kolstad@parsec.UUCP (06/14/83)
#N:parsec:46500001:000:4876 parsec!kolstad Jun 8 12:49:00 1983 Computer Systems News -- Monday, June 6, 1983 Unauthorized copy. FOLLOWING 10 YEARS OF DEVELOPMENT, XEROX OFFERS SMALLTALK FOR LICENSING by Michael Azzara, reproduced without permission. PALO ALTO, CALIF. -- Smalltalk-80, the programming environment credited as being the great granddaddy of the current crop of integrated operating environments, has been released for general licensing by Xerox Corp. Apple Computer Inc.'s Lisa and VisiCorp's Visi(ON), both of which have taken leadership positions in the emerging market for integrated software environments, trace their origins back to Smalltalk, which has been under development for more than a decade at Xerox PARC (...) here. But a Xerox spokeswoman said both these products implement only a small portion of the complete Smalltalk environment, which is credited with pioneering development of sophisticated man/machine interfaces through the use of icons in conjunction with bit-mapped graphics displays and "mouse" cursor-positioning devices. "People hear 'Smalltalk' and they think it's a kid' language," the spokeswoman said. "But it's not. It's an environment for exploratory development and programming -- it's for programmers." According to Daniel Ingalls, one of the scientists of Xerox's Software Concepts Group, which developed Smalltalk, Smalltalk is both a language and a software-development environment. "It's an entirely interactive system -- a language complete with editors and other development tools all in a window-biased framework with a graphics interface," Ingalls said. Among Smalltalk's key features for software developers are its ability to be modified on-line and the object-oriented metaphor on which it is based, according to Ingalls. He noted that such features, along with its powerful user interface, set Smalltalk apart from other programming environments such as Unix, Ada, and the UCSD p-System. SOURCE CODE WINDOW "In Smalltalk, you can have a window open on source code and change the system while you're using it," Ingalls said. Other systems require recompiling and reloading before source code editing takes effect, "but our system can do all that within itself," he noted. Xerox initially expects to license Smalltalk to universities and to software houses for commercial research and development, Ingalls said. For now, Smalltalk is of no use to most end users because there is only one machine- specific implementation of the package, on Xerox's 1100 scientific information processor, a $59,000 machine. Ingalls said Xerox expects researchers in universities and third-party software houses to develop interpreters, which Xerox calls "virtual machines," for specific hardware, along with the development of applications to run with Smalltalk. Xerox itself is offering for license a generic version of the Smalltalk "virtual image," the portion of Smalltalk that is machine-independent, Ingalls said. The licensing fee is $20,000 for commercial users and $400 for educational users. The company said it will allow resellers to sublicense Smalltalk for $150 beginning early next year. Industry observers, however, doubt that the Smalltalk product itself will have a significant impact on the software market even though its influence has been so widespread. "The original expectation had been that Xerox itself would attempt to popularize Smalltalk in conjunction with its workstations -- the Star and others," said Kenneth G. Bosomworth, president of International Resource Development Inc. "But to put it mildly, the market hasn't gone Xerox's way." "Xerox probably recognizes there's no chance Smalltalk could become a de facto standard or even a widely used product if it's restrict to Xerox products, so they may as well license it to everyone else too. But they probably feel they've been upstaged by Apple's Lisa and VisiCorp's Visi(ON) and so forth. "Smalltalk was made to provide the man/machine interface capabilities that these other systems are doing. I doubt it can become a significant language." Jean Yates of Yates Ventures has a more optimistic outlook for Smalltalk. "The product is just unparalleled for its ability to develop multiple user windows," she said. "Although it's not practical for micros [because the program is so large], it does run on them, and someone will come out with a commercial subset of Smalltalk that could very possibly end up becoming the language of choice for developing user interfaces." Yates said there are at least eight start-up software companies developing products around Smalltalk, plus interest from more established companies like Microsoft Corp. Additionally, sources have reported that IBM, Hewlett-Packard Co. and Digital Equipment Corp. are among the approximately half-dozen companies that licensed Smalltalk under nondisclosure agreements more than a year ago.
darrelj@sdcrdcf.UUCP (06/19/83)
Three minor corrections/addenda to report on Smalltalk Licenses: 1) The Xerox 1100 SIP had it's price reduced to $45,000 (from $59k) over 6 months ago. 2) The Xerox 1132 also runs Smalltalk (and 5 to 10X faster). It's price is about $125,000. 3) A single 1100 or 1132 can be licensed for Smalltalk for $5,000. At four machines the pricing switches to the $20,000 blanket license. The primary market for the 11xx machines is as Interlisp machines. Many of the features in Smalltalk have corresponding features in Interlisp D. (The main exception is the "object" orientation, but the functions for the display manipulation do possess an ad-hoc object-style of message passing). Darrel J. Van Buer, SDC
hdj@burdvax.UUCP (06/20/83)
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