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From: Terry Lambert <terry@cs.weber.edu>
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: Object-oriented what? (was: Future of FreeBSD)
Date: 1 Aug 1995 19:26:46 GMT
Organization: Utah Valley State College, Orem, Utah
Lines: 59
Message-ID: <3vlv5m$aii@park.uvsc.edu>
References: <DC6vJ3.L53@news.central.com> <3v9svg$hv1@vodka.intele.net>
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Barnacle Wes <wes@intele.net> wrote:
] Why would the UNIX community in general need the ability to develop
] "fast cheap GUI applications including system admin and configuration
] and multimedia in object based paradigm"? Most people who use software
] do not develop it, they buy it. They don't really care how difficult it
] is (or is not) to develop, other than how it relates to quality and cost.
] And heaven knows ease of development has a loose relation to quality
] and cost, look at the (now 7th!!!) beta of Winblows '95.
I agree. But the difficulty of development reflects on the cost
and the availability of the products. The Mac is harder to code
for than the PC, so the Mac sucks hind-teat as far as application
availability. Most business software for the Mac is ported to
the Mac from the PC or another platform.
UNIX has been typically thought of as multiuser, and the costs of
packages have reflected a per-seat cost multiplier as a result,
until license managers have become more available.
Now the license manager licensing cost is factored into product
price at an average per seat expected amortization.
Because of the increased difficulty of programming in a UNIX
environment -- or rather, the different expertise required -- the
UNIX market is not commodity with regard to software, and thus
the prices are set at what the market will bear instead of on
parity with the competition.
How many terminal emulation packages do you know about on UNIX?
I don't mean X stuff, which anyone can program, I mean the real
thing. Basically, one.
] There are several companies producing impressive distributed
] systems management tools for UNIX. Between them, these
] companies have everything from user account maintenance to
] load balancing to data mirroring. The fact that these fine
] products exist, and that others will soon be available, and
] that they compete with each other, means the customer is probably
] already getting a "better deal."
Yes, commoditization is a big factor in price. But so is the
level of effort necessary to achieve cross-platform homogeneuity.
Escpecially with systems management tools.
] The SGI workstations are still *the* workstation for developing multimedia,
] even if the platform being developed for is Winblows or Mac. Don't take my
] word for it, read the articles in _Computer Graphics World_.
I agree, mostly. DOOM was written on a NeXTStep box, after all.
Terry Lambert
terry@cs.weber.edu
---
Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present
or previous employers.