Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!know!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!samsung!uunet!brunix!rca From: rca@cs.brown.edu (Ronald C.F. Antony) Newsgroups: comp.sys.next Subject: Re: SOME ADVICE FOR NEXT Message-ID: <52280@brunix.UUCP> Date: 5 Oct 90 19:01:51 GMT References: <340@atncpc.UUCP> <1990Sep28.233054.2605@portia.Stanford.EDU> Sender: news@brunix.UUCP Reply-To: rca@cs.brown.edu (Ronald C.F. Antony) Distribution: comp Organization: Brown University Department of Computer Science Lines: 39 In article <1990Sep28.233054.2605@portia.Stanford.EDU> azure@portia.Stanford.EDU (Lai Heng Chua) writes: >Take Lisp for example. If you develop Lisp applications for the >NeXT that goes for $250, you don't want to have to have the >buyer pay $1500 for the Lisp. Who is going to buy your app.? Fortunately you can get a runtime license for Lisp and distribute it with your app. You then have to pay 2% of your price as license to Franz, inc. >If you have an app that messages Mathematica and the latter doesn't >come with all machines, what is the use. Very true, unfortunately... >Same for Sybase. >These are enabling software and NeXT was right to bundle >them with the machines. Yes NeXT WAS right. You still can get Sybase for a nominal fee (what ever this means), but many people will not do that. The good thing about the sybase server was that it could have been a replacement for all the silly file standards. Instead all progrmas that are somewhat data-driven could have accessed the same data from the data-base. No more problems with incompatible data-formats. No more being locked into one sigle application. Of course this would have meant that NeXT should have developed also a dbKit. Such a dbKit could even contain some object-oriented extensions and ... Fortunately not everything is lost yet. NeXT did not abandon so much that readapting makes them look silly. On the other hand we never know what sort of unreasonable claims were made by the producers of the software in question. If I look at the product catalog and some of the high prices there, I think I know why NeXT had to step back from some of their plans. Ronald ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." Bernhard Shaw | rca@cs.brown.edu or antony@browncog.bitnet