Although I agree with your sentiments, I think that you misread Chris'
message... he's saying saying basically the same thing you are.  "how
would you possibly sell it?" refers to a Squeak focused on web-browsing
and word processing.  He then says that Squeak should lead (ie: Morphic,
etc.), not follow (ie: web-browsing).

Joshua


On Wed, Nov 19, 2003 at 12:55:33AM -0400, Lex Spoon wrote:
> Chris Muller <afunkyobject at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > > My own experience with squeak is that it only needs a decient
> > > web-browser and a usable word-processor as well as a few layout fixups
> > > to be ready for prime-time... 
> > 
> > I think the path to commercial success with Squeak on the large-scale you are
> > thinking is to use Squeak to lead, not follow.  Attempting to imitate
> > "web-browsing" and "word-processing" with Squeak would be a public-relations
> > "death" for Squeak.  How would you possibly sell it? 
> 
> There are plenty of things.  Coolness alone will sell you a bunch of
> them.  Squeak makes *great* demos.  How cool that everything is sitting
> on your desktop waiting for you to mess with it?  You don't have to
> double click and wait for applications to load.  Your data is just
> *there*, ready to be moved around, edited, viewed, or tossed across the
> network.
> 
> And if you are a power user, you're even happier.  If you like Visual
> Basic or AppleScript then you'll go nuts with Morphic.
> 
> I don't see why everyone is so down on the thought.  OS/2 and BeOS had
> plenty good followings during their time, and they were relatively
> imitative.  As a closer example, the Lisp Machine still has rabid
> followers today.  To do a SqueakOS seems to only take time and a
> willingness to pursue success instead of just mess around.  It's a big
> project, but it's not ridiculously big compared to the kind of efforts
> floating around these days.  Imagine 10% of Netscape in its prime. 
> Imagine 1% of go.com.
> 
> 
> Dan Ingalls put it best back in the famous Byte article:
> 
> 	"An operating system is a collection of things that don't fit into a
> language. There shouldn't be one."
> 
> 
> I'm tired of being left to wallow around in sub-standard OS's.  I put
> what time I can into moving Squeak towards being an OS of its own, and I
> think it will get there over some number of years, but a commercial
> effort is a fine way to go and would speed things up.
> 
> 
> Lex