Re: Bundling of layered software

[RDP@ALAN.kahuna.decnet.lasc-research.lockheed.com (Robert D. Pfeiffer))]

    Date: Thu, 22 Mar 90 10:05:17 EST
    From: buff%pravda@gatech.edu (Richard Billington)

	    Date: Wed, 21 Mar 90 15:46 EST
	    From: cjl@ai.mit.edu (Chris Lindblad)
	
		Date: Wed, 21 Mar 90 09:12 PST
		From: RDP@alan.kahuna.decnet.lasc-research.lockheed.com (Robert D.
		      Pfeiffer)
	
		Meanwhile, as the broken record player continues to play...
		"Bundle Concordia and Statice into Genera <skip>, bundle Concordia and
		Statice into Genera <skip>, bundle..." <:-)
	
	    So do you think they should also bundle Macsyma and the S products?  While
	    they're at it, why don't they just give away all their software!  Oh yea,
	    first they should get it to run on other vendors hardware.
	
	    Symbolics has to charge money for its products in order to exist.
	
    I think RDP's point is that there are some products which are clearly special-purpose
    (Macsyma and S-products and Joshua) while there are others which are more like other
    extensions to the standard programming environment (concordia - better documentation
    facilities for your code; statice - databases are, in my opinion, something everyone
    uses, although usually they do it by cobbling together something out of textfiles and
    code).

    [...]

Yes, thank you.  That is my point.  Although I don't think it represents
any great insight on my part.  "Everyone" seems to realize it.  In the
original conversation, Hannu Saarenmaa, had just asked, "Would it be
logical to bundle an OODBMS and hypertext with it?"  And Paul Pangaro
had replied, "The combination is quite powerful and of interest to many
applications."

The further point I would make (and I've already said this on the SLUG
list before; sorry for being repetitive and I'll be brief) is just this:

The big additional benefit to both Symbolics and its customers of
bundling hypertext and database capabilities back into Genera (that is,
specifically Concordia and Statice -- I'm not proposing they should
bundle in "everything else") is that it would allow the Symbolics
developers to more easily perceive the (very detrimental) "seams"
between these products and to formulate a strategy to eliminate them.

Parting shot:
"Symbolics has to charge money for its products in order to exist."?
Of course they do, but I think this would be a terrible marketing
strategy.  Symbolics has to provide value to its customers in order to
exist!