[ocaml-biz] defining commercial success

[Brian Hurt]

On Sun, 29 Aug 2004, Brandon J. Van Every wrote:

> Linux succeeded in large part because of the GNU tools, which comprised
> 80% of the system and had been around for some time.  So, you can see
> the rampup as longer than 5 years in some respects if you like.
> Equally, you can also see that Linux did something that GNU and BSD Unix
> failed to do.

Timing helps a lot.  Circa 1990-1991, cheap 386 PC's with "large" (2Mbyte) 
memories had dropped in price to the point where poor college students 
could afford them.  I know, as I was a poor college student at the time, 
and I bought one (for about $600).  The 286 was broken sufficiently to 
make it functionally impossible to write a usable Unix-level OS for it, so 
this was the first time Unix-capable machines were cheap.

Windows 3.0 didn't exist yet, DOS was still the standard desktop OS.  And 
the 386 was obviously overpowered for backwards, dumb DOS.  DRDOS (my OS 
of the day) was a little better, but still not what the machine was 
clearly capable of.

BSD didn't support the PC at the moment- the first PC BSD kernels didn't 
appear until 1993.  When I enquired on usenet BSD groups, I was snottily 
told to buy a "real" machine, like a Sun workstation.  Which I would have 
loved to do, if I had $3,000.  I didn't, I barely had $600.  Also, BSD had 
the whole AT&T lawsuit hanging over it's head.

Hurd was around, but was obviously pre-pre-alpha.  Worse than that, it 
required a $100 license for the Mach microkernel to be purchased from CMU.  
I didn't have another $100, and if I did, I would have bought more 
hardware.  Coherent Unix also cost $100, and other commercial Unixes 
(Unixware, SCO (they were different companies back them), NeXT, etc) cost 
even more.

Minix was obviously not intended to be anything except a testbed.  

If Linus hadn't written Linux, someone else would have.  In some alternate 
Universe, you might be debating with Linus Torvalds about the commercial 
success of Brianux.  Or Linus and I might be debating the commercial 
success of Brandux.

I think a similiar "Window of Opportunity" exists for Ocaml.  C++ has way
too many sharp corners for large scale development, especially large
scale, distributed development like Open Source.  Java is controlled by
Sun, and is too large and slow.  C# is controlled by Microsoft, and is too
large and slow, because it's a Java knock-off.  Python, Ruby, and Lua are
interpreted languages, and thus too slow.

-- 
"Usenet is like a herd of performing elephants with diarrhea -- massive,
difficult to redirect, awe-inspiring, entertaining, and a source of
mind-boggling amounts of excrement when you least expect it."
                                - Gene Spafford 
Brian