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From: davidh@dent.Berkeley.EDU (David S. Harrison)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.eiffel
Subject: ISE Opinions of other Eiffel Implementations
Keywords: Eiffel, GNU
Message-ID: <14377@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: 5 Jun 89 19:07:13 GMT
Sender: news@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU
Reply-To: davidh@ic.Berkeley.EDU
Followup-To: comp.lang.eiffel
Organization: UC Berkeley Electronics Research Lab
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This question may have already been asked, but now that there is some
discussion of comparing Eiffel and C++, I think it might be useful to
clarify this issue:

	What is the policy of Interactive Software Engineering
	toward other implementations of Eiffel?  Suppose a group
	undertook the (substantial) task of producing an Eiffel
	front end for the GNU compiler?  Legally,  how would
	ISE react?

One of the standard arguments against Eiffel is that it is a
"proprietary" language.  In some sense, if one develops a product in
Eiffel, it's future is linked to the fortunes of ISE.  Eiffel is not
alone in this respect.  Several other languages suffer the same onus.

Very successful languages (like C, Pascal, and Fortran) give birth to
many implementations supported by many different vendors.  Often, a
public domain "reference" implementation speeds this process.  This
does not preclude proprietary implementations.  Indeed, most
industrial users will require the robustness, maturity, and support of
such products.  However, I believe a public domain implementation of
Eiffel would further the cause of the language greatly.  As
demonstrated by the wide acceptance of the X window system, this
implementation need not be supremely efficient just fully functional.
How does Dr. Meyer and ISE feel about such implementations?

			David Harrison
			UC Berkeley Electronics Research Lab
			(davidh@ic.Berkeley.EDU, ...!ucbvax!ucbcad!davidh)