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Re: Expecting Phone Call from Oprah [message #27163 is a reply to message #27119]

Wed, 10 October 2001 15:50

Joseph B. Gurman
Messages: 31
Registered: April 2000

Member

In article <MPG.162d13b126369e769896f9@news.frii.com>,
david@dfanning.com wrote:

[snip]

> I haven't been silent, I've just been biting
> my tongue. I think this is just about exactly
> what you can expect when large corporations
> start to make decisions. There is no question
> it is a good business decision, if you are
> considering just the ins and outs of money.
> There are, quite frankly, not very many Mac
> users. And I don't even think Apple believes
> the Mac is going to be a big scientific computing
> platform.
>
> When things are flush, it is no problem doing
> fringe projects. But things are not flush at
> Kodak, not by a long shot. I wouldn't expect
> more platforms to bite the dust, but I do
> expect more products to fall into disfavor.
> Who is using River Tools anyway?
>
> Anyway, I think this is probably a sad day
> for Dave, Ali, and the other good guys at
> RSI, for whom money was never the most
> important thing. Their number one goal--
> always--was producing quality software
> for scientists. I'm glad I'm not there
> anymore.
>
> Cheers,
>
> David
>
> P.S. Let's just say I have the same feeling
> in the pit of my stomach as I did when Office
> Depot came into town and put all those
> Stationary stores out of business. :-(

I agree that this is a sad day, and that the good guys probably
think thaty this, not too put too fine a point on it, sucks. I'm almost
sad I have no Kodak stock to sell.

There are plenty of Mac users of IDL. Undoubtedly not as many as
Windoze users, or Solaris users, but more than enough, at some fraction
of $5K a pop, to make up the 2 man-year's of thierry Fauconaux's time.

Sorry, David, but this is a bineheaded business decision, since the
attraction of IDL in the sicentific community is at least as much its
cross-platform portability as its versatility for the individual user.
If I'm developing applications and software trees to deploy across a
broad (if not enormous) user base, why would I even bother to look at aq
product that's as self-restricted as IDL now is?

By the way, I have offered to buy the OS X IDL code base from Kodak.
Anybody know where Thierry is now?

Joe Gurman

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[Message index]

		Expecting Phone Call from Oprah By: David Fanning on Tue, 09 October 2001 11:46
		Re: Expecting Phone Call from Oprah By: Stein Vidar Hagfors H[1] on Wed, 10 October 2001 11:51
		Re: Expecting Phone Call from Oprah By: Noam R. Izenberg on Wed, 10 October 2001 04:29
		Re: Expecting Phone Call from Oprah By: David Fanning on Tue, 09 October 2001 15:09
		Re: Expecting Phone Call from Oprah By: Mark Hadfield on Tue, 09 October 2001 14:25
		Re: Expecting Phone Call from Oprah By: David Fanning on Tue, 09 October 2001 14:01
		Re: Expecting Phone Call from Oprah By: Joseph B. Gurman on Wed, 10 October 2001 15:50
		Re: Expecting Phone Call from Oprah By: Struan Gray on Tue, 23 October 2001 07:07
		Re: Expecting Phone Call from Oprah By: Pavel A. Romashkin on Tue, 09 October 2001 13:56
		Re: Expecting Phone Call from Oprah By: Randall Skelton on Tue, 09 October 2001 13:23
		Re: Expecting Phone Call from Oprah By: David Fanning on Wed, 10 October 2001 16:44

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