96/02/04 Subject: NEXTSTEP NEWSLETTER 1.NEXT LOOKS POISED FOR GROWTH 2.WEB MANIA BOOSTS NEXT'S FORTUNES 3.SUN WILL SOON SHIP OPENSTEP 4.NEXT IS REALLY MOVING TO NT 5.NEXT MAY BE DROPPING MACH 6.STEVE JOBS IS ACKNOWLEDGING POWER POLITICS 7.NEXT LOOKS OVERCONFIDENT 8.BEHIND THE WEB MANIA DEMO 9.OPENSTEP FOR WINDOWS 95 DROPPED AS EXPECTED 10.D'OLE AND EOF FOR NT EVALUATION 11.ERRATTA 12.OBJECT DATABASE MARKET SURVEY 13.IS YOUR COMPANY HIRING? 14.NEXTSTEP DEVELOPERS NEEDED a)MANAGE A $20 MILLION DOLLAR NEXTSTEP PRODUCT b)BECOME A NEXTSTEP PROJECT MANAGER c)BECOME A NEXTSTEP CONSULTANT d)NEXTSTEP CORPORATE GURU NEEDED e)OBJECT DATABASES IN AUSTRALIA f)WEB (OBJECTS) MASTER SOUGHT 16.BPG NEWS 17.HOW TO SUBSCRIBE 1. NEXT LOOKS POISED FOR GROWTH For the first time in many years I am bullish on Next's future growth. Steve Jobs is focussed on the business issues. Web Objects looks well positioned. Sun is close to releasing NEO with OPENSTEP technology embedded. NeXT is investing heavily in making OPENSTEP for NT a reality. With Pixar's success, Steve Jobs has a lot of money, so NeXT is a safe bet. NeXT is receiving lots of publicity. The NT and Solaris operating systems lower the barriers to OPENSTEP adoption. Independent Software Vendors are porting their wares to NT or Solaris as they see fit. It is a great time to be in this market. 2. WEB MANIA BOOSTS NEXT'S FORTUNES By all accounts NeXT's Web offerings look very interesting. Check out their web server (www.next.com) for more info. Download your free version of Web Objects for Solaris, NT, or NextSTEP 3.3. The market is interested. There were over 100 members of the press in attendence, as opposed to 50 at NeXT's presentation at Object World. Steve Jobs was extremely gracious and enthusiastic. He has developed a wonderful way to poke fun at Microsoft. When Windows 95 crashed, interrupting the demo, he started to talk, then said: "This commercial break brought to you by...Microsoft". The audience loved it. 3. SUN WILL SOON SHIP OPENSTEP Sun plans to ship the OPENSTEP technology licensed from NeXT as part of their next release of NEO. NEO is currently Solaris plus Corba distributed objects. Sun has integrated the OPENSTEP software from NeXT into NEO. My sources tell me that NEO stands for NeXT's Excellent Objects, although Sun officially denies it. There are now two completely separate code-trees: one at NeXT and one at Sun. The Sun version is deeply tied into the static binding of C++. Basically messaging is being added as an option on top of Sun's static view of the world. They have a very slick way for Interface Builder to access Corba objects on the network. The network Corba objects would just show up as icons in Interface Builder. Sun would not release figures on what percentage of their customers use NEO, but they did indicate that eventually NEO would be rolled into the mainstream solaris release. 4. NEXT IS REALLY MOVING TO NT In my December 1st Newsletter, I indicated that the NT port was not a serious effort because they did not make the investment to fix the GNU debugger and were just using the Microsoft linker/debugger which did not support Objective-C native-mode debugging. That has now changed. NeXT is now making a significant investment in moving to Windows NT. They moved their 18 developers from porting NextSTEP to Berkeley Standard UNIX to porting OPENSTEP to Windows NT. The new release of the GNU debugger now works on Windows NT, although a few bugs are still being worked on. Does anyone know when the Gnu Objective-C patches will become publicly available? 5. NEXT MAY BE DROPPING MACH First NeXT tried migrating to Berkeley Standard UNIX. When that proved too difficult, NeXT decided to move to Windows NT. OPENSTEP for NT has a divergent code tree from the MACH code tree, and it looks like MACH is being dropped. Currently NextSTEP is using an older version of the GNU debugger than is the OPENSTEP on Windows NT project. So much for keeping their black and HP hardware customers up to date. At least the Sun customers can move to NEO. HP customers are upset, but it is their own fault for not having a backup plan in case something happened to NeXT. 6. STEVE JOBS IS ACKNOWLEDGING POWER POLITICS It looks like the reason that NeXT is abandoning their MACH operating system is because they have chosen not to compete against Netscape. Netscape is the 800-pound gorilla that sets the standards in the pInternet market, and companies are desparate to work with it. In exchange, companies have to agree not to tread on Netscape's turf, or else. So NeXT is positioning itself as an add-on component to Netscape servers, rather than as a competing server. That being the case, there is no reason to keep the operating system; in fact, it is a liability. Congratulations to Steve for responding to power politics. 7. NEXT LOOKS OVERCONFIDENT Everyone in the NeXT community is talking about going public, and acting on the assumption that NeXT will go public soon with high probablity. For example, NeXT employees are declining significantly better paying jobs because of the perceived value of the stock that they are currently vesting. I agree that NeXT is doing well but, in my opinion, their confidence is overrated. To me, NeXT is looking solid for the first time. They need to keep this up for two years before they can go public. A good reference case is Parc Place Smalltalk. They profitted from a major market shift to Smalltalk. There has not yet been any such shift to Web Objects. Furthermore I believe that NeXT is making a major strategic error. They are planning on abandoning their proprietary operating system. If they do so, it will be difficult to distinguish them from other NT tool vendors. For years I have said that they should abandon their operating system, and they failed to do so. Now, just as they are about to abandon MACH, I see a reason for them to keep the operating system. Web servers need to run on operating systems that are optimized for serving Web applications. Sun's Solaris does well as a general purpose sever; Silicon Graphic's IRIS is good for serving video; NeXT's MACH could have been optimized for serving three-tier web applications accessing corporate databases. This would have been a very significant niche, one that easily justifies going public. A lot of people in NeXT are also saying this. Let me help them be heard. I would be interested in your opinions on the matter, and a discussion of the technical issues. What operating system modifications would be required to make Mach an optimal web server? How would it then compare to Solaris, and NT? 8. BEHIND THE WEB MANIA DEMO During the demo, Steve Jobs showed a Windows 95 Netscape client accessing a Web Objects server tied into the Official Airline Guide (OAG) Mainframe, and booked a reservation for a United Flight, which he then confirmed by telephone. Many people were impressed with the demo; I was impressed by what went on behind the scenes. At one point, Steve clicked on the month of March, with no response. The developers in the back room dynamically loaded in the March calendar, and when Steve clicked the next time, the correct image appeared. A very impressive demonstration of real-time software development, which I suspect NeXT did not do enough to highlight. To their credit, the whole show was only conceived a month ago. 9. OPENSTEP FOR WINDOWS 95 DROPPED AS EXPECTED In March of last year, I predicted that OPENSTEP for Windows 95 would not happen. There was no mention of it at Web Mania. It was good confirmation that market hype cannot overcome technical limitations. 10. D'OLE AND EOF FOR NT EVALUATION I have on my desk EOF 1.1 for Windows NT, and D'OLE 3.5 for Windows NT. I am looking for someone to evaluate the products and write a review in time for the next newsletter on March 1st. D'OLE does not require NextSTEP, instead it uses the Microsoft Visual C++ Linker and Debugger. 11. ERRATTA There were a number of errors in the Web Mania presentation. Allow me to correct them for NeXT. Web Objects has competition. The customers all know that. NeXT does a disservice to its customers by failing to educate them on how Web Objects compares to its competition. Perl, and SGI scripts are used for automating Web Servers. The language vendors such as Smalltalk and I believe Delphi offer Web Server automation tools. The database vendors are certainly offering Web-Form based interfaces. Other tools are available on the Macintosh. Please let me know if there are any tools you recommend as an alternative to Web Objects, and I will publish the list next month. Please include your comments on how the tools compare to Web Objects. Despite Sun's potentially buying apple, it is extremely unlikely that Web Objects will be ported to Macintosh. The technical issues are significant, and the owners of the GNU compiler (The Free Software Foundation) are against a Macintosh port because they dislike Apple's business practices in the copyright area. 12. OBJECT DATABASE MARKET SURVEY NeXT is focussed on connecting Relational Databases to the Web. How much interest is there from the newsletter readers in Object Databases? What applications are you interested in building on an object database? What characteristics are you looking for in an Object Database? What databases have you considered? Has the era of Object Databases arrived, or are we still waiting? 13. IS YOUR COMPANY HIRING? If your company is looking for NextSTEP developers, consider using this NextSTEP newsletter. The newsletter reaches some 2400 people, mostly NextSTEP developers and the subscription list is growing rapidly. The newsletter is a very effective way to find just the right kind of person for your position. 14.NEXTSTEP DEVELOPERS NEEDED If you are interested in any of these job opportunities, please give me a call at (510) 795-6086. You can also NeXTMail me an RTF version of your resume, or fax it to me at (510) 795-8077. I can treat your resume in great confidence, or I can multicast it to all the hiring managers I know. Let me know what I can do for you. 14a MANAGE A $20 MILLION DOLLAR NEXTSTEP PRODUCT This is probably the largest NextSTEP product in the world. They need someone to manage the entire thing. It is a financial application, so the company is wealthy, and it is an important position, so you will be well treated. There will be 50 people reporting to you. You will be based in Texas. 14b BECOME A NEXTSTEP PROJECT MANAGER This is an opportunity to put your career in hyperdrive and become the project manager for a 7-8 person project currently being developed and eventually deployed internationally. You do not need much management experience for this position, but you do need an ability to think in terms of schedules, deliverables, and resources required. The company is willing to offer a salary of $65-70K, and if you are really good, have no relocation expenses, and are willing to wait for their management to approve more money, you might even get up to $75K. It is a year-long project, that will probably take a bit longer, and when it is successfully completed, your opportunities will be fantastic. The project is located in Boston. 14c BECOME A NEXTSTEP CONSULTANT This is an opportunity for people who have 6 months or more of NextSTEP experience to become a NextSTEP consultant . It is a one-year-plus project located in Boston. When the assignment ends you will be an experienced NextSTEP consultant with great opportunities. I expect the position will pay $50 per hour, but the client will go up to $60 /hr they need to in order to find a good person. They will also go higher for someone with greater experience. AT $50/hr the position pays $100,000 for a 50 week year, so it looks like a good opportunity for someone with 6 months experience. I was a consultant on this project, and it is a very interesting project with a large number of different software platforms being integrated together. I highly recommend this company. The positions are in Boston. 14d NEXTSTEP CORPORATE GURU NEEDED This is opportunity to become the corporate fountainhead for NextSTEP related information. The ideal candidate should know the internals of NEXT's product line, and should ideally know all the key support people at NeXT. The company is building a challenging Wide-Area Distributed application, with a central corporate database and 30 regional databases. The company is using EOF, Foundation Kit, PDO and Sybase, and will be connecting to Informix. The company is getting beta versions of OPENSTEP for NT, D'OLE, and WebObjects. NT experience is a plus. The company is in the San Francisco Bay Area. 14e OBJECT DATABASES IN AUSTRALIA I am looking for a person with Objectstore or OO database experience who knows some NextSTEP and wants to work in Sydney, Australia, for a while. Sydney is a great city: clean, interesting, beautiful. I was just there on vacation. All visa issues will be taken care of. 14f WEB (OBJECTS) MASTER SOUGHT The San Francisco Bay Area company is looking for an experienced NeXT developer to be their Web Master. They are about to get heavily into Web Objects, and need someone who knows a lot about the web to lead the way. 15.BPG NEWS My wife and I just bought a new house in Menlo Park, California within walking distance of Kepler's Book Store. If you are near there and would like to get together, please let me know. 16. HOW TO SUBSCRIBE This newsletter is published monthly. Subscriptions are provided free. If you would like to subscribe, please send email to newsletter@bpg.com. I am very interested in subscribing email distribution lists. Please specify whether you prefer NeXTMAIL or ASCII mail. Feel free to tell me a little about how you are using NextSTEP. =END=