When Palm, Inc bought Be, Inc in 2001, many of the BeOS community developers split into several different groups, one of which became OpenBeOS. OpenBeOS is "dedicated to the re-creation, followed by the extension, of BeOS," according to the OpenBeOS team. Currently, the operating system is based on the NewOS microkernel, written by a former Be programmer. OpenBeOS has stated that they hope R1 of OpenBeOS will be 100% compatible with BeOS R5 binaries, and that the look, feel and usability of BeOS R5 will be completely re-created. Improvements upon the operating system will be in successing releases.

The project can currently be found at http://open-beos.sourceforge.net/index.html