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From: Vladimir Bondarenko on 11 Jul 2007 20:15
http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/wa.exe?A2=ind9909&L=derive-news&P=R2

Date: Thu, 02 Sep 1999 11:43:57 -1000
Reply-To: "Soft Warehouse, Inc. (Albert Rich)" <[log in to
unmask]>
Sender: derive-news
From: "Soft Warehouse, Inc. (Albert Rich)" <[log in to
unmask]>
Subject: DERIVE Comes of Age
Content-type: multipart/alternative;


To all DERIVE Users:

On 6 August 1999 Soft Warehouse, Inc. and all its assets,
including DERIVE, were acquired by Texas Instruments
Incorporated. There has been much concern expressed on
this NewsGroup and elsewhere about the impact this will
have on the future of DERIVE. As one of the principal
authors of the system, I would like to respond to these
concerns. The views expressed are my own, not TI's.
However, note that I am working with TI as an independent
consultant.

At the risk of over anthropomorphizing DERIVE, I make the
following metaphor:

More than one person has told me that DERIVE has many of
the traits of a woman (intuitive, persistent, eager to help,
etc.). I have been working on DERIVE and her predecessor
muMATH for 20+ years now. And like any 20 year old, she is
ready to go out into the world on her own. Like any father
would be, I am proud and elated that she has come of age,
but also deeply concerned about her future.

The following facts have convinced me that passing the DERIVE
torch to TI is the right thing to do:

Soft Warehouse, mostly through the efforts of my partner
David Stoutemyer, has had a close working relationship with
the Educational and Productivity Solutions (E&PS) division
(formerly the Calculator division) of TI for more than seven
years.

During that time E&PS has successfully developed and marketed
products (the TI-92 and TI-89 calculators) based in large part
on computer algebra (CA) software developed in cooperation
with Soft Warehouse.

The investment TI made to acquire Soft Warehouse provides clear
evidence that TI appreciates the value and potential of CA in
general and DERIVE in particular.

TI faces strong competition in the graphing calculator market.
To remain competitive in this market, TI will need to provide
math and science educators with an integrated set of math tools
(both hardware and software) available on a broad range of
platforms.

Writing and debugging completely new software for each product
would be prohibitively expensive, difficult to support, and not
provide the required integration between products. Instead, it
makes much more sense to write an interface specially designed
for each product, but to base all the products on a single math
engine. TI appears to want to base its products on the math
engine that powers DERIVE.

Theresa Shelby designed (in collaboration with me) and
implemented the DERIVE for Windows interface (both version
4 and the forthcoming version 5). Theresa and David Stoutemyer
are now employees of TI. I am a consultant working with TI.
Presumably we were hired by TI for our expertise in developing
compact, efficient CA systems, as well as for our experience
in marketing mathematical software over the last 20+ years.
Therefore, we have a unique opportunity to significantly
influence the direction E&PS takes in the future.

Our agreement with TI makes it clear that the top priority for
Theresa and me is to complete, thoroughly test, and release
version 5 of DERIVE for Windows as soon as possible. Thereafter
I will continue to work on the math engine that powers DERIVE.

Freed from the responsibilities of running a company, I can
devote more of my professional time and creative efforts to
extending the mathematical and programming powers of DERIVE.

TI has the resources, personnel, and know-how required to
effectively promote DERIVE in the current highly competitive
global software market in a way that Soft Warehouse could
never hope to do.

In addition to its own considerable programming talent,
TI has the stature to attract first-rate programmers and
mathematicians to enhance DERIVE's performance and
reliability, and to extend the range of its capabilities.
Also authors will be more likely to write and publishers
more likely to publish math and science books based on
DERIVE if TI's name is on the product.

Several users have expressed concern that DERIVE will be
transformed from an efficient and compact CA system into
a behemoth much like our competitors'. E&PS pioneered
development of the graphing calculator, and more recently
(in cooperation with Soft Warehouse) has produced calculators
having symbolic math capabilities. The relatively modest
computing power and memory size of such portable platforms
gives E&PS a vested interest in preserving DERIVE's compact
size and high performance. Also, the calculator paradigm
that DERIVE uses fits in well with that used on products
designed for math and science education.

muLISP (the LISP system in which DERIVE is written) and
DERIVE (and its predecessor muMATH) have steadily evolved
over the past 20+ years. The mistakes and successes I made
in the process have taught me a great deal about how to
implement a computer algebra system. I am not going to
live forever. I am determined to pass this knowledge on
to others more capable than me so that DERIVE and/or her
successors will continue to be used and improved. Thus,
as soon as version 5 is released, one of my primary
consulting duties will be to transfer this knowledge to
software engineers at E&PS. I and the other authors greatly
appreciate your loyalty and enthusiasm for DERIVE, and your
concern about her future. But, now it's time to get back
to work on version 5!

Aloha,
Albert D. Rich
Co-author of DERIVE

P.S. We recently received the following email from my
friend and colleague, Julio Valella of Texas Instruments:

================================================================

Al, David, and Theresa:

I am delighted to be assigned as the Texas Instruments
DERIVE Product Manager.

In my new role I have a monumental challenge, to continue
your long established excellence in development and support
of the Derive family of products. And to help you complete
Derive 5.0 and ship, promote, and support it worldwide with
our renown TI-Cares(TM) Educator Support services.

We are a mere few days into this challenge! We are learning,
organizing, training our staff, and marshalling resources
required to maintain uninterrupted delivery and support of
DfW 4.11 while we prepare to launch and support DfW5.0
worldwide. Some of the forthcoming TI-Cares(TM) services
Derive enthusiasts should enjoy in the near future include:

+ Workshop Loan Program - Texas Instruments free loan service
to educators and professionals who wish to conduct training,
academic presentations, teacher workshops, and on site
institutional demonstrations.

+ Conference Exhibits - Texas Instruments exhibits at most
math and science conferences worldwide. Beginning this November
Derive will be displayed with opportunity for hands on
demonstrations, literature, applications and support services
information.

+ World Wide Web information dedicated about Derive will
continue at
http://www.derive.com/
Soon global exposure and support for Derive expands at
http://www.ti.com/calc/docs/software.htm

As the Team Leader of TI-92 development my emotional connections
with Derive and its development team run deep. Now I am eager to
get to know and work with Derive customers and enthusiasts
worldwide.

With a little help from all our friends I'm confident we will
meet our challenge and measure up to the high expectations you
have conditioned in Derive users!

Cheers,
Julio Valella
Derive Product Manager
Texas Instruments Educational & Productivity Solutions
[log in to unmask]
http://www.ti.com/calc/

From: JB on 12 Jul 2007 03:49

After that optimistic outlook by Julio Valella, now Derive is dead.
Why would TI buy a product that had a very good reputation and kill
it? I've never understood that. If it wasn't intentional, it had to
be through incredible miss-management.

From: Frank J. Lhota on 12 Jul 2007 06:46
"JB" <wjbudd(a)yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1184226590.826731.214310(a)n60g2000hse.googlegroups.com...
>
> After that optimistic outlook by Julio Valella, now Derive is dead.
> Why would TI buy a product that had a very good reputation and kill
> it? I've never understood that. If it wasn't intentional, it had to
> be through incredible miss-management.

Frankly, I'm amazed at how many products that Borland had purchased that
were sent to the scrap heap soon after.


From: Chip Eastham on 12 Jul 2007 17:20
On Jul 12, 6:46 am, "Frank J. Lhota" <FrankLho.NOS...(a)rcn.com> wrote:
> "JB" <wjb...(a)yahoo.com> wrote in message
>
> news:1184226590.826731.214310(a)n60g2000hse.googlegroups.com...
>
>
>
> > After that optimistic outlook by Julio Valella, now Derive is dead.
> > Why would TI buy a product that had a very good reputation and kill
> > it? I've never understood that. If it wasn't intentional, it had to
> > be through incredible miss-management.
>
> Frankly, I'm amazed at how many products that Borland had purchased that
> were sent to the scrap heap soon after.

I'm interested in seeing an example or two
of what you are thinking of, re: Borland.

regards, chip

From: Frank J. Lhota on 12 Jul 2007 18:30
"Chip Eastham" <hardmath(a)gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1184275246.740753.256780(a)m3g2000hsh.googlegroups.com...
> On Jul 12, 6:46 am, "Frank J. Lhota" <FrankLho.NOS...(a)rcn.com> wrote:
>> Frankly, I'm amazed at how many products that Borland had purchased that
>> were sent to the scrap heap soon after.
>
> I'm interested in seeing an example or two
> of what you are thinking of, re: Borland.

They bought a CM package called Sorcerer's Apprentice. Soon it was
abandoned. Then they bought a popular programmer's editor called Brief from
Solutions Software. After buying Brief, Borland did no updates, and
eventually dropped the product. Then they bought the newer program editor
CodeWrite from Premia. That they actually did maintain for a while, but that
product was also allowed to lapse.

> regards, chip
>


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