Comment by dang
11 years ago
Here's some more info: http://www.uruk.org/emu/Taos.html, via https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/comp.lang.forth/Cj_6....
According to Wikipedia the company was sold in 2007 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tao_Group). That's a pretty long run from the early 90s.
I've tried emailing Chris Hinsley to see if he wants to answer questions on HN. An old email address, but maybe he'll see it at some point.
The uruk.org opinion article was the one I encountered first, though the BYTE mag one is of higher quality.
The wiki article lists quite a convoluted history, not to mention all the rebrandings. It seems like they never really focused on attracting researchers or considering any FOSS presence, which is a shame because it's now practically lost by this point.
If Hinsley answers, that'd be great.
I wasn't a founder, but I spent ages campaigning for a free development kit to try and get homebrew momentum. Management was rigidly against it. The reasons basically boiled down to (a) our APIs were trade secrets; (b) support costs would be way too high.
(a) was obviously dumb, but (b) had a point. We would have gotten people asking us questions. With a tiny staff we'd have had to blow off anyone who weren't paying for a support contract, which would have gotten us bad press; and given how weird intent was, we would have got questions. Part of the reason for the Amiga deal was that they'd do this for us. Well, that went well...
I agree with Dave, I was involved in arguing for a open version, as the CTO of Tao, so people could get their hands on, but it wasn't to be. :(
With hindsight Tao should have done this.
Chris
I agree. Heaps of experimentation and first-class work were lost because they happened before open source became mainstream. Especially in industry, where licensing models sealed work off from community adoption.
I'm really starting to wonder if these sealed off models promoted innovation. Have you seen much crazy innovation since open source became mainstream?
2 replies →
I got the email !
Chris Hinsley
Do you have any more insight onto the state of the Taos IP? (i.e. any chance of getting it open sourced?).
I'm afraid it really is gone :( Rusting on a shelf somewhere never to see the light of day again.
However I did start an experimental project a while back to do a simple Taos like kernel over BSD/Linux in x86_64, VP macros and process load balancing, point to point link network simulation and function level dynamic binding ?
https://github.com/vygr?tab=repositories
Look for the Asm-Kernel project amongst my other stuff.
Was just starting to work on a GUI, AVE MK 6 :) But then got into a new job and it's currently sat at that stage till I go back to it.
Regards to all, was great to read this and bring back such wonderful memories of the great team we had at Tao, some of the brightest tech people I have ever had the pleasure to learn from.
Chris Hinsley