jim@ci-dandelion.UUCP (Jim Fulton) (05/15/87)
>>> It's free (thanks DEC!) >> Ahem. That's ``Thanks, MIT'', please > For the $25M+ that MIT got in equipment and cash, not to mention that they > hold the license; I see no need to single out MIT for X. They got lots of > money and support over a 5 year period and hacked out a window system. It > was a business transaction, not a donation to the community. Why not thank > the people who paid for it, who are still paying for it? My apologies that this posting isn't directly related to NeWS; hopefully the point that it makes will be applicable to NeWS as well. I'm not looking for a debate, but I would like to make sure that people don't think that DEC gave MIT money specifically to build a window system. I speak from the standpoint of someone who was involved with Athena during its first two years and has followed its progress fondly ever since. 1. Project Athena originally received commitments from DEC and IBM to donate a combined total of $50M in people and machines. MIT also pledged to raise $20M on its own. MIT has been very careful over the years to make sure that Athena is not "owned" by anyone. 2. The X servers through X.V10 were written by Robert Scheifler of the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science, not by Project Athena. The fact that Bob works for LCS has been omitted far too often. 3. Project Athena's goals are and always have been to explore how education can be enhanced by making computation be an essentially unlimited resource. Creating a window system that could rapidly form the graphics foundation for Digital's workstation product lines was not the reason for developing X. Building a useful tool was (even before X become popular Athena had decided that it would make software developed there available to the community). Clearly the companies that are supporting X are doing so because it is in their best interest. However, having been involved with X on both sides (academia and industry) I feel that one of its main strengths is the spirit of cooperation that surrounds it. This is what has enabled it to outgrow it parents. Jim Fulton Cognition Inc. 900 Tech Park Drive arpa: jim@ATHENA.MIT.EDU, fulton@eddie.mit.edu Billerica, MA 01821 uucp: ...!{mit-eddie,talcott,necntc}!ci-dandelion!jim (617) 667-4800
lantz@GREGORIO.STANFORD.EDU.UUCP (05/20/87)
Date: 18 May 1987 1147-PDT (Monday) From: Keith Lantz <lantz@gregorio.stanford.edu> In article <8704260521.AA00696@brillig.umd.edu> dm@BFLY-VAX.BBN.COM writes: >Subject: Re: NeWS wanted >Date: 25 Apr 87 10:52:57 D (Sat) >From: dm@bfly-vax.bbn.com > >> It's free (thanks DEC!) > >Ahem. That's ``Thanks, MIT'', please. Shields raised, asbestos garments on... For the $25M+ that MIT got in equipment and cash, not to mention that they hold the license; I see no need to single out MIT for X. They got lots of money and support over a 5 year period and hacked out a window system. It was a business transaction, not a donation to the community. Why not thank the people who paid for it, who are still paying for it? Indeed, while we're at it, why not make sure to thank Stanford (especially Paul Asente) for getting the ball rolling in the first place -- with X's ancestor, W. Cheers, Keith P.S. For you trivia buffs, W was so named because it was developed for the V distributed operating system. I believe it was only serendipitous that W could also stand for "Window".