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Re: Reply to Ousterhout's reply (was Re: Ousterhout and Tcl ...)

To: scsh@martigny.ai.mit.edu
Subject: Re: Reply to Ousterhout's reply (was Re: Ousterhout and Tcl ...)
From: Steve Cassidy <steve@srsuna.shlrc.mq.edu.au>
Date: 10 Apr 1997 13:36:32 +1000
Organization: Macquarie University, NSW, Australia

> As for Tcl, it's there for one reason and one reason only -- strong
> corporate backing.  We've got a powerful company that wants to
> make a quick buck and therefore is using its clout to force
> Tcl down our throats.  This is the same tactic used by charlatans
> like Micro$oft.  Indeed that's the only possible explanation
> as to why a glorified text preprocessor would even get a second
> look -- that and the fact that it is riding on the coattails
> of Tk.

Many people, myself included, started using tcl/tk before Sun took it
up. Remember that this is a free tool, which for my purposes is very
important.  The current corporate backing is certainly seeking to
extend the user base of tcl/tk but, I would imagine, a vast proportion
of the current code base would still be there if Sun hadn't taken over.
My own decision to use tcl was based on easy embedding in my code and
the presence of Tk.  I'm no great fan of the language but it is wrong
to compare Sun with Microsoft in this manner -- microsoft is unlikely
to give you the source of VB or port it to unix. 

-- 
Steve Cassidy
                Speech, Hearing and Language Research Center
                     School of English Linguistics and Media
Tel: +61 2 9850 8729                    Macquarie University
Fax: +61 2 9850 8240                    North Ryde,NSW, 2109
steve@srsuna.shlrc.mq.edu.au                       Australia
http://srsuna.shlrc.mq.edu.au/~steve

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