I thought Sun bought NextStep

Post #70,582 by boxley 12/23/02 8:29:26 PM Reply	I thought Sun bought NextStep and merged a lot of it with Solaris. Or was Sun just a licensee? I thought those NeXT machines were great but ahead of their time. thanx, bill will work for cash and other incentives [link\|http://home.tampabay.rr.com/boxley/resume/Resume.html\|skill set] You think that you can trust the government to look after your rights? ask an Indian
Post #70,615 by rickmoen 12/24/02 12:47:55 AM Reply	You're probably thinking of NeWS Bill wrote: I thought Sun bought NextStep and merged a lot of it with Solaris. Gosh, I wish. You might be thinking of an advanced windowing system Sun invented called [link\|http://www.phoenix.volant.org/NeWS/\|NeWS (Network-extensible Window System)], which it proposed at the same time that some MIT grad students produced the X Window System. (I usually call the latter's current implementations "X11", to avert confusion with OS X.) NeWS was much, much better than the X Window System, but was never adopted anywhere but at Sun (where SunOS supported it), partly because of higher licensing costs, and partly for industry-political reasons: If you were a commercial rival of Sun Microsystems, you didn't want to support its initiatives and probably wanted to actively sabotage them, regardless of merit, in order to avoid conceding leadership to them. The proprietary Unix world had all the politics of Renaissance Italy, in that regard. Fortunately, the rise of open-source has as a major force in the Unix world has tended to impose meaningful standards (even where, like X11 and NFS, those standards suck a fair amount) and consequent interoperability. I thought those NeXT machines were great but ahead of their time. I had friends who had the NeXT black cubes, and they were indeed very slick. I was able to buy an external flat-black NeXT-branded CD-ROM case when they were remaindered, and I still use it. Being from Steve Jobs's firm, it of course has no fan in it (and fortunately doesn't need one). Rick Moen rick@linuxmafia.com If you lived here, you'd be $HOME already.
Post #70,636 by boxley 12/24/02 8:39:12 AM Reply	Nope this is what I remembered Jobs and Sun, OpenStep [link\|http://www.cube-zero.net/NeXT/?main=history\|http://www.cube-zero...eXT/?main=history] To this end, NeXT released NEXTSTEP for Intel, Sparc, and HP which allowed the software to run on Intel 486 and Pentium processors, as well as Sun SPARC-based computers and Hewlett-Packard HP-UX workstations. NeXT continued to produce the NEXTSTEP operating system until release version 3.3 and created the OpenStep API specification for operating systems in conjunction with Sun Microsystems. thanx, bill will work for cash and other incentives [link\|http://home.tampabay.rr.com/boxley/resume/Resume.html\|skill set] You think that you can trust the government to look after your rights? ask an Indian
Post #70,637 by tuberculosis 12/24/02 9:02:07 AM Reply	No, he's thinking of NextStep Which was also licensed by IBM for the RS6k workstations at one point - but immediately after they licensed it, Next released a new version and demanded IBM repurchase to get it. IBM was not pleased and abandoned plans to make it the default on the RS6k. Similar issues occurred with Sun - they didn't get in the end what they thought they were getting. From here: [link\|http://www.objectfarm.org/Activities/Publications/TheMerger/OpenstepConfusion.html\|http://www.objectfar...tepConfusion.html] You can get the whole explanation. Excerpt: OpenStep ... was born as part of the deal with Sun. OpenStep stands for an API specifications which was based on an evolution of the existing NEXTSTEP APIs. Most of the new technology already was available inside NeXT's labs but needed a renewed system to get integrated. OpenStep does not refer to any "real" implementation. It stands for the abstract API definitions which a vendor has to support in order to call his system "OpenStep compliant". OpenStep consists of the AppKit, FoundationKit and the Display PostScript layer. The name is a mix of OpenLook and NextStep. OPENSTEP ... is NeXT's specific implementation of the OpenStep specification, and basically represents NEXTSTEP 4.0. This was yet another marketing move to get rid of the old name. OPENSTEP is a dual personality which still provides the NEXTSTEP compatibility libraries to run applications which are based on the old APIs. Additionally it has the new OpenStep compliant frameworks. The look & feel remained the same, and so users hardly can tell the difference between both worlds. The full naming is OPENSTEP for MachOS/[NeXT Computers, Intel, SPARC]. OpenStep for Solaris ... is what Sun calls their implementation of the OpenStep standard. While based on source code which Sun bought from NeXT, this package runs on the Solaris operating system and uses the X Window system. This makes it considerable different from NeXTs implementation of the OpenStep specification. Still both companies managed to provide a very high level of source code portability (not compiled binaries!). OPENSTEP for Windows ... stands for a package, developed by NeXT, which puts OPENSTEP functionality on top of Windows NT. Obviously it does not include the MachOS layer but being derived from "OPENSTEP for MachOS" frameworks it offers considerably more then the OpenStep specification requires. Incidentally, I write code on this OS every day, supplementing missing capabilities with opensource libs wherever necessary and I'm intimately familiar with where many of the components come from. OSX, apart from the Carbon libs, Drivers, Graphics engine, AppKit and Foundation (of which there are at least 3 open source versions floating around) its mostly been taken from free sources. I am out of the country for the duration of the Bush administration. Please leave a message and I'll get back to you when democracy returns.

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