On Jul 4, 2005, at 4:14 PM, David T. Lewis wrote:
>
> In my opinion it would be very bad for Squeak to be seen as a
> competitor to the commercial systems, and very good for Squeak if
> the commercial systems grow in credibility thanks to the positive
> contributions of the Squeak community.

I agree that it's important to have a healthy market for commercial  
Smalltalk systems, but why is it bad for Squeak to be seen as a  
competitor in that arena?  Squeak can provide some things - like an  
attractive price point and protection from vendor lock-in - that the  
commercial vendors cannot.  For many of my clients, the choice was  
between Squeak and Ruby or Python, and if I had said "sorry, for  
commercial work you should be using VW", they simply wouldn't be  
using Smalltalk.

I don't think there's any danger of Squeak eroding Cincom's market  
share.  The parts of the market that need the one are too different  
from the parts that need the other.  As "competitors" I think they  
largely serve to grow the total Smalltalk market, which is good for  
everybody.

Avi