Re: Kodak buys RSI!!

["Pete Riley" <uk2(at)linuxfan.com>]

Hi Ronn:

I do hope you're right. But from a business perspective, unless your
specific needs fall within the narrow interest that Kodak has for RSI, I
think it's a lost cause. And it's not that I'm not an optimist....I was a
Manchester City fan for 10 years.

My primary interests lie in timeseries analysis and visualization of 3-D
simulation datasets. As best as I can tell, these two fields, which are
currently well-covered in IDL, are not aligned with Kodak's primary
interests. Now I've already paid for my 5.4 licences, so I'm not going to
jump ship just yet. It would, however, take some convincing from David Stern
or others in higher positions at RSI to convince me to stay.

We should remember that IDL is a good all-around product, but it has a
number of limitations. Perhaps this is the perfect kick we need to embrace
open technology and all plough our efforts into openDX?

If you want to be unrealistically optimistic, how about the following
scenario: Kodak only wants Spyglass technology, or whatever, and doesn't
care about IDL. They follow IBMs lead and make the IDL source code
publically available....then I wake up.

-Pete

"ronn kling" <ronn@rlkling.com> wrote in message
B5F67EBD.A90%ronn@rlkling.com">news:B5F67EBD.A90%ronn@rlkling.com...
> Everyone,
>
> My first reaction when I saw the announcement was "great! Now they can put
> real money and backing into IDL".  I know that most of the posts have been
> negative, but I just don't see it that way.
>
> First, as someone who is out doing cold calls to get work, the buying of
RSI
> by Kodak is only a plus. Now I can say that I do most of my development
> using a product from Kodak instead of saying "a small company in Boulder".
> I can't understate how much more comfortable this will make potential
> customers of IDL. And of course, the more IDL customers, the better the
> product should be.
>
> Second, Kodak has the cash to add more engineers to the development team.
> This should only improve the product we get.
>
> Third, even if image processing is the emphasis and not pure science that
> will only help us.  Image people are as interested in surface fitting,
> fft's, 2D and 3D graphics, optimization, and statistical techniques as we
> are.
>
> Finally, even if (when) Kodak decides to expand out of the traditional IDL
> market they will pay attention to current users.  To not do that would be
> extremely shortsighted, and since Kodak has been around about 100 years I
> don't expect that behaviour from them.
>
> Call me an optimist, but I still think the purchase is a great thing!
>
>
> -Ronn
>
> --
> Ronn Kling
> Ronn Kling Consulting
> email: ronn@rlkling.com
> "Application Development with IDL" programming book updated for IDL5.3!
> Shareware and Freeware at: http://www.rlkling.com/
>
>