Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!dinosaur.cis.ohio-state.edu!bob
From: bob@dinosaur.cis.ohio-state.edu (Bob Sutterfield)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.news
Subject: Re: NeWS available for HP workstations ?
Message-ID: <29796@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu>
Date: 20 Dec 88 05:12:06 GMT
References: <8812191027.AA19821@ecn.uucp> <12404@jade.BBN.COM>
Sender: news@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu
Organization: The Ohio State University Dept of Computer & Information Science
Lines: 51

In article <12404@jade.BBN.COM> mlandau@bbn.com (Matt Landau) writes:
>In comp.windows.news (<8812191027.AA19821@ecn.uucp>), wim@ecn.UUCP  (Wim Rijnsburger) writes:
>>At the moment we use SUN workstations, but we want to use [NeWS] on
>>HP workstations in the future. Does anyone know if NeWS is available
>>on HP and how we can get it?
>
>I've not heard of anyone porting NeWS to HP's,

Chris Maio of Columbia is reported to have done it.  Since I don't
deal much with our HPs, I don't know the exact terms, but it probably
requires at least a Sun NeWS source license.

>...but this does bring up the larger question of "How can the
>interested NeWS-using community get NeWS on non-Sun hardware?"
>
>Basically, there seem to be 3 possibilities:
>
>  (1)  Sun ports and sells NeWS for other machines.  This doesn't
>       seem very likely, for lots of reasons.

Sun Consulting seems willing to do almost anything for enough money.

> (2) Independent companies port NeWS to other hardware... it's not
>       clear that such companies will ever be able to supplant
>       vendor-supplied window systems on other machines.

Not in the huge market of people who buy a machine as an appliance.
But in the niche market of places where workstations are already in
use, and someone wants to buy personal computers or other sorts of
workstations and integrate them with the rest of the environment,
"real" window systems like X and NeWS and... are a fundamental
component of the effort.  There's enough of a market there to support
a few bright folks willing to hustle, and that's who's doing it right
now.

>...make NeWS window system technology as widespread as NFS is now.
>So the general answer to "How can we get NeWS on hardware X?" is
>DEMAND IT!

I don't know whether the rest of the industry is going to (from their
point of view) roll over and let Sun dictate yet another standard way
of doing business and create a new way to compete, like they did with
commodity UNIX workstations and NFS.  That's why everyone jumped on
the X bandwagon in response to Sun's NeWS announcement: to try and
keep Sun from defining their market for them again.

The big boys know that NeWS is technically superior in a lot of ways,
and that the only way to battle it is with "market popularity".
Momentum is mass times velocity.  What they lack in velocity, they're
trying to make up in mass.  Don't look for DEC to support NeWS any
time soon.