UK Lab Responsible for VNC To Close 166
NexUK writes "Guardian Online has an article about the imminent closure of the UK based AT&T lab , the place that brought us VNC, the popular desktop remote control system. The article talks about a nice "Toys" budget where the employees could buy gadgets without prior authorization." AT&T Strikes again, I'm surprised they haven't bought PARC and closed it down too.
what about omniORB?!?!?!?!?!? (Score:3, Insightful)
What a shame... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:This totally blows... (Score:3, Insightful)
But how much did you PAY AT&T for VNC? They don't run this lab for your benefit alone ... they run it to make money. If in their cost-benefit analysis the lab is a liability to the corporation, then they have not only the right, but the fiduciary responsibility to shut it down. Just because a lab comes out with neat stuff doesn't mean there is a good reason for the owner to keep it open.
If you are so convinced that it is worth pouring money into, it shouldn't be that hard to find a group of investors willing to give you the cash to buy and run the place as you see fit. That's the way commerce works! The fact that no one is interested in buying the place indicates, to me at least, that it might not be such a valuable property as many comments seem to think it is....
Re:Lame header (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:VNC never was revolutionary (Score:3, Insightful)
VNC wasn't supposed to be remote control software in the beginning. It was supposed to be the foundation of a thin-client computing environment.
I swear, some of the best innovations are not carefully planned in advance, but spring forth from where you least expect them.
A note from a VNC developer (Score:3, Insightful)
1) AT&T Labs has not released a significant version of VNC for a little while now, yet VNC development continues on many fronts. These efforts will therefore not cease just because the AT&T Lab goes away. Examples of non-AT&T projects involving VNC:
ChromiVNC [uklinux.net] (MacOS 7.5/9.x server) - maintained by myself, Jonathan Morton.
VNCThing [webthing.net] (MacOS Carbon viewer) - maintained by Dair Grant.
OSXVNC [osxvnc.com] (MacOS X server)
TightVNC [tightvnc.com] (ultra-efficient Win32 and UNIX servers and viewers) - maintained by Constantin Kaplinsky.
TridiaVNC [tridiavnc.com] (semi-commercial Win32 and UNIX servers and viewers) - maintained by Tridia Corporation.
A large number of independent viewers, as well as a few servers, for minority and hand-held platforms are also available.
Each of the above is independent of the AT&T Labs, although most use at least some of the AT&T code.
2) Most people who use VNC seriously, use the independent versions because they are noticeably further advanced than the AT&T versions. In fact, generally progress on the AT&T versions has been limited to occasional bugfixes for some years.
3) Support for most versions of VNC (but not normally TridiaVNC, for which commercial support from Tridia is available) is primarily conducted on a central mailing list, currently operated from an AT&T server. The posting rate from AT&T representatives or developers is very low. As a group, VNC developers are currently discussing where to move the support list to ensure it's continued operation.
This is all made possible by the GPL.