From: Dinesh Vadhia <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Fw: Could Haskell be taken over by Microsoft? Date: Tue, 21 Jul 1998 14:49:07 -0700 [...] > 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. > [...] > > 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. I don't believe this. Look at Perl. It is distribute by the "Artistic License" and I think everybody on this list would be happy if Haskell had only a tenth of the popularity of Perl. (Even GHC's compiler driver is written in Perl ;-) Cheers, Manuel
