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UK Lab Responsible for VNC To Close
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.
Anyone know what'll happen to omniORB, the good C++ CORBA ORB produced outta bell labs?!
"Old man yells at systemd"
AT&T research facilities are wonderful, magical places that shouldn't be allowed to shut down or see their demise. These things should be heavily subsidized by the government. Bell Labs (now Lucent) is going down the shitter, and AT&T is closing the research labs that they still own. AT&T's research facilities (Bell in particular) are the people that brought us things like Unix, the laser, and the transister, not to mention countless other things. It's a real shame that they are closing down these facilities--like the article says, research facilities are delicate organisms, and they can't be reassembled after you've broken them up.
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....
Indeed. That head is horribly passive. Want real headlines? Read a reputable newsource ... where real editors with real journalism backgrounds write the headlines. Headline writing is part art, part science and it definitely requires some dedication.
DO NOT DISTURB THE SE
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.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
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 (MacOS 7.5/9.x server) - maintained by myself, Jonathan Morton.
VNCThing (MacOS Carbon viewer) - maintained by Dair Grant.
OSXVNC (MacOS X server)
TightVNC (ultra-efficient Win32 and UNIX servers and viewers) - maintained by Constantin Kaplinsky.
TridiaVNC (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.
--- The key to knowledge is not to rely on people to teach you it ---