Comment by david-given
11 years ago
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