Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!aplcomm!capd.jhuapl.edu!waltrip From: waltrip@capd.jhuapl.edu Newsgroups: comp.sys.next Subject: Re: X11 for the NeXTstation Message-ID: <1991Jan13.214543.1@capd.jhuapl.edu> Date: 14 Jan 91 02:45:43 GMT References: <1991Jan10.020437.14465@cs.mcgill.ca> <17136@csli.Stanford.EDU> <3573@gazette.bcm.tmc.edu> <1117@toaster.SFSU.EDU> Sender: news@aplcomm.JHUAPL.EDU Organization: CAPVAX, JHU/APL Lines: 82 In article <1117@toaster.SFSU.EDU>, eps@toaster.SFSU.EDU (Eric P. Scott) writes: > In article <3573@gazette.bcm.tmc.edu> dan@cortex.neuro.bcm.tmc.edu > (Dan Johnston) writes: >>Here's another similar story. The lack of X has cost NeXT many sales >>recently at my institution. They were very interested in NeXT but >>when they found out there was no X, they bought suns. > > Big F---ing Deal. As far as I'm concerned, stuff like > > AppleTalk > Cobol > DECNET > GIF Viewers > Macintoy binary compatibility > MSDOS or OS/2 emulation > Portable NetWare > RJE > SNA > X11Rwhatever > ports of various braindamaged PC word processors > > are all "foreign compatibility" products. None of these are > native to the NeXT. I don't want to pay for their development or > their support in bundled systems. Third parties are perfectly > capable of venturing into these arenas, and deserve all the > profits they can milk out of you suckers. > I think the "foreign compatibility" point is a good one; hence my previous post to this thread wondering about the status of Pencom's (or is it Pencomm?) port of X11R4. I do hope, however, that the loss of sales is something of a big deal to NeXT and that they are not above trying for a little commercial success while they are saving the world from Pee Cees, Macs, etc. A little commercial success may help assure that they'll be around long enough for some of us to get to use the environment that is most interesting about the NeXT if only we can convince the uninterested that we can fit in to the degree necessary. But I agree that I would like them to pick carefully and to make good use of third party developer capabilities as your post suggests. Previous postings on this topic have suggested that maybe NeXT's support of third party development of X servers may have left something to be desired...but this may be miscommunication. [...stuff deleted...] > > NeXT has better things to worry about... like developing a > C2-certifiable release. Well, maybe that's a biggie. Or maybe they ought to get out of the operating system development business as much as possible by transitioning to OSF/x (where x should equal 1? 2? you be the judge). Adopting OSF as the NeXT OS would probably permit NeXTstep to be ported to more platforms (if that's of any interest to NeXT) and would give them maximum platform independence for future NeXTs. But product strategies aside, things like "I'd like to see C2 level security in a future OS release" represent the sort of user feedback that a company can use. DEC's user organization, DECUS, provides a priority-ordered list of things that DECUS members have suggested and voted upon for wishlists for DEC products (or at least for VMS). Maybe it's about time for a national NeXT users' group to start doing the same sort of thing. > That's going to count for a lot more, > since the really big customers won't even look at NeXT without > that, and it's not something a third party can easily address. > > As it is, we see NeXTs having a lot fewer deficiencies than Suns. > As soon as the color NeXTs start shipping in volume, we'll have > a hard time justifying more SPARCstations--they're just too damn ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Previous posters have been saying that they're in a different situation. But we're glad to hear someone's got a better situation:^) > expensive to bring up to a similar level of functionality. > > -=EPS=- > -- > Imagine a world without human suffering. Imagine a world without X. c.f.waltrip DDN: Opinions expressed are my own.