Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!pilchuck!dataio!fnx!nazgul!bright
From: bright@nazgul.UUCP (Walter Bright)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.objective-c
Subject: Re: How's Stepstone/Objective-C doing?
Message-ID: <295@nazgul.UUCP>
Date: 11 Apr 91 04:26:54 GMT
References: <1991Mar30.165230.11364@sugar.hackercorp.com> <1991Mar31.192347.4953@netcom.COM>
Reply-To: bright@nazgul.UUCP (Walter Bright)
Organization: Zortech, Seattle
Lines: 19

In article <1991Mar31.192347.4953@netcom.COM> rkitts@netcom.COM (Rick Kitts) writes:
/The point of this then is that I am not
/suprised that their are apparently no non-Stepstone implementations of
/Objective-C. 
/I would be curious to
/know if anyone has elected not to do an Objective-C because of these
/licensing arrangements.

I did. Back some years ago, I investigated whether to do C++ or Objective-C
as an extension to the Datalight (now Zortech) C compiler. I picked
C++ primarilly because it was an open language, and I would not get sued
for implementing it and calling it C++. At that time, it was a matter of
great debate which one was going to succeed. I strongly feel that AT&T
made the right (!) choice in making it open, and that was the single biggest
factor in the subsequent success of C++.

I suspect that if the Eiffel and Actor people had sold the *source*
to their compiler rather than the binaries, their languages would be much
more successful...