From: matt@centerline.com (Matt Landau)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.open-look,alt.toolkits.xview,comp.windows.news
Subject: Re: SunSoft's OpenWindows Directions
Date: 27 Jan 93 16:51:41 GMT
Organization: CenterLine Software, Inc.
NNTP-Posting-Host: 140.239.1.32

In <lmb9ggINNobc@exodus.Eng.Sun.COM> pierre@stendhal.Eng.Sun.COM (Pierre Bedard (SunSoft Windows Marketing)) writes:

>Q. What about XView?

>A. SunSoft recognizes that many of our customers use the 
>XView toolkit. You do not need to port applications from 
>XView to OLIT. You can maintain your present applications 
>on XView until you feel comfortable moving to an object 
>environment or you need functionality not available on 
>XView.

This sounds a lot like SunSoft is setting the stage to *drop* XView
entirely.  The phrases "maintain your present applications" and "need
functionality not available on XView" conspicuously avoids any mention
of new application development using XView, or of ongoing development
work on the XView toolkit itself.

Can we have *clear* statement of direction from SunSoft on the future
of XView?  Will SunSoft continue development of XView, adding features
and fixing bugs in new releases?  Or is work on XView being suspended,
with an eye toward EOL'ing the product in favor of OLIT?  Forgive my 
bluntness here, but at least in the window systems arena, SunSoft has
an unfortunate history of quietly hinting that products are going away
without ever coming right out and saying it.

>Q. How long will X11/NeWS and TNT be supported?

>A. Support for X11/NeWS and TNT will continue to be 
>available. Source code for the latest release of 
>OpenWindows will also be available at a reasonable price.

You didn't answer your own question.  *HOW LONG* (your question, not 
mine) will support continue to be available?  I don't actually care,
not being a tnt or NeWS programmer, but if you're going to pose the
question in a public new posting, you should at least answer the same
question you posed :-)

>Q. Is product quality that much better?

>A. We believe OWV3 is a high-quality product. By moving 
>to an MIT source base we will be able to deliver an even 
>higher quality product. MIT has issued many public 
>patches since the release of R5, containing over 1,300 
>bug fixes. Patches are issued every few weeks. 

The frequency of MIT patch releases seems irrelevant unless SunSoft 
is planning to provide corresponding patch releases of OpenWindows 
version 3.X every few weeks or months, instead of once a year or so.  
Judging from the speed with which other vendors who have MIT-based 
servers update their product releases, this seems fairly unlikely.

In other words, the fact that MIT provides patches every few weeks 
doesn't do me any good as a user of SunSoft's next OpenWindows system 
unless I have the source.  Is SunSoft planning to distribute the 
source?

Don't get me wrong, I think that, politics of the Workstation Wars
being what they are, SunSoft might be doing the right thing for its
business here (although I'll surely regret the loss of the last truly 
innovative window system technology outside of NeXT).  But the way 
it's presented here makes it sound like something it isn't.
--
 Matt Landau			Waiting for a flash of enlightenment
 matt@centerline.com			  in all this blood and thunder

 Needless to say, these opinions are my own.  CenterLine probably
 wouldn't be caught dead agreeing with anything I say :-)