[non]Status of TI

[gooch@TIJERAS.SW-SW.Dialnet.Symbolics.COM (William D. Gooch)]

    Date: Wed, 15 Aug 90 12:39 EDT
    From: GRoberts@YUKON.SCRC.Symbolics.COM (Gary Roberts)

    My understanding from my ex-LMI friends (ex-LMI, not ex-friends) is that
    TI bought up a significant minority stake in LMI before entering the
    Lisp Machine business.  It is possible to imagine a number of different
    scenarios where that stake became a conduit for technology transfer from
    LMI to TI.

I have heard that back in the days when Grant Dove (now CEO of MCC) was
a TI executive, he almost "had TI buy Symbolics."  Why TI didn't do it
was never explained to me - perhaps because LMI came cheaper.  Nowadays,
Dove is a staunch anti-lisper, much to the chagrin of the diminishing
ranks of lisp hackers who still work for MCC.  I guess that if any one
individual deserves blame for the difficulties of the lisp market, Dove
is it.  He was also a main perpetrator of the lies to the public about
the MCC CAD program's failings being due to lisp and lisp workstations
(none of which was even remotely true - I know, because I was there).

Oh well, at least Dove is stepping back to let Craig Fields take over
MCC's day-to-day management of operations.  I don't know how enlightened
Fields is, but he could hardly be worse than Dove.

P.S.  I found it very amusing in a perverse sort of way to discover that
one anagram of the letters in "Grant Dove" is "vendor tag" (I spent much
of my work time during the CAD program's cataclysmic transition period
developing and fooling around with an anagram generator).