Jean-Louis Gassée

Jean -Louis Gassée (* March 1944 in Paris ) is a French businessman. He was from 1981 to 1990 employees at Apple and founded after the company Be Incorporated.

Gassée was initially head of Apple France branch, and later went on as head of the development department of Apple in the United States. When he made the Apple management 's proposal to develop a completely new operating system, but it fell on deaf ears. So he left Apple and founded in 1990 with Steve Sakoman the company Be Incorporated. However, the company was never profitable, 2001, the operating system ( BeOS ) was purchased together with the development team from the PDA manufacturer PalmOne. Be Incorporated led then another lawsuit against Microsoft, which ended in a settlement, the obtained compensation payment has been largely distributed to the remaining shareholders and the company handled it. Jean -Louis Gassée worked for PalmOne until 2002 and then worked as a manager in various companies, however, was from autumn 2002 to the Supervisory Board of PalmSource. From November 2004 until the end of 2005 he was chairman of the company PalmSource. He now works as a Board Director for the California venture capital firm Allegis Capital.