Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!usc!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!sdd.hp.com!decwrl!orc!bbn.com!diamond.bbn.com!mlandau From: mlandau@bbn.com (Matthew Landau) Newsgroups: comp.windows.news Subject: Re: NeWS down-played in OW 2.0 Message-ID: <14471@diamond.BBN.COM> Date: 22 Aug 90 19:34:28 GMT References: <11722@hoptoad.uucp> <1990Aug21.154152.27532@odin.corp.sgi.com> Sender: news@bbn.com Lines: 29 janssen@parc.xerox.com (Bill Janssen) writes: >On a different thread: I'm not sure that the 2nd-classness of NeWS is >Sun's fault. Seems to me that the world (or maybe "commercial >market") is the one putting NeWS in the back seat, and that Sun, >wanting to be a player in that world, is forced to go along. This is a good point. Let's be realistic for a minute: as a vendor of worktations, Sun has to ask itself what the customer base is demanding, and at the moment, the customer base is demanding a good, high-performance implementation of X11. Yes, *we* all know that X pales in comparison to NeWS along any dimension you care to compare... except for the all-important dimension of market popularity. Given limited resources, I can't really fault Sun for deciding that they had to emphasize a good solid X11 implementation at this point. After all, where is NeWS going to be if Sun can't sell any machines? My hope is that, now that Sun HAS an implementation of X11 that's at least as good as anyone else's (and one that exhibits many fewer bugs than either DEC's or IBM's product offerings), and can satisfy that very immediate market demand, they'll have the freedom to redirect some of those resources back to the NeWS side of things, which is where the real added-value of OpenWindows (and Sun hardware) is going to come from in the future. -- Matt Landau Rebel without a clue. mlandau@bbn.com