Re: MCL to Windows

[tomd@dfhake.pls.com (Tom Donaldson)]

> Date: Fri, 25 Feb 94 10:43:06 EST
> From: Mark.Perlin@J.GP.CS.CMU.EDU
> To: info-mcl@CAMBRIDGE.APPLE.COM
> Subject: MCL to Windows
>
> Folks, 
>
> Perhaps a better strategy for the perpetuation of the MCL development
> environment would be to port it to Windows.  Apple has no loyalty to its
> developers, so it would be illogical for its developers to continue any
> misplaced loyalty they may have to Apple.  Our goal, after all, is rapid
> development and deployment of innovative applications, often including
> reasonable user interfaces.  Given the 10:1 ratio of PCs to MACs out in the
> world, the dissemination and impact of our work would be increased an order
> of magnitude by moving to PCs.  It may be in our interest to convince Apple
> to sell MCL off to a PC development tools company (Microsoft?).  
>
> (Note: I don't actually own or use a PC, but at least there's a free market
> in machines and software for them.  UNIX would be another possibility, for
> pretty much the same reasons.)  

Great idea!  If the MCL environment were on a variety of platforms I would
find it MUCH more appealing.  As long as whoever took it over made it 
reasonably easy to produce portable apps, and would keep developing the
environment and porting to new platforms (ideally, all the platforms
our text retrieval engine runs on: Mac, HP/UX, SunOS, Solaris, VAX/VMS,
MSDOS/MSWindows - future: others).

But don't sell MCL to MicroSoft!  There has to be a better way ...

-tomd