis Gassée, who also served a ...

outsourced publication of BeOS in 2000, Gobe became the publisher of BeOS in North America, Australia, and sections of Asia. Only weeks after signing up other publishers around the globe, Be, Inc. halted development for the BeOS platform and publicly announced that all of its corporate focus would be on "Internet Appliances" and made public announcements that hampered forward momentum of the BeOS platform. In addition, the publishers in general and Gobe in particular did not have source code access to the BeOS and were not able to continue its development or add drivers that the platform needed to be a viable alternative to Windows or

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

. Gobe also published Hicom Entertainment/ Next Generation Entertainments " Corum III"

role-playing game A role-playing game (sometimes spelled roleplaying game, or abbreviated as RPG) is a game in which players assume the roles of player character, characters in a fictional Setting (narrative), setting. Players take responsibility for acting out ...

for BeOS during this period. The failure of Be, Inc and BeOS meant ports had to be undertaken, and Windows and Linux variants were developed. Although the company shipped a Windows version of its software in December 2001, it was unable to obtain sufficient operating capital after the 2000 stock market crash and suspended operations 2002. In 2008 Gobe management began to work with distribution and development teams in Greater Asia and had plans to ship a new version of the product for the India market early 2010. Later in August 2010, Gobe Productive's website was disabled and then sold to an Indian movie producer called ErosNow.

Gobe Productive

The main product, ''Gobe Productive'', was by far the most polished of the word processors, spreadsheet and vector graphics applications for BeOS, but as an integrated package a la ClarisWorks and

Microsoft Works Microsoft Works is a discontinued office suite, productivity software suite developed by Microsoft and sold from 1987 to 2009. Its core functionality includes a word processor, a spreadsheet and a database management system. Later versions have a ...

. Gobe Productive v1.0 for BeOS was released in August 1998, v2.0 in August 1999, and v2.0.1 on 29 February 2000. After the failure of Be, Inc a Windows and Linux variants were developed. The company shipped a Windows version of Gobe Productive 3 in December 2001.

Other Gobe employees

* Dave Johnson * Ben Chang * Joël Spaltenstein * Kurt von Finck * Daniel Maia Alves * Cheyenne Tuller * Tomy Hudson

Notes

References

External links

*
Be, Inc. article
(archived) * {{Spreadsheets BeOS Discontinued software Defunct software companies of the United States