Re: run-time list of selectors in protocol?
Re: run-time list of selectors in protocol?
- Subject: Re: run-time list of selectors in protocol?
- From: Erik Buck <email@hidden>
- Date: Fri, 9 Dec 2005 14:08:29 -0500
I am also curious who your government customer is.
I have worked in the US aerospace community for many years, and I
built Openstep based solutions for several government and non
government agencies. I have also occasionally come across Openstep
based solutions that others created.
I have never come across any Cocoa technology based solution that was
acceptable to a US government agency. I don't know for sure why, but
here are some theories.
- I believe official DoD and GAO policies prohibit procurement of
sole source desktop computers, and since that is 99% of the computers
Apple sells and Cocoa is only available for use on Apple computers,
that pretty much takes Cocoa solutions out of the running.
- The government is very aware of the vanishing vendor and vanishing
product problems endemic to the computer industry and has policies in
place to avoid the problems. One such policy is a requirement that
companies hold critical software in escrow and assign intellectual
property rights to the government in the event that the critical
software is ever removed from the market or becomes unsupported.
Apple is obviously unwilling or unable to comply with that
requirement. believe it or not, Microsoft does.
- Apple seriously screwed government agencies that had deployed
Openstep solutions in the field by refusing to sell more Openstep
deployment licenses at any cost. The senior government officials
involved at the time are even more senior now and they have long
memories. I was present at a speach given by NASA's chief
scientist. NASA has historically been a big user of Apple products.
After the Openstep debacle, the chief scientist said that he would
recommend almost any alternative to purchasing another product from
Apple ever again.
- Just as Macs have long suffered from a perception that they are not
for "real" work, there is also a perception that they are not for
"government" work.
Here is a small note to Apple: If you would have let the government
run Cocoa applications on multi-source Commercial Off The Shelf
(COTS) single board embedded computers (PPC or Intel), there is a
good chance I could have sold 15-20 thousand units even at a price
premium in excess of the retail cost of a new high end Mac for one
aerospace product alone.
One more story: During the openstep debacle, my company offered to
bundle a Mac with every copy of our application if Apple would sell
us the openstep enterprise licenses we needed. An extra cost of 5K
for every copy of our product would not have prevented a single
sale. We knew full well or customers would just toss the macs in a
dumpster, but we hoped this would satisfy Apple. It did not.
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