In response to
SluggoSlacker's writeup:
BeOS will not and cannot be open-sourced. The rumors are unconfirmed because they are completely false. The reason BeOS is closed is because there is a lot of proprietary code in there, which is not owned by Be. Without this code, the OS would basically be useless. Look in the About BeOS window sometime. MP3 support by Fraunhofer, RSA encryption by RSA, USB support by Intel, and Indeo video by Intel. That's just the major stuff, there's a lot more "under the hood". While it might be nice for some people to think about, most Be zealots like myself can't bear the thought of BeOS becoming like Linux, with 12 billion different versions, or worse yet getting absorbed by it. Not that there's anything wrong with Linux, it's just that the two operating systems are geared for totally different things, Linux for running servers, BeOS for creating multimedia.
There are parts of the OS that are open-source right now, though. The source to all the GNU utilities that Be uses is on the Be CD, the Tracker and Deskbar are open-source (with, I think, a BSD-ish license), and the code to a few of their demos comes with the development tools.