[ExI] Xanadu Revived?!

[Chris Hibbert]

Michael M. Butler wrote:
 >> >Well, to see _a_ story. It's Wikipedia. I counted six factual errors

And Amara responded:
 > which are?

Michael's experience covers a period that partially overlaps mine, so I 
notice different errors.

In this paragraph, I detect the point of view of one of the "factions", 
and a mischaracterization of the divestiture and history of the factions.

   "Then a newer group of programmers, hired from Xerox PARC, used
   the problems with this software as justification to rewrite the
   software in Smalltalk. This effectively split the group into
   two factions, and the decision to rewrite put a deadline
   imposed by Autodesk out of the team's reach. In August 1992,
   Autodesk divested the Xanadu group, which became the Xanadu
   Operating Company, which struggled due to internal conflicts
   and lack of investment."

The "newer group" was led by Mark Miller, who'd been a part of the 
project from the Swarthmore days.

"Justification" is pejorative.  Since the "problems" are admitted here, 
it seems more like a "reason".  I worked at XOC from mid-1991 to early 
1993.  It was XOC the entire time, as I recall.

I was the Manager of Software Development for most of the time I was 
there before the divestiture, and there was no deadline imposed by 
Autodesk that I ever heard of.  We announced deadlines we set for 
ourselves, and delivered software to customers at Autodesk and elsewhere 
on-time or within a few weeks of target dates.

I was in Europe (watching the Olympics in Barcelona) when the 
divestiture happened.  Autodesk divested all of its external 
subsidiaries at the same time in an effort to put more attention into 
their revenue-producing products.  It's hard to see why anyone familiar 
with the situation would say that Xanadu was singled out for failing to 
meet commitments when the divestiture was general.

The part about internal conflicts is true, though the intervention of 
Memex (mentioned in the following paragraph) addressed the lack of 
investment.

Chris
-- 
It is easy to turn an aquarium into fish soup, but not so
easy to turn fish soup back into an aquarium.
-- Lech Walesa on reverting to a market economy.

Chris Hibbert
hibbert at mydruthers.com
http://mydruthers.com