barry@pico.math.ucla.edu (Barry Merriman) (02/01/91)
In article <0iLNw1w164w@questor.wimsey.bc.ca> lclarke@questor.wimsey.bc.ca (Lawrence Clarke) writes: > > - Contrary to information in "InfoWorld" magazine, IBM *is* going > with NeXTstep and Microsoft has officially dropped OS/2 > development. Glad to hear it. Are there any plans for NeXT to license/port NeXTStep to other _workstation_ environments (Sun and DEC come to mind)? Is this a goal for NeXT? Three comments: (1) This is near and dear to my heart, since I would like to develop GUI interfaces for scientific computing applications in NeXTStep _and_ have them run on the DEC/Sun platforms my engineering buddies seem to prefer. (The alternative is to develop them for X, in which case I think I would rather pass and let a grad student do it :-). (2) its still early enough to make a difference---for example, many folks here at UCLA Math still use suntools instead of X. (3) I hope next has understood the lesson that anything that is not widely portable (if not totally free) must die, and conversely things that are widely portable (or even free) will survive and spread. Casualties/walking dead are Suntools and VMS, for example, and survivors are X and Unix. Note I'm not trying to debate the merits of NeXTStep versus any other GUI---so don't start on that again :-)---I'm just saying to NeXT ``If you love it, set it free'' (to some extent, at least). -- Barry Merriman UCLA Dept. of Math UCLA Inst. for Fusion and Plasma Research barry@math.ucla.edu (Internet)