GNU A Possible Ally?

[Harvey J. Stein]

Kelly Murray writes:
 > >From: Jordan Henderson <jordan@Starbase.NeoSoft.COM>
 > > How about this scenario.  LispOS develops to some level of maturity.
 > > All of the CL Vendors grab a (fairly) stable snapshot and bolt on
 > > their own CL technology.  They then put their people to work on
 > > incompatible extensions.  There is great value in each supported
 > > system and many of them have advantages over the PD LispOS, one of
 > > which being a commercial firm that takes responsibility for 
 > > maintenance.  Users select one of the many LispOS variants for
 > > their own work.  The impetus to improve the PD LispOS is much diluted
 > > because the much of the large potential user base is off using commercial 
 > > variants, which all move in their own various directions. 
 > >
 > 
 > > This, I think, is a realistic scenario.  The only way the LispOS could
 > > gain some mindshare in the world at large is if there was one product 
 > > that would steadily be improved to meet the needs of users.  Anything
 > > else is marginilization.
 > 
 > This is pretty much what happened with UNIX, scores of modified
 > proprietary versions.  A huge commercial success.

Until Microsoft came along and decided to do battle with a fractured
Unix community.

And, the commercial success was severely dampened by incompatibility
between versions of Unix.

-- 
Harvey J. Stein
Berger Financial Research
abel@netvision.net.il