Editing YellowTAB

{{Short description|German software firm}}
{{lowercase title|title=yellowTAB}}
{{More citations needed|date=March 2010}}

{{Infobox company
| industry = [[Software development]]
| defunct = {{end date|2006}}
| hq_location_city = [[Mannheim]]
| hq_location_country = Germany
| website = yellowtab.com
}}

'''yellowTAB''' was a German software firm that produced an [[operating system]] called "yellowTAB [[Magnussoft ZETA|ZETA]]". While the operating system was based on [[BeOS]] 5.1.0, the company never publicly confirmed that it has the BeOS source code or what their licensing agreement with BeOS's owners [[PalmSource]] was. The company went insolvent and ceased trading in 2006. Later, David Schlesinger, directory of Open Source technologies at [[ACCESS, Inc.]], which had meanwhile become the owner of the BeOS source code, stated that there had never been a license agreement covering yellowTAB's use of the source code and that ZETA was therefore an infringed copy.<ref name=bits>[http://www.bitsofnews.com/content/view/5498/ bitsofnews.com: ACCESS Confirms Zeta BeOS Version Infringing], 4 April 2007, verified 8 March 2011</ref>

The company's offices were in [[Mannheim]], and its corporate motto was ''Assume The Power''. Following their closure, the OS was taken over by [[magnussoft]], who started selling it as "magnussoft ZETA".

yellowTAB has come under some criticism from the [[BeOS]] userbase, who claim that the company did not give back what it took from the [[Haiku (operating system)|Haiku]] project and other [[Open-source software|open source]] BeOS projects. In many cases, open source programmers have recreated yellowTAB's extensions to BeOS, most notably their [[Scalable Vector Graphics|SVG]] graphics extensions to [[OpenTracker]]. However, yellowTAB's actions to date have not violated the [[BSD licence|BSD]]/[[MIT licence|MIT]] licences under which most open source BeOS projects exist.

In March 2006, yellowTAB donated their "Intel Extreme" driver to one of the [[Haiku (operating system)|Haiku]] developers for integration into the [[Haiku (operating system)|Haiku]] source tree where further development was to take place. Both yellowTAB and Haiku developers were to collaborate on Intel Extreme Graphics driver development, but to date this code has not yet been committed to the repository.

In April 2006, insolvency protection proceedings were filed for the company, although employees denied that it was actually filed by the company, suggesting potential malicious intent.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/71775 |title = Entwickler von BeOS-Nachfolger Zeta in Bedrängnis {{!}} heise online}}</ref> However, the firm has transferred development and support of ZETA to a third-party, [[magnussoft]].

==References==
<references/>

==External links==
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20050101091300/http://www.yellowtab.com/ yellowTAB] - official site

{{BeOS}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Yellowtab}}
[[Category:Software companies of Germany]]
[[Category:BeOS]]
[[Category:Companies based in Mannheim]]