On 10/5/05, Ron Teitelbaum <Ron at usmedrec.com> wrote:
> I agree.  It seems to me that Java is Smalltalk strongly typed [....]
And with a whole slew of other flaws... If it were only strongly
typing, the language might even be halfway usable...

> and with a
> business model to attract corporations and Server Vendors.
>
Sounds all a bit revisionist to me. There was no business model. And I
doubt Sun ever broke even on this whole thing. Maybe by attributing
all their hardware sales over the last decade to Java...

Java was hyped (and, having visited the early JavaOne's and stuff,
that hype was loads of fun), hyped more, and overnight somehow became
a very major programming language. If the market is so huge, you don't
need 'a business model' - there's a market, all sorts of models will
work; from the major rip-off^H^H^H^Hconsulting firms' model of
overcharging for useless information to all sorts of niches.

> Is sqf a register non-profit in the US?
No. And I don't think it's likely it will in the near future, because
the focus of development is, as far as I can tell, outside of the US. 
Maybe a US chapter under the SPI umbrella, some time?

> For example, if Oracle gave you a bunch of money and
> we all set out to build the oracle dll support and maybe incorporate their
> business objects, we would be in big trouble.
>
That'd be just fine as long as the result would be open source, thus
benefiting the general public :-)

And I doubt that, whatever any country's laws say about non-profit
status, SqF will ever take money for work if the condition is that the
end result is closed source. Because that's what any of the
Squeak-based companies out there should be doing, not SqF...