Nebula 2/Nebula Two.iso/Newsletters/NSnewsletterApril18.txt

Text File | 1996-04-18 | 22KB | 431 lines

April 18, 1996

Subject: NEXTSTEP NEWSLETTER

1.SUN AND OPENSTEP
2.WHAT IS MISSING IN OPENSTEP ON NT?
3.WHY NEXT PROJECTS FAIL?
4.NEXTSTEP DEVELOPERS INSTANTLY AVAILABLE
5.NETKIT LOOKS REALLY COOL.
6.BETATRON CONFUSION
7.EULOGY FOR MACH OS
8.LONG LIVE MACH
9.NEXTSTEP JOBS EMAIL LIST
10.WEB NEWS
11.WEB TRANSACTIONS NEEDED
12.WHICH WAY WILL THE INTERNET EVOLVE
13.JAVA VS OBJECTIVE-C
14.HIGHWAY 101 BILLBOARDS
15.SUN ANNOUNCES JOE
16. DAYDREAM REPORTS ARE GREAT

17.WANTED TO BUY DAYDREAM
18.NEWSLETTER NEWS
19.HOW TO SUBSCRIBE

1.SUN AND OPENSTEP
Sun is currently planning on selling OPENSTEP User and Openstep
developer as separate unbundled products,  priced comparably to
NEXTSTEP or OPENSTEP on NT.   For a while, they had been distracted
by  JAVA Joe, Java WorkShop, Intranet WorkShop and NEO (CORBA) which
are still consuming most of their resources.  But now Sun is again
paying attention to OPENSTEP.   They are looking for an OPENSTEP
product marketing manager.  If you are interested send me your
resume, and I will forward it to the appropriate person.  This is
good news. The NEXTSTEP market was ecstatic while Sun  was planning
on bundling the product with NEO user ($200).  This market was
depressed while Sun was correctly perceived as being distracted.
Again this market will be upbeat, with Sun investing in OPENSTEP
marketing.  While Sun is not bundling the product, at least customers
will now have multiple suppliers for OPENSTEP.  That overcomes a key
barrier to sales, namely managing the risk of NEXT as a sole source
supplier.  This announcement of Sun's decision to invest in OPENSTEP
marketing is very good news for the NEXTSTEP community.

2.WHAT IS MISSING IN OPENSTEP ON NT?
It is clear that NeXT does not have the resources to port all of
NEXTSTEP to OPENSTEP immediately, so the hot question is what will be
included, and what will not be included with each release.  In the
initial PR1 release of OPENSTEP for NT, new, never-before-seen
features were included, but in the PR2 release  these features have
been removed with the intent to focus on quality.  I do not know
exactly what will be included in the upcoming releases.  At the NeXT
Corporate Users Group, customers were reported to have asked how will
they manage NT networks if NETINFO is not ported to NT.   I have
heard that NeXT is telling their customers to use Microsoft CC: Mail
on NT, presumably because NEXTMAIL will not be available.  In general
I understand that  NeXT is not planning on initially porting the
Applications, but rather is focussing on the libraries and
development tools first.


3.WHY NEXT PROJECTS FAIL?
I have had the great privilege to see many NEXTSTEP projects.  Some
are wildly successful, others are like pouring money into a seive,
nothing much accumulates.   A major cause of failure is poor
planning.  Prototyping is a powerful approach, but does not stand
alone.  A plan is also needed.   People would never build a building
without a set of design drawings, but they are happy to build
software without these design drawings.  A good plan must start with
a description of the existing system.   This is not just the existing
software and hardware systems, but also a description of the business
processes to be supported.  With this baseline, it is possible to
create a plan for the project.  The business process plan describes
how the company should be run.  The functional specification
determines what the software will do. The user interface prototypes
show what the applications will look like to the end-users.   Data
Schemas define the relational databases, and Object Models document
the application objects. The process descriptions define what
processes will be running on the network, and the process diagrams
show their intercommunication.   The Data distribution diagrams show
which processes and which data will reside on which computers.  These
are the engineering documents that are needed to build a
sophisticated business application.  They form the basis for
concensus on what your project is building.  They can also be used
for engineering analyses to determine whether the system is able to
function according to its requirements.  These are very important
documents.  The projects I have seen that lack a solid design, are
the ones that get into trouble.  Let me know if you would like to see
more articles on this subject.

4.NEXTSTEP DEVELOPERS INSTANTLY AVAILABLE
 I now have 77 active job seekers, experienced NEXTSTEP developers
ready to respond to your job listing.  For the last month, I have
been successfully providing next day service.  You tell me what type
of person you are looking for, where the position is located, and by
the next day, I will fax or NEXTMAIL you 5-10 resumes of people who
fit your requirements, and have expressed an interest in your
position.  I know developers who have experience developing large
corporate applications.    I know developers who have up to 7 years
of NEXTSTEP experience.   I know developers willing to charge $40K
/year.  I know developers available to start work tommorrow.   Let me
know what you need, and I will find you the right person.



5.NETKIT LOOKS REALLY COOL.
Netsurfer Inc.'s netkit allows you to build applications that merge
corporate applications with the Web.  It provides an Interface
Builder Palette with a Web View.   You can drag and drop a Web View
into your applications user interface.  Netkit  merges Video, Audio,
HTML, with all the grace of NEXTSTEP.  Netkit allows an HTTP server
to serve up a NEXTSTEP application, and run it in the display window.
Great flexibility, serious security implications.  Netkit includes a
good HTML parser and the company hopes to some day build an HTML
editor on top of it.   Alas Netsurfer Inc is clearly underfunded.
They only have 3 and 1/4 developers on the project, with the company
president flying around the country demonstrating it.   In practice,
I think that testing is being pushed out to the Beta Users.  But who
cares?  This is totally fantastic software, beautifully designed,
that keeps NEXTSTEP an exciting place to work.   Do your best to go
buy a copy, so that they have more money to invest in development of
this cool stuff. You should expect parts of the product to migrate to
NT independent of OPENSTEP.   Any Beta Testers out there with
feedback?



6.BETATRON CONFUSION
In the last newsletter, I mentioned the Betatron counting downloads
of Web-Objects.  Well accept that number with a grain of salt.  Some
people downloaded all three versions.  Some percentage of the
downloads were interrupted or not completed. Many others  downloaded
from the FTP site without registration.  But the most important
confusion is that  some people downloaded multiple times, once for
each new release.   NeXT internally maintains the actual numbers for
how many copies of each version were downloaded.  It would be nice if
NeXT would publish that more informative statistic.

7.EULOGY FOR MACH OS
I can now say on good authority that NeXT has ceased investment in
the Mach Operating system.  Yes, the new version of OPENSTEP on Mach
has been upgraded to be compatible with OPENSTEP for Windows NT, but
the underlying operating system is being left as is.  I believe that
NeXT's intention is to mothball it, but who can say for sure.  If it
is the case that NeXT Mach will soon be history,  I think I now
understand why we should mourn for it.  There are several reasons.
It is the only operating system that supports fat binaries.  It has
very elegant integration of software.   In last month's newsletter, I
reported on how to fix the Multi-homed Server Bug in NEXTSTEP using
dynamically Loadable Kernel Modules.  There was even a module that
allowed NEXTSTEP to talk Appletalk events.   This flexibility and
extensibility in the operating system is very impressive, and I
believe not possible, and certainly not easy on Windows NT.  So if
you needed to modify the OS, NeXT Mach was great.  But the market
neither cared nor understood.


8.LONG LIVE MACH
Meanwhile some NEXTSTEP diehards plan on running OPENSTEP on MACH
for as long as they can.  NeXT should encourage that by making a loud
public committment to MACH as the alternative to NT.  At the same
time, they should make a strong committment to a long-term support of
their existing NEXTSTEP Customers.  Part of this would be to
recognize that it is the individuals who helped make them a success,
therefore their committment should be to people who helped them.
Let the masses run OPENSTEP on NT, the more serious outfits run MACH.
As part of this strategy, NeXT should write some software (a device
driver?) for NT that makes NT fat-binary compatible.  Similary NeXT
should port NetInfo over to Windows NT, to allow for easy system
administration of mixed NT-NEXTSTEP networks.     This would also
allow some customers to migrate production applications gracefully to
OPENSTEP for NT.

9.NEXTSTEP JOBS EMAIL LIST
This part of the newsletter is evolving very quickly.  A monthly
newsletter did not respond to hiring managers needs for finding
people quickly.  In order to respond quickly to companies, I now have
a separate email list for job announcements.  On average, every day I
post a new job there.  Last Monday, I posted four different jobs.  If
you are looking for a NEXTSTEP position, you need to be on that list.
I hope that this will soon be  the most vibrant job market in the
NEXTSTEP community.    Recent postings include jobs in New England,
Virginia, the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, Florida,
Washington D.C., Ohio, Chicago, and Europe.   Most of those locations
had multiple companies looking for NEXTSTEP developers, usually for
multiple developers.  Industries include Telecom, Financial, Movie
Production, Hotel Management, Insurance, customer support, nuclear
power plant maintenance, shipping, and web server construction.
There could be a position just right for you.   How do you get on the
list?  It is easy.  Send me your resume in NEXTMAIL RTF format.
<[e-mail]> I will not send anyone your resume without your
explicit permission.  You will be added to the list, and you will
literally receive a new job announcement every day.   When you see a
job you like, let me know, and I will send in your resume.   If you
ever have any questions, I am here to answer them.  Almost all
positions get filled directly from the list, so in general I will not
be advertising jobs in the newsletter.  There are a few exceptions.
There are four types of people I have not been able to find enough
of.  There is now a very strong demand for developers in Virginia,
$50-$70/hr.  I am also not able to find an experienced database
administrator who wants to work in Holland and also develop on NeXT.
Also anyone with OPENSTEP on NT experience is very much needed.
Finally anyone with SCI, SITK, Polygraph and other security
clearances, it would be illegal to name, is needed.  If would like to
be on the jobs mailing list, send email to <[e-mail]>

10.WEB NEWS
The following CD store application was built within 10 man days.
This demonstrates how rapidly a server can be built with WebObjects.

http://www.gonet.de/cgi-bin/WebObjects/Examples/VirtualCDStore


Known Bugs in NeXT Software Version 33.2  has been released.  It
covers bugs in all of NeXT's products, including OpenStep and EOF.
ftp://next-ftp.peak.org/pub/next/documents/KBNS.33.2.README.rtf
ftp://next-ftp.peak.org/pub/next/documents/KBNS.33.2.rtf.gz
ftp://next-ftp.peak.org/pub/next/documents/KBNS.verification.32.1.tar

Cup Of Coffee has been Rreleased.  It is a NeXT-based Interface
Builder for JAVA.
 http://www.contrib.com/melonSoft

Web Objects components are available for demonstration at:
http://wofapps2.next.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/ReusableComponentsEx
or available for download at:
http://www.next.com/Pubs/Documents/Download

Lighthouse announces WebVision for building data-driven charts on the
Web.
http://www.lighthouse.com
http://www.lighthouse.com/PressReleases/WebVisionAnnounced.html

Web Objects notes are available at:
 www.cea.edu/jenniwoo/BANG_WOdevSIG

The NEBULA CD ROM has a Web Site:
http://www.cdrom.com/titles/nebula.html
They sent me a free CDROM.  It looks useful to me.  It has the
NeXT-specific version of the Taylor UUCP libraries on it.    They
also have a font garden CDROM with fonts and lots of icons.  I like
it when people send me free stuff.


New Mail Utilities can be found at:

ftp://next-ftp.peak.org/pub/next/submissions/mailapp-utilities.1.5.NIH
S.bs.tar.gz
On peanuts you should be able to find it very soon at this URL:
ftp://ftp.informatik.uni-muenchen.de/pub/comp/platforms/next/Mail/prog
rams/mailapp-utilities.1.5.NIHS.bs.tar.gz

ENHANCED MAIL Bundle Version 1.2 is available at
ftp://next-ftp.peak.org/pub/next/submissions/EnhanceMail.1.2.NIHS.bs.t
ar.gz
ftp://ftp.informatik.uni-muenchen.de/pub/comp/platforms/next/Mail/bund
les/EnhanceMail.1.2.NIHS.bs.tar.gz

NXAPP and OPENSTEP quarterly journal is on a cd-rom called Developer
Source. It includes AI Expert, Byte, C++ Users Journal, Client/server
Computing, Data Comm, Delphi Informant, Dr. Dobb's, Pretty much all
the IEEE publications, MSJ, NXApp, Open Computing, Openstep Journal,
OS/2 Developer, Software Dev, Sysadmin, UNIX review, Windows
Developer's Journal... and more.  Includes Windows-based Search
Engine.  $450/Yr.  Contact [e-mail]  or 800 370-6717.



11.WEB TRANSACTIONS NEEDED
NeXT is very wisely targeting Web interfaces to relational databases.
At Web Mania, Steve Jobs gave the example of one of his employees who
ordered flowers across the Web.  In the middle of the process, the
network crashed, so there was no way to tell whether the transaction
made it to the server or not.  The situation was further complicated
because the flower company's customer-service database was different
from their internet server database.  Steve Jobs correctly concluded
that they would be better off if they had used a single database, and
built their application using Web Objects and EOF.   He failed to
note that  the problem is at least partially the fault of the
middleware connecting the Netscape browser and the server database.
Netscape browsers do not support guaranteed message delivery from the
client to the server.  They do not support the concept of committing
a transaction locally, and rolling it up to the server as soon as it
is available.  This feature is essential for mission-critical Web
Applications.   If it had existed, the flower buyer would have been
confident that the order would be processed as soon as the server was
reconnected to the web.   In my opinion, NeXT should be doing such
Netscape Browser extensions to work with their Web Objects product,
and target mission-critical Web-Applications.   That would give them
a significant competitive advantage against the other Internet server
development tools.


12.WHICH WAY WILL THE INTERNET EVOLVE
In the Web Objects presentation, NeXT stated a future direction of
JAVA on the server.  This is an interesting direction, but I think
that NeXT must have excellent market intelligence if they know which
direction the Web will go.  I think that they should adopt a
different corporate strategy.  They should acknowledge that it is
impossible to predict the future of the Internet, and that the best
way to stay on top is to scatter many seeds and harvest the ones that
succeed.  NeXT should actively encourage the third-party market,
treat all ISV's equally, buy out the promising companies, and use
NeXT's market presence to push the interesting products.   Let us
look at the history of opportunities.


I understand that the Web was originally developed on NEXTSTEP.
NeXT could have cloned the software, created a fantastic PDO server,
and be where Netscape is today(almost).   Once the basic Web worked,
people needed an easy way to author HTML.  There was a company called
Pages that developed a GUI HTML editor, which  eventually closed
down.  NeXT could have bought it out for not much and published an
HTML editor back when most servers were still being developed by
hand.   Dynamic Servers are the next big item in the evolution of the
Internet.   Earlier last year ITS released WebRex, which beat Web
Objects to market by many months.   It is a pity that NeXT was not
able to buy the WebRex product and ship earlier.   (Instead the two
companies developed such an antagonistic relationship that even I got
caught in the middle.  ) Other opportunities are continuing to
appear.  NeXT could buy Netsurfer and blow away the competition.
There are undeniably other interesting products out there.  All of
these would benefit from having a billionaire behind them.  Most of
the vendors would be willing to swap intellectual capital for stock
in a company that could go public.   The real strength in the NeXT
market is the originality and entrepreneurialism of the developers.
NeXT needs to invest in that community and harvest the results.


And what if the developers wanted too much stock for their
application?  Why clone it and pay them nothing of course.  ( I hate
to say that, but my readers have asked me to give a balanced
newsletter).


13.JAVA VS OBJECTIVE-C
One reader asks whether  JAVA will end up surpassing both Objective-C
and even Smalltalk, becoming the language that brings dynamics and
extensibility beyond the educated few.  I think not.   First of all,
it is not clear that JAVA will become as hot as its hype indicates.
The applets are large, so download speed is an issue.  Its
performance is slow, so it  will depend on Microsoft actually
releasing the  Just-In-Time Compiler  (JIT) scheduled for end of
summer.  With such speed improvements only on Windows, it will no
longer be effectively cross-platform.  Furthermore, JAVA reportedly
has large security holes, which make is unsafe to download JAVA apps
from the internet to inside a firewall.  But if it's corporate use is
therefore restricted to intranet applications, there are better
tools. While JAVA is interesting, Java is not the solution to all
problems.

14.HIGHWAY 101 BILLBOARDS
NeXT had a very nice billboard on Highway 101, in redwood city,
announcing the Web Mania event.  They kept it up long after the
conference was over.  Two weeks ago it was closed down.  This week
they put up a new billboard announcing that WebObjects is now
shipping.   Where else but Silicon Valley do software companies buy
highway bill-boards?

15.SUN ANNOUNCES JOE
Two weeks ago, 3/26, Sun launched Joe, a netscape plug-in that talks
to CORBA servers  directly.   Joe is freely available and Internet
downloadable beginning with a Beta version in late April and First
Customer Ship this summer.  <http://www.sun.com/sunsoft/neo>

16. DAYDREAM REPORTS ARE GREAT

Generally customers are quite pleased with Daydream's ability to turn
a NeXT computer into a Macintosh.   You can read the review article
on Daydream in Issue # 2, October 1994 of the NeXT IN LINE Magazine.
Page 23.  Try <[e-mail]> or <http://www.quix.com> failing that
<[e-mail]>.    Of course it costs some $700 dollars new.
For twice that price, you can buy a new Macintosh.    Alternatively,
you can use the Partner product from IPT to integrate Macintoshes
with NEXTSTEP.  It does file and printer sharing.  Their phone number
is [phone].  Their fax is [phone].   It is also
available through opensource <http://www.opensource.com>.

17.WANTED TO BUY DAYDREAM
Does any one have a copy of daydream to sell.  If so, please let me
know.  Send email to [e-mail]  My posting on usenet did not
find any sellers.  I guess the owners like daydream too much to sell
their copies.



18.NEWSLETTER NEWS

There are big changes happening with the newsletter.  The newsletter
has become a full-time activity for me.  It has become profitable.
(Not bad for a free publication)  Its quality is improving;  I am
more carefully previewing stories with the appropriate individuals.
Its coverage is improving;  I am  more carefully scanning usenet  to
not miss any important events.  I am getting better at seeing the
trends; I described the Sun situation quite well last month, with
really very limited information.  The  subscriber base is growing
rapidly.   The newsletter is widely read within the NEXT community.
Even last month's critic clarified that he dropped his subscription
because he was receiving it from a separate distribution list.
Another person within NeXT wrote to say:  "I think your newsletter is
really good-- very readable and informative. I strongly disagree with
whoever wrote you the  'unsubscribe' message."  One reader told me
that he no longer reads usenet he just reads the newsletter.  I hope
that that will be an increasing trend.    Altogether, it means that
the newsletter has become an institution in the NeXT marketplace.



19.HOW TO SUBSCRIBE
This newsletter is published  once a month.  Additional newsflashes
go out occasionally.  Subscriptions are provided free.   If you would
like to subscribe, please send email to [e-mail].  Please
tell me a little about how you are using NEXTSTEP.  To make my job
easier, please left justify your name and email address, one line
each as follows:

Christopher Lozinski
BPG
35032 Maidstone Court
Newark, CA 94560
[e-mail]

Please specify whether you prefer NeXTMAIL or ASCII mail. Feel free
to subscribe a friend.   I am also very interested in posting this
newsletter to email distribution lists.





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