welch@CIS.OHIO-STATE.EDU (Arun Welch) (07/01/89)
I just talked to a Mr. Neil Blake at Xerox, who is apparently the person now in charge of handling the Envos situation. Honestly, after the bouncing around I've recieved among Xerox execudroids so far, I wasn't expecting much out of the discussion. Anyway, the situation as he sees it are that they are three different aspects: a) Support and enhancement of Medley b) Getting NCP out the door c) Providing a migration path from Medley to NCP He expects for things to be resolved by the end of July, and it seems likely that someone from Xerox will participate in some sort of dialog with us at IJCAI. I stressed to him my view that there were a bunch of us out here who were heavily invested in Medley, and that I would be rather appalled by support for it being taken over by someone who didn't really know and understand it (one of the *rumors* was that Xerox was gonna sell the company to a major common lisp vendor, something that reminds me too much of LMI). He seemed quite willing to discuss the matter further with anyone, his number is (408) 737-4861. He seems to understand the current customers issues better than most of the Xerox execs I've dealt with so far... Since the turnout at IJCAI seems pretty small so far, if someone does show up from Xerox then I'm willing to pass along any info/questions. I'll send another message as IJCAI approaches. ...arun