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 Frontier began its life as a Macintosh scripting system, first shipped in 1992, built around a powerful object database and multi-threaded runtime. In 1995, we turned to the Web, and found that Frontier was the perfect way to manage large dynamic sites with many authors. But it proved difficult for many Mac users, so we added an HTTP server and then, in 1999, developed Manila, an Internet application, included at no extra cost with Frontier. Manila brings content management to the Web browser. In the past two years, tens of thousands of people have started writing for Manila websites, and today that power is coming, for the first time, to Apple's new operating system. So..Something new! Frontier 7 for Mac OS X. More Frontier OS X notes  Daniel Berlinger: "As the first application to allow scripting of the Mac OS, and a basis for interapplication communication on Macs (and later other platforms) Frontier has lived at the intersection between apps and OS'es. Its whole philosophy seems to be about bridging differences in the way apps speak so that more and better work can be done. The XML-RPC and SOAP interfaces already present in Frontier prepare for it to remain at the crossroads for a long time to come." Of course the site is served on Mac OS X. It wouldn't do to serve an OS X site on Windows, would it?  The cowskull refuses to go away. No matter how much people dis it, it's a very resilient cowskull. It's very hard to hurt a cow skull's feelings. You won't often see a cowskull sulking. The teaser piece I wrote on Monday when it was clear that the OS X release was days away. We originally planned to have it out on Wednesday, but you know how that goes. We put together a Thanks To page, which is our tradition at UserLand going all the way back to the beginning. We're proud to say who made a difference in making our software work. Now I'd like to express my gratitude to and to congratulate Brent Simmons on a fantastic and (praise Murphy) successful release. Brent accepts any challenge I throw at him, and he keeps getting deeper and more powerful as a programmer. Mazel tov Brent. You're the best. And finally (this is the position of greatest honor) this release could not have happened without the work of Tim Paustian. Last year Tim posted a message asking for the source code to Frontier so he could port it to Mac OS X. I've known Tim for many years, he's easy to work with, and fantastically smart and productive. I jumped at the opportunity. I sent him an email, we sent him an NDA, then sent him the source code. After a few months he had it working, then Brent took over, with Tim's help, and the release happened. So, more than any release of Frontier, this one was a community effort, from the beginning. Having smart, friendly, generous people to work with is the biggest blessing possible. To Brent and Tim, thank you very much. You guys are a total inspiration. Everything else Standard: Gracenote sues Roxio. Patent, trademark and breach of contract. Marek: "I will comply. I will find another job." News.Com: "Microsoft's upcoming Train Simulator game won't have any Union Pacific cars in it, and the railroad giant wants to make sure it stays that way." Bruce O'Neel is implementing SOAP in Squeak and documenting his work on his weblog. Nice! Think Secret has "learned that the major update to Mac OS X Server will likely be ready to ship on May 21 after Steve Jobs' announcement at his World Wide Developers Conference keynote." Scoble says he's going to do a Scripting News train over the weekend. This is very cool. Lest anyone believe that open source advocates don't spread fear uncertainty and doubt. Hey I can trash MS with the best of them, but this Economist article is totally off the wall. It's disappointing to see this kind of Boy Kills Boy one-sidedness from a publication that's famous for thought, not bluster. Like so many others they use the word "attack" in their headline to describe Craig Mundie's speech. Oy. In the mind of the beholder. Partial journalists are as big a problem for freedom of software developers as any BigCo. BTW, note that the Economist is using Microsoft IIS to serve their site. Basically, Microsoft makes a fine Web server. Apache does too. There are big things missing in Apache. Same with Microsoft. Neither one is particularly easy to set up and use. In other words, imho, there's lots of room for innovation in Web servers. I wish the reporters would start asking some questions like "Where does this stuff go from here" and stop paying so much attention to development ideology. FUD blows both ways and over the heads of most hard-working developers, and always limits forward motion. You can be pretty sure the last sentence will appear in a DaveNet before too long.
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