At 10:14 AM 7/4/2005, 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 don't think competition is necessarily a bad thing. Squeak, and other commercial Smalltalks, naturally compete with Cincom Smalltalk, as well as with each other. In that sense they're competitors. But they also compete with all other development possibilities out there, which is a much larger space. In that space, they help and complement each other, by growing overall Smalltalk usage. Even within the purely Smalltalk space, competition helps force the others to always improve.
It's possible to have destructive competition, and I think that's something to be avoided. The metaphor I like to use is a couple of people stuck in a lifeboat, and spending all their time hitting each other with the oars instead of rowing. But competition as far as who can row the fastest only benefits everyone.
Avi made a point about market share, but market share is not really the important metric. Cincom would, I expect, be delighted to have a smaller market share of a larger market, and I would expect that to be an normal consequence of a growing market.
Note: I work for, but in no way speak for, Cincom.
-- Alan Knight [|], Cincom Smalltalk Development knight@acm.org aknight@cincom.com http://www.cincom.com/smalltalk
"The Static Typing Philosophy: Make it fast. Make it right. Make it run." - Niall Ross