david@ics.com (David B. Lewis) (09/07/90)
It will take SUN 4 billion dollars to
put Motif on Sparc. This is the basic
reason for the OL/Motif war.
Though money (e.g. market share) may be at the root of it, the problem is not
initial expenditure -- a company the size of Sun *should* spend appropriately
so as to do a proper job of product qa, roll-out and support, particularly for
a GUI product generally recognized as being relevant to the way in which people
will be interacting with machines for the next several years. I am sure that
it is reaching deep into its pockets to support Open Windows, so I would not
call an aversion to spending money the "basic reason" for the "war".
Look instead five or ten years into the future, as it seems that only Sun,
of the major hardware vendors, has done. It simply must maintain control of
the primary user interface used on its own hardware if it is to be able to
continue to make inroads into the walk-in/shrink-wrap-software market.
Sun loses its edge in the low-end market if it lets such a fragmented
consortium as OSF make its decisions and set its schedules.
(In the mean-time, of course, Motif is available on Suns from a variety of
sources. I don't know how much DEC and HP are spending, but I know that we
didn't drop half that number of digits.)