NEXTSTEP NEWSLETTER March 23, 96 1.SUN PRIORITIZES INTERNET TOOLS OVER OPENSTEP 2.WEB NEWS 3.MICROSOFT EMBRACES NEXT 4.NEXT, SUN, NETSCAPE ALLIANCE WEAKENED 5.MICROSOFT CONQUERS WORLD MARKETS 6.MICROSOFT DECLARES WAR ON NETSCAPE AND SUN 7.NETSCAPE PUSHES ON VERY FAST 8.JAVA LOOKS HOT 9.BASIC INTERNET PUBLISHING 10.NEXTSTEP DEVELOPERS AVAILABLE 11. SIGNAL TO NOISE RATIO 12.NEXTSTEP DEVELOPERS NEEDED 12a. NEXTSTEP DEVELOPERS URGENTLY NEEDED 12b. VACATION SPECIAL $90 K 12c. INTRODUCTORY NEXTSTEP POSITIONS 12d. FOREIGN NEXT DEVELOPERS 12e. GERMAN SPEAKER NEEDED $80K 12f.CHICAGO FINANCIAL FIRMS 12g.FLORIDA POSITION 12h.NORTHERN VIRGINIA POSITION 13ERRATTA 14.MULTIHOMED NEXTSTEP SERVERS 15BPG NEWS 16HOW TO SUBSCRIBE 1.SUN PRIORITIZES INTERNET TOOLS OVER OPENSTEP Sun Microsystems has decided to focus their marketting and technical resources on their internet related products acknowledging that they are no longer being driven by a strong demand for OPENSTEP. You may recall my Feb 1st article entitled SUN WILL SOON SHIP OPENSTEP. I called it wrong big time. My apologies. Although OPENSTEP is still part of their official strategy, they are just not focussed on it. Internally they are debating pricing and bundling strategies. It sounds like Sun does not have a c lear plan. I can think of some very large companies that invested heavily in Sun Microsystems on the promise of OPENSTEP. I know some vendors who stuck with NeXT on the promise of Sun Solaris OPENSTEP. They will all have to wait until this internet thing cools down, and objects become hot again. Officially Sun says that OPENSTEP will ship in the middle of this year. I don't know about that. At least they haven't laid off any of their OPENSTEP developers. Can anyone ! help me out in understanding what is going on at SUN? 2.WEB NEWS Starting with this issue, there is a section on Web News, covering the new and enhanced Web Sites of interest to the NEXTSTEP community. I hope you like it. NeXT user Group International shuts its doors. See: GS corp announces an upgraded website. See: ,http://www.gscorp.com> Tip Top ships a new release of Web objects PERL, Objective-TCL, and Objective-Browser. This stuff is Cool Object Technology. They leverage the Objective-C run-time system very elegantly. Check them out at: NeXT releases 3Dkit and the Indexing kit to be included in misckit. See: http://www.misckit.com/press_kits.html (HTML copy of the press release) http://www.misckit.com/faq/NXKits.html (FAQ giving more info) 3.MICROSOFT EMBRACES NEXT Steve Jobs was the keynote speaker at the Microsoft Developers Conference. I have never seen so many developers in one room. Half of Moscone Center's Large Hall was filled to the brim. And they all listened to Steven Jobs demo Web Objects for 20 glorious minutes. Although Microsoft is endorsing many internet products, only Steven Jobs made it up to the podium. Even more amazing, most of the audience cut dinner short to come back in the evening to hear the details. The market looks white hot for NeXT. Do you want to see how strong the demand is? Watch the counter of total WebObjects downloads at http://wofapps1.next.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/Betatron It was at about 1250 when Steven Jobs did the presentation. 4.NEXT, SUN, NETSCAPE ALLIANCE WEAKENED. If this was published two weeks ago, I would have run the lead story that NeXT, Sun and Netscape were in a strategic alliance to break Microsoft's control of the desktop architecture. They planned to push a portable client browser with a language that Microsoft did not control: JAVA. They wanted to get control of the server development environment with JAVAScript for the server. NeXT was key, because they would bring this technology onto NT, with Microsoft willing or not. Microsoft saw this as a loosi ng battle, and decided to officially embrace the technology, while really pushing for Visual Basic to be the language of choice. So Microsoft invited NeXT in, offering them an endorsement. On its part NeXT will be giving priority to their visual basic interface. NeXT will also be giving priority to the Microsoft Internet Server API (ISAPI) for Web Objects. But NeXT will continue to develop the Netscape Navigator API to Web Objects. And they will expand their Java Offe! ring. Did I mention that the Comm on GateWay (CGI) interface to Web Objects is being deemphasized? Who needs open standards anymore, Microsoft and Netscape rule. Fortuneately, Next is able to cooperate with both Netscape and with Microsoft. NeXT even demoed their application on NETSCAPE browser in the evening at the Microsoft Conference. The NeXT demo included a Java applet, so they had to use Netscape. 5.MICROSOFT CONQUERS WORLD MARKETS While the other companies are battling for the US market, Microsoft is quietly conquering the rest of the world. Bill Gates is meeting with heads of state from around the world, gathering tremendous local publicity for free, and ensuring them that if they use Windows 95, they will be technically up to par with the whole US. Microsoft paid for foreign editors to come to the Microsoft Developers Conference. Great Cheap publicity. However, Bill is doing some good. He is encouraging the leaders of these co untries to provide less expensive internet access as a top priority. 6.MICROSOFT DECLARES WAR ON NETSCAPE AND SUN Microsoft came late to the internet, and they lost significant opportunity to NETSCAPE, but now Microsoft is in full swing planning on reestablishing control. They have closed down their interactive TV group, and are focussing on the internet. The Microsoft Internet Browser now integrates the local desktop with the remote internet. Looks very nice. They want to make sure that they achieve market dominance. They want to make sure that Visual Basic becomes the scripting language of choice. They belie ve that they can leverage Windows control into Internet control. Of course they still have NETSCAPE to contend with. 7.NETSCAPE PUSHES ON VERY FAST. The Netscape Nasvigator 2.0 Java enabled browser is now shipping. They shipped it early, and the first users found a few security holes and some bugs. I presume that they are now patched. Netscape is now starting to work on Web for home television sets. Macintosh released Pippin, a scaled down Macintosh that displays to a home TV and runs NETSCAPE browser. It is being pushed heavily in Japan, and the Palo Alto Cable Coop is testing it. While Microsoft is trying to regain control of the desktop co mputer environment, Netscape is trying to win control of the much larger Television market. Meanwhile Sun has released chips that run Java natively. This should help the low-cost television market. Furthermore Sun and Netscape are working on JOE, a combination of Java and NEO which will allow Netscape clients to talk to CORBA servers. This will allow for mainstream three-tier client-sever architectures. Watch for the Sun announcements at the upcoming Interop conferen! ce. 8.JAVA LOOKS HOT. Java is an interpreted language designed to provide secure downloadable applets. It looks very intelligently designed. See They have a publication "OLE, JAVA or BOTH" with a good synopsis of the language and its history. Java looks very promising. It has Sun and Netscape marketting behind it. It has the internet developers freely sharing and growing the code base. It is a shared platform for everyone that dislikes Microsoft. The developers love it, and optimized incrementa l compilers are being created for it. At the Microsoft Developers Conference there was a late addition press release, that Microsoft had licensed Java from Sun. I wonder when Microsoft will be shipping Java in their browser??? 9.BASIC INTERNET PUBLISHING The majority of the internet publishing market is static publishing. It has become increasingly clear that the platform of choice for static Web Publishing is Page Mill on the Macintosh by Adobe for $100 street-price. It is a real WYSIWYG HTML editor with excellent reviews, and the other macintosh publishing products to work with it. Do not believe the hackers who say that hand-coded HTML is still the best way to go. We just do not have enough time to hand-code all the HTML the world needs. Page Mill even toggles between editing and browsing mode. Of course when you get to the point that you need dynamic pages then NeXT Web Objects looks like a good additive. In the meantime, I believe that it is possible to dual boot your black hardware as a macintosh using a product called daydream. Has anyone done this? 10.NEXTSTEP DEVELOPERS AVAILABLE Here is a quick survey of the NEXTSTEP developers who have asked me to find them positions. 2 Neophytes 19 With 6 Months experience 13 With One year Experience 11 With Two Years Experience 9 With Three Years Experience 5 With Four Years Experience 1 With Five Years Experience 1 With Six Years Experience 1 With Seven Years experience. For more info on any of these people send email to jobs@bpg.com. 11. SIGNAL TO NOISE RATIO One of my readers inside NeXT recently unsubscribed saying: "I find that in the midst of the useful information in the newsletter, there tends to be one or two glaring inaccuracies or wild rumors. Sometimes the falsehoods are so flagrant that they seem to have been put there just to generate a hubbub, possibly in the hope that real information surfaces." His insight is remarkable. Of course he gets the accurate information, because he has the advantage of working within NeXT, which the rest of us do n ot. I apologize for this, but you have to understand that it is the nature of the newsletter. For me to pass through the important information and not filter it too tightly, it is inevitable that I also publish incorrect information. Someone invariably corrects me, the correction is published the next month,and we all benefit. Sometime I go with my hunch at what is happening. The SUN PRIORITIZES INTERNET TOOLS OVER OPENSTEP story is such an example. Certainly it is ! not based on a Sun announcement. Rather it is based on bits of information which have flowed to me. With that story, the pieces fit. Whatever the truth, the story is not that far from accurate. Even if I get it a little wrong, the correct news surfaces. What amazes me is how often my articles are correct, how often I call it right, given the scarcity of information in this NEXT market. Anyhow, I am taking steps to improve the quality of the information content. Thanks for the feedback. 12.NEXTSTEP DEVELOPERS NEEDED The job listings part of this newsletter is growing very fast. There are companies all over the United States, even in Europe asking me to help them find people. In addition to the jobs listed, companies in Boston, Holland, and the San Francisco Bay Area are accepting additional resumes, but are not actively recruiting. Additional jobs arrive on my desktop all the time. I have one or two companies a week asking me to help them find someone. I maintain a list of job seekers, and I post announcements to that list as the jobs become available. If you are thinking of switching jobs, let me know. I probably have just the job for you. I can give you advice on your best job strategy, and I can tell you a lot about the companies that you are considering. If you are interested in any of the following positions, please give me a call at (510) 795-6086, or send email to lozinski@bpg.com with your resume. NeXTMAIL RTF preferred. 12a. NEXTSTEP DEVELOPERS URGENTLY NEEDED. This San Francisco area company needs NEXTSTEP developers urgently. They are interviewing, and flying people in like crazy. 22 days paid vacations. 10 days holidays. 6 Sick Days. Almost as much vacation as in Europe. Project Bonuses. $1500- $5,000. Stock Options. Excellent benefits. They pay all the health premiums for the employees and their dependents. The project is large enough to have a variety of positions, so they should have something just right for you. They are looking for a number of people, and are particularly interested in someone with extensive GUI experience. 12b. VACATION SPECIAL $85 K Warm Sunny Climate. Help a resort develop their business applications, and enjoy the resort while you are at it. Cheap Housing, World Class Entertainment, International City, strong education systems. You need experience developing hotel or resort reservation applications. You also need1 Year NEXTSTEP, 2 Years Objective-C, 4 Years Unix , 2 Years RDBMS. The company would prefer if you had experience with HP Unix , Informix, and EOF. US Citizens Only. Just don't tell the company that I called it a va cation special. 12c. INTRODUCTORY NEXTSTEP POSITIONS I am now able to find positions for developers with not much experience. I have companies in Los Angeles, Michigan, the San Francisco Bay Area, Germany, and Virginia looking for beginning NEXTSTEP developers. I probably know companies in the city of your choice looking for beginning NEXTSTEP developers. This generally means people with up to six months NEXTSTEP development experience, although sometimes I can place people who are active in their user group, but have not developed professionally on NEX TSTEP. 12d. FOREIGN NEXT DEVELOPERS I am now able to find positions for foreign developers with NEXTSTEP experience. I have at least one US consulting company interested and willing to hire foreign developers for projects opening up around the US. They will process your H1 visa. I also have one german company looking for NEXTSTEP developers. EEC Citizenship preferred. 12e. GERMAN SPEAKER NEEDED $80K The company needs a german speaking NEXTSTEP developer. They are willing to pay $80,000 = Deutsche Marks 118,400 per Year. This is considered a desirable location, close to the Alps and skiing. 28 days vacation and 11 days holiday per year. 12f.CHICAGO FINANCIAL FIRMS. Continue to need NeXT developers. They filled the last openings. One company seeks two more strong NeXT developers with experience in relational databases and EOF. The other company seeks one experienced, and one beginner NEXTSTEP developer. Financial Industry experience is a strong positive. Full Benefits, top pay, bonuses, tuition assistance. 12g.FLORIDA POSITION This is an interesting and large project. They are running multiple databases and the Tuxedo Encina transaction Processor ported to NEXTSTEP. The applications are being hosted on the Web. Great place to live. You have the choice of working for the company directly as an employee, or, if you have enough experience, working through a consulting company. 12h.NORTHERN VIRGINIA POSITION Beautiful place to live one hour to mountains. 1 Hour to Chesapeake Bay. 2 Hours to the Atlantic. 1-5 acre plots average homes. Affluent, Educated neighborhood. It is the best time of year. Almost Spring. You have a choice of two consulting companies to work for. Each one reports to the same end client. 6 Month extensible contracts. Your ability to sell yourself to the client is very important. Oracle Database. EOF. Multi-Company Distributed Databases. 4 Years of work Experience needed. 1 Year of NEXTSTEP Experience preferred. 13ERRATTA Linux is being expanded to include multithreading and multiprocessors. Two more Internet Server Development products I missed in the previous list. Tango, a mac product: and Cold Fusion, an NT/95 thingy: 14.MULTIHOMED NEXTSTEP SERVERS My error, it turns out that it is possible to support multiple home pages and IP addresses on NEXTSTEP. It relies on the PPP kernel module. Izumi Ohzawa writes: There are two parts to the PPP distribution packagefor NS. One is a module loaded into kernel at boot time via /etc/rc.local, and the other is the actual PPP daemon "pppd". Multiple virtual IP address stuff uses only the former. Pppd hooks modems to the net via the loaded kernel module, but the kernel module part is more general and is not necessarily tied to any specific interface such as modems. Therefore, it can be used to implement multiple virtual IP addresses on the Ethernet. In this use, pppd part is never used. Manuel Alberto Ricart ,http://www.SmartSoft.COM> adds: You will need to get the source and the NeXT specific changes for the ppp software. Once you ftp them and merge them together, grep for '#define NUM_PPP' and change the number there to the number of interfaces you need. On the version I pulled, this #define was located in pppd/pppd.h but this may change on a future release (the other UNIX sources pull this #define from the Makefile, and for some unknown reason, the porters o f the NEXTSTEP version moved it). After this, all you need to do is recompile. Welcome to Multi-homing heaven. The only remaining issue is that you cannot surf websites you multi-host on the multi-homed machine. If anyone knows how to resolve this, it would be a great step towards doing a few things (yeah, I know we are not supposed to use the server - tell that to my SysAdm). 15BPG NEWS My apologies that this newsletter is being published a week late. I have been flooded with companies looking for developers, and developers looking for positions. Everyone gets the attention that they need to achieve their objectives. If the newsletter had gone out last friday, I would not have been able to help each person fully. I am trying to make the necessary process changes here to stick to the schedule. Realistically the next issue should go out April 7th. Taxes are due April 15th, so I the f ollowing issue will be May 1st. 16HOW TO SUBSCRIBE This newsletter is published twice a month, about the 1st and 15th of each month. Subscriptions are provided free. If you would like to subscribe, please send email to newsletter@bpg.com. To make my job easier, please left justify your name and email address, one line each as follows: Christopher Lozinski lozinski@bpg.com BPG 35032 Maidstone Court Newark, CA 94560 I am also very interested in posting this newsletter to email distribution lists. Feel free to subscribe a friend. Please specify whether you prefer NeXTMAIL or ASCII mail. Please tell me a little about how you are using NEXTSTEP. =END=