In article <···@imagine.ADMS-RAD.Unisys.COM> ·······@imagine.ADMS-RAD.Unisys.COM (Charles Hurd) writes:
>A friend of mine told me recently that Gold Hill Computers (vendors
>of Golden Common Lisp for PCs) has closed its doors. Can anyone
>verify this? Does anyone have more information as to what happened?
Gold Hill is not dead, but currently only consists of a bunch of people
paid as consultants to bring in money and try to meet some prior
commitments. I don't know how long this configuration will last.
It is a testament to the confusion of its management strategy that it
was not possible to make money off Lisp, even given the size of the
DOS market. A tiny percentage of a huge market is still a viable base
for even a specialist company. Also, new environments such as Windows
3.0 and OS/2 (especially OS/2 2.0), the drop in memory prices, and the
basic bang-per-buck enhanced by falling 386 prices were all
contributing to make Gold Hill's Common Lisp a viable option for the
``real world.''
I worked at Gold Hill until the layoff, which happened at the end of
February. Unless something happens quick, some of the interesting
new technologies, like a smaller runtime and a Windows 3.0 environment
(much faster than the current Windows Developer, with the capability
to coexist with other large applications such as Excel) will never
see the light of day. Also, it looks like nobody is staking a claim
for the OS/2 market, even for the 32-bit version. This is truly a waste.
Anybody know people in the DOS software business with vision and a
little extra cash ?
I would like to second previous opinions on Gold Hill's technology. I've seen
the Mac port of GoldWorks, and it is great. The PC version of GoldWorks II
suffered from the slowness of the Hummingboard/Windows software interface, but
other versions do not have this problem. In fact, for medium-scale
applications, GoldWorks II really fit our needs well. If anyone knows of a
cash-rich company, I'd suggest that they look into acquiring pieces of Gold
Hill's product line. I can't speak for the Golden Common LISP products, but
I did hear interesting things about a Windows 3.0/386 version that would
have solved most of the current problems with PC GoldWorks II.
fere