I've been on the Haskell list for over a year now as a bystander interested
in this new area of functional programming. My background is on the
marketing side of the software business and have worked for some of the
large ones (but not Microsoft!).
The recent thread of notes to "Could Haskell be taken over by Microsoft?"
bears out what I've been thinking over the past year about Haskell which is
... "How on Earth is this Haskell stuff, not withstanding its merits, ever
going to make it in the real world?". From what I've read and seen I really
see Haskell as nothing more than another 'interesting' computer language but
ultimately confined to the academic/research community.
The situation would change dramatically if say, a Microsoft, picked it up
and ran with it. But they wouldn't do it unless they had full control over
the language which the Haskell community wouldn't allow.
On the other hand, Haskell could follow the Linux route with a GNU license.
No problem with this except how many customers are seriously going to take
the leap of faith. It is a sad fact of life that the majority of the "real"
market consists of conservative customers who look for a number of
(non-product) things from a technology component including supplier status,
pricing, support, and so on. Having a a number of small companies providing
Haskell support won't cut the mustard in the real 'big' world.
It's fair to say that the jury is still out on Java. It may well turn out
to be a success and then maybe not but just think of the hundreds of
millions of dollars that have been spent on its development and marketing in
the past few years.
If the Haskell community wants Haskell to be a significant product in the
computer language and software development markets then the only route open
is to setup a company whose sole purpose is that ... Everything else (for
the Haskell community) is just wishful thinking.
Dinesh
