🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1991May23.075820.983@agate.berkeley.edu> izumi@mindseye.berkeley.edu (Izumi Ohzawa) writes:
>In article <1991May23.031433.11017@netcom.COM>
> rkitts@netcom.COM (Rick Kitts) writes:
>>In article <2058@camex.COM> geoff@circus.camex.com (Geoffrey Knauth) writes:

>>> I've been hearing ugly rumors that [...] Stepstone [...]
>>> [is] in trouble.  Someone please tell me this is disinformation.
>>
>> I spoke with the president of Stepstone today regarding Stepstones
>> financial situation. I was told by the person who answered the
>> phone (not the pres) that SS was undergoing a ``reorganization''
>> and that ``very(?) few employees were left.''. [...]
>
> I am a bit confused.
>
> How critical is Stepstone's continued operation to NeXT and NeXT
> users?
>
> What part of NeXT software is directly dependent on Stepstone?
>
> I am confused because I thought Objective-C compiler technology
> is now/soon part of GNU compiler, which is free.

I love free market economies.  Simply put, Stepstone was pulling in to
much money, not really providing the bang for the buck.  NeXT knew
this (or found it out) decided to cut cost, knew they could do better
than to continue to give any more money to Stepstone.  So they extened
the GNU compiler (for which they don't have to give a red cent to
anyone if they don't want to), and came up with a more cost effective
solution for their needs.  They relied on Stepstone in the past, now
they are ``free'' (pardon the pun).

I think everyone should drop their current compiler vendor, take half
the money, and give it to a company like cygnus or some other support
organization that supports a un-encumbered compiler.

I think in the long run, this will prove to be a win.  A win for
everybody involved.  Take a look at what it has done for NeXT, no more
money to Stepstone, a C++ compiler for free, and others will do some
bug fixing, bug reporting, documentation, maintainance, and upgrading,
as well as things like porting, so that maybe if they choose to switch
to (name almost ANY popular processor) in the future, not a whole lot
of real work needs to be done.

(The above are optionions of mine, I do not claim ANY of the above as fact.
I would like to see e-mail if you followup to this.)
--
If I can get mail to you via a legally registered fully qualified
domain name, you could be on Saturn for all I care.

		-- quote by Bob Sutterfield <bob@MorningStar.Com>