Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!feed2.news.luth.se!luth.se!newsfeed.berkeley.edu!nntp2.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!solomon.io.com!news.tamu.edu!news.utdallas.edu!geraldo.cc.utexas.edu!not-for-mail From: Bill Gribble Newsgroups: comp.sys.be.programmer,gnu.misc.discuss Subject: Re: Is there money to be made developing new applications for BEOS? Date: 14 Jan 2000 08:22:04 -0600 Organization: The University of Texas at Austin Lines: 40 Message-ID: <87g0w0g2cz.fsf@flophouse.localnet> References: <947724450snz@vision25.demon.co.uk> <_iff4.315$B_3.22365@typhoon1.rdc-detw.rr.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: argus.csres.utexas.edu Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: geraldo.cc.utexas.edu 947859729 16721 128.83.141.48 (14 Jan 2000 14:22:09 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@cc.utexas.edu NNTP-Posting-Date: 14 Jan 2000 14:22:09 GMT User-Agent: Gnus/5.0802 (Gnus v5.8.2) Emacs/20.5 Xref: news.ifm.liu.se comp.sys.be.programmer:10986 gnu.misc.discuss:69849 cbbrowne@news.hex.net (Christopher Browne) writes: > "If a meteor takes out North Carolina and RHAT's labs," Linux > continues. Probably injured somewhat, but continues. And to make this point even clearer, consider the opposite example of the Newton and Apple. As you may recall, the Newton was a pioneering handheld computer that failed, largely as a side effect of over-hype by Apple and premature release of the technology. What a lot of people don't know is that the "swan song" version of the Newton, the 2100 model, actually delivered on Apple's initial hype and then some. Lots of folks are still using their Newton 2100s because there's nothing on the handheld computing market that can compare to them. After Jobs shut down the Newton group and fired everybody, a group of Newton developers made a serious offer to buy the Newton OS and platform from Apple. Their offer was in the $10M range. Apple refused, and an insightful analysis from a former Apple Newton developer pointed out that at least part of their decision was influenced by the fact that they COULDN'T sell the Newton; they no longer had the knowledge necessary to deliver it as a saleable product. They had fired everyone who even knew where the source code was. The OS build and patch generation process was arcane and filled with special-purpose hardware that no one knew the location of and tools that no one knew how to use. As a result, possibly the most advanced operating system ever put in a consumer device (it had persistent compressed virtual memory, a completely object-oriented frame-and-slot application and data storage model, a very nice little LISPy garbage-collected programming language with on-board byte compiler, and by the end, very accurate and speedy handwriting recognition) is lost forever and only a few people will ever know anything about its guts. Closed-lab development made it easy for the build process to remain undocumented and kludgy. When the ability to develop the system relies on something that's in the heads of just a handful of people you're cooked if they disappear. Bill Gribble