[antlr-interest] Report of GUI's death greatly exaggerated

[Andreas Stefik]

On Sun, Oct 9, 2011 at 11:22 PM, Michael Bedward
<michael.bedward at gmail.com> wrote:
> As a long-time NB user I really like the sound of ANTLRWorks becoming
> an NB Platform app. Just two things I'd be cautious about:
>
> 1. Oracle's commitment and what this means for platform stability.
> Recent events, such as dropping support for the Python and Ruby
> plugins (euphemistically termed "giving them to the community") raise
> worries about Oracle's commitment to anything that isn't seen as
> commercially attractive in the very short term.

I recall when Ruby support was dropped, they showed some statistics
from the Gesture collector on how many people use it. So far as I
recall, it was dropped because very, very few people actually used the
plugins. I don't remember the stats off the top of my head, but at the
time I recall thinking it was probably the right decision. Since that
time, they've been able to dedicate more resources to other projects,
many of which are really neat (~7.1 branch).

So, I don't work for Oracle and have no vested interest, but I don't
think it was so much commercial interests as it was a lack of interest
from the community.

Just my opinion. Awesome work, Ter, you and Sam are moving going fast!

Stefik