🚀 go-pugleaf

I don't consider it ``wildly successful'' to nibble at the crumbs that fall
from Microsoft's mouth.

Nor do I believe you get lots of applications to market because ``nobody wants
to program in Windows.''  Greed gets applications written, not the wants of
prima-donna programmers.  The NeXTSTEP market is not one in which you can make
huge amounts of money.  Certainly you should have gotten the message from all
the major vendors who have contemptiously dismissed the NeXT market?

I am pleased to see that NeXT has finally decided whether it is a hardware or
a software company.  I'm sad that they chose to be the latter.  Their hardware
was much more interesting.  I guess at some point Canon will complete its
ownership of the hardware product line, and NeXT will be another Digital
Research with NeXTSTEP becoming another DR-DOS to NT and OSF/1...

What do I think should happen?
 1) NeXT should join OSF if they are not already a member, and commit to an
    OSF/1 kernel.
 2) NeXT should offer NeXTSTEP for sale at very low prices, including sources,
    for any platform.  NeXT should license NeXTSTEP to any other vendor, even
    SUN.  NeXT should stop thinking of NeXTSTEP as something that is so
    obviously valuable they have a captive audience; because it isn't and they
    don't.
 3) NeXT has to get back into the price/performance race with hardware.  NeXT
    hardware has become very uncompetitively priced in the past two years.
 4) NeXT has to start introducing new and innovative hardware products.  The
    680x0 stuff should be considered the `low-end' stuff.  There needs to be a
    SPARC, RISC, and Alpha CPU product.
 5) NeXT needs to face reality, and integrate X into NeXTSTEP.  Buy the rights
    to co-Xist or Mouse-X, and put it in the Window Manager.
and most importantly ---
 6) NeXT needs to stop trying to find a niche in which it is the only player
    (and thus the `best'), and instead realize it is in a multi-vendor market
    in which `being the best' is transitory at best.  This whole idea of
    locking people into NeXTSTEP is an excellent way to get people to reject
    NeXTSTEP out of hand.  Every year, it's a different marketing hype.  Now
    it is nibbling at NT.  Before it was `mission critical apps' and nibbling
    at SUN.  Before that...  etc. etc.

Yes, OSF/1 is in a lot of trouble right now.  But with DEC betting Alpha on
it, you can be sure that OSF/1 will be fixed.  NeXTSTEP is in a lot worse
trouble, but everyone is still in denial.