[Oberon] V4 versus S3 survey

[Treutwein Bernhard]

Just some thoughts:

>1. Would it be better if it were a growth story? Better in what sense? 
> Better for whom?
[...]
>We all know how great it it is. Perhaps it makes sense to ask how bad it is. Why
>bad?

hmm, I am not sure. I guess a growth story would have suffered even more 
from the forking than Oberon System suffered already (V4/S3/ETHOS/AOS/A2).

I personally think that its failure is due to the former requirement of a large 
graphic display, which were expensive at that time (late 1980ies/beginning 
1990ies) and the binary Text file format, which deterred many people.

>But Oberon and Oberon System is doing even worse than BB, if we define "bad"
>as "very few users". So why?

Lack of support? Lack of community? Forked repositories? No central platform?

--
   Bernhard

>-----Original Message-----
>From: Skulski, Wojciech [mailto:skulski at pas.rochester.edu]
>Sent: Monday, November 20, 2017 2:53 PM
>To: ETH Oberon and related systems
>Subject: Re: [Oberon] V4 versus S3 survey
>
>Oberon isn't exactly a growth story.
>
>A couple questions:
>
>1. Would it be better if it were a growth story? Better in what sense? Better for
>whom?
>
>2. Assuming that "yes, it would be better", then why is it not? What is missing?
>What is wrong?
>
>We all know how great it it is. Perhaps it makes sense to ask how bad it is. Why
>bad?
>
>Similar questions could be asked of BlackBox, but here the story is a bit different.
>BB was a commercial product whose marketing was not that great. Also the
>company had an idealistic vision of the users community (that is, programmers
>and developers) who were itching for a good language running in a good
>framework. Somehow the professional developers are different from what the
>company was thinking. So now BB has found another niche where it is reportedly
>doing well.
>
>But Oberon and Oberon System is doing even worse than BB, if we define "bad"
>as "very few users". So why?
>
>W
>
>________________________________________
>From: Oberon [oberon-bounces at lists.inf.ethz.ch] on behalf of Andreas
>Pirklbauer [andreas_pirklbauer at yahoo.com]
>Sent: Monday, November 20, 2017 3:49 AM
>To: ETH Oberon and related systems
>Subject: [Oberon]  V4 versus S3 survey
>
>> 1. The community is small. Assuming that 29 persons who
>> responded (thank you!) represent 1/2 of the community,
>> there are under 100 Oberon users worldwide.
>
>That's another way of saying that Oberon isn't exactly a growth
>story. There were more Oberon developers in the 90s..
>