Start of 2014 sees the demise of another Linux distribution. This time its Mac lookalike Pear OS that bids good bye. Starting from today, Pear OS is no longer available for download. Pear Cloud server will also go offline from 31 January.
Unlike Linux distributions that were discontinued in 2013, Pear OS is not discontinued for the lack of fund or man power, rather it has been bought by some unknown big enterprise (I hope its not Apple :P) that will use Pear OS for its own product. That means Pear OS cannot be forked or continued by community.
Owner of Pear OS, David Tavares announced the news on Facebook on 20 January 2014.
Its future is now in hands of a company who wants to remain anonymous for the moment. The concept has pleased them it and now wants to continue and improve the system for their own products. I can not give a name but it is a very large company well known …
The same message is displayed on the Pear OS website as well. David thanked the user and developers for their support in the farewell message.
Probably this explains why Pear OS 8 was excessively buggy. David was less focused on developing Pear OS as he was busy in finalizing the deal. {Read: Pear OS 8 review}
I saw couple of angry messages on social networking sites that it goes against the ‘norms’ of Open Source. While the outburst is justified to an extent, it is David’s right to choose what he thinks is better for his future. As he indicated that he is going in other direction, may be to start a new venture. I wish him good luck for his future.
With Pear OS gone, its users may install Elementary OS Luna, another Ubuntu based distribution with OS X-inspired looks.
