[Oberon] Multiple incompatibilities with ISPs

[Douglas G. Danforth]

eas-lab at absamail.co.za wrote:
...
> The last thing we need is a few isolated users patching their code 
> individually.  Where is the central control !
> 
> -- Chris Glur.

Ideally there is no central control, only a coordinated
interaction between distributed parts.  However, there
needs to be a critical mass and there needs to be
enough commonality (alignment) between the members
to move forward.  Unfortunately, it looks like
money is a necessary ingredient to maintain and
grow systems.

For what it is worth, here is my ranking
(from easiest to use to hardest to use) of the
variaus oberon systems

1. BlackBox/Component Pascal
2. Linz Oberon V4
3. ETH Oberon V4
4. Ofront (Josef Templ)
5. ETH S3 without gadgets
6. ETH S3 with gadgets
7. ETH Native oberon
?. Bluebottle (not enought experience)

I consider myself a very strong advocate of Oberon and
yet I am fragmented even here.

When working within a company I can venture to mention
Blackbox becasue it is commercially supported and available
on Windows (unfortunately not on Unix).  I do not even
attempt to mention ETH Oberon (S3) since there is no
compatibility with any other software.  I do mention
and have used Ofront in commercial environments since
it can generate C code runable on unix platforms.  Its
not easy to do but at least I can develop under BlackBox
and port to Unix.

It is my hope that Bluebottle can continue the ETH work
and provide something new that is attractive to the
commercial environement (and hence provide funds for
people to maintain it).  Work at the Jet Propulsion
Lab (JPL) in Pasadena California is progressing on
hardware where massively parallel processors have
their own embedded memory.  This should fit nicely
with active Oberon.  But that is just a fantasy at
this point.  We need solid reliable and supported
software that is viable in the commercial market
place now.

-Doug