mrc@Tomobiki-Cho.CAC.Washington.EDU (Mark Crispin) (11/10/90)
Christopher Lane has made a number of good points.
I've spent my time in the last few years on distributed e-mail
software, including a NextStep client. This is all new code,
carefully engineered and designed to be write the first time. Chris
would probably be one of the first people to second this, as he is one
of my earliest and most enthusiatic users.
I believe that a large number of people remain unconvinced of the
long-term viability of NeXT. NextStep is sufficiently unique,
bizarre, and proprietary to make anyone leery of becoming married to
it.
Second, the rewards are minimal or non-existant. In the old days, if
someone wanted a new feature in freeware they'd offer the author money
to do it for them. Not any more. If anything, it seems that people
are far more demanding of support services from freeware than they are
from gonzo expensive packages.
Third, NeXT has done nothing to promote freeware development. They
expect lots of people to develop for them and pay NeXT for the
privilege. A large body of freeware would promote NeXT sales, so why
doesn't NeXT sponsor projects with independent developers? Instead of
grants to universities, how about equipment loans to individuals in
support of particular projects (where the loan becomes a title
transfer when the project results are delivered and accepted by NeXT).
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