IIRC that was one of the two/three main ways forward discussed and planned for after Be Inc went belly up.
- OpenBeOS (Haiku) - rewrite from scratch
- Option 2 (can't remember if it had a name) - was just to Implement BeOS userland on a Linux, to get free access to drivers etc. Most of the Be community was not interested, and I cannot remember if they even got started..?
- (YellowTab - Some company had access to BeOS sources and started releasing and somewhat updating the OS on a commercial basis - but don't think they actually had the rights to do that....)