🚀 go-pugleaf

Wojtek wrote:
>They do not think of themselves as being providers "for the market",
>and therefore they always refused to make any such commitments.
>That is funny, because on the other hand they invested lots of effort
>into making terrific systems that we know. They just do not want to
>take on any sort of expressed obligation. I think this is understandable.

I can understand why people would want better support for Oberon users
from the ETH. However I simply dont understand why people aren't
enthusiastic when they HAVE IT in the form of Oberon-Microsystems (OMI)
and Oberon/F.
This company is "for the market", and has made just the commitments we
need.
As I see things, WE are part of the Oberon/F market.
If we want more platforms supported, or a V4 look and feel - put customer
pressure on OMI. I'm pretty sure the OMI team would love to be able to
financially justify development of a V4 look and feel and the porting of the
framework to 15 platforms.
Think about it: A Native-PC version of Oberon/F is just round the corner-
all we have to do is pay for it. We are on equal footing with the
developers - if we are willing to pay them. Its as simple as that.
Collectively, maybe we can cause it to happen. FWIW: I've had over 25000
overseas hits to my Oberon pages in the last 6 months.


>The whole idea of my many postings can be boiled down to just two points:
>
>1. Please notice you have a potentially influential international audience
>   for your ideas. "We" can be looked upon not as an annoying crowd,
>   but rather as a carrier through which your ideas can infiltrate the places
>   which you cannot reach yourself.

I think we are being respectfuly regarded as an audience enthusiastic for
the ETH research.
But we want more. We do not want to be told about ideas and given
works-in-progress.
We want software we can use (with our weird weird ATI video cards too!).
We want stable, portable and elegant products with well proven designs,
not experimental prototypes.
We want a commitment to support. We want our wants/needs pandered to.
In short, I believe we want to be _consumers_, not an _audience_.
The article that appeared in this forum by N. Wirth said it all.
(its in the comp.lang.oberon archives at:
http://www.math.tau.ac.il/~laden/clo/9507/0339.html)
It is now time for "Effective Technology Transfer".
Note "Technolog Transfer" - ie: bring the _technology_ out of the research
and not taking the _researchers_ out of the research labs with it.

>2. This can happen only through practical applications of your software.
>   Please make developing such applications easier, by not creating
>   unnecessary stumbling blocks in the first place.

Do you realy want to unify System-3 and V4? What is the point?
V4 is stable, available on many platforms and includes full
source code. Such a 'unification' will bring about the situation
where either: a V5 is created as a research vehicle and in independant from
the new combined version, or the combined V3-4 is constantly changed.
I think the separation is logical.

btw: Those familiar with at&t's plan9 OS already went through this spiel:
once the researchers finished their research on the OS, they released
it with no support and (thankfully) continued research into
a new OS ("brazil") instead of spending their time making sure
plan9-users are happy. Discussions similar to this one could be seen
from time to time in plan-9 public forums.

Personally, I'm very happy with the situation:
I'm busy studying Oberon/F and the upcoming new version seems
more promising than ever.
Meanwhile ETH research reaches me in books and publications:
J.Gutknecht has recently published a new technical report to chew on
and I'm waiting for the English version of N.Wirth's new book while
trying to make time to read his last one.
And finally I'm a grateful user of Oberon. I have no desires to "update",
"revise" or even "improve" the language. (No, I dont think its perfect, I
think I'm just far less "trigger-happy" when it comes to langauges)

Perhaps its just lucky timing:
Because I'm a relative latecomer to Oberon, Oberon/F was available to me from
the start. So I have no V4 legacy.

Anyway thats my view of things, as far as the ETH and the future Oberon
platform go. However I feel theres still *alot* to be done in the
user and non-ETH/Linz/Ulm developer community.

Regards,
Guy.