Back in 1987, I was looking around for an advantage for my C compiler (Zortech C). I looked at ObjectiveC (by Stepstone) and C++ (by AT&T). Both had NNTP newsgroups for them, and both had about the same amount of traffic, and hotly debated each other.
I had to choose, and knew little technically about either. But Stepstone wanted royalties for developing a clone of ObjectiveC. I contacted AT&T's lawyer (William Ryan) who said I didn't need a license to develop a clone of C++. I asked if I could call it "C++" and he said sure. He laughed, and thanked me, saying I was the only one who ever bothered to ask.
So C++ it was, and Zortech C++ came out in 1988 (the first native C++ compiler for DOS, and arguably at all. g++ was out, but as a beta.)
The action for programming at the time was on DOS, and C++ pretty much exploded with the availability of an inexpensive, fast, native compiler for DOS. The comp.lang.c++ traffic grew by leaps and bounds, and comp.lang.objectivec faded away.
AFAIK pre-nextstep Objective C was also a very simple layer over C that only had "id" as a type with things like protocols, etc being introduced later by next.
(also i wonder if Stepstone had a leg to stand on regarding implementing a clone of Objective C... you couldn't call it Objective C as i guess they had a trademark over it, but what else would they license?)
Reminds me of discussing music piracy with my musician friends, all of whom fervently wanted to be sufficiently popular to actually HAVE people pirate their stuff!
(Not the piracy part, the "you really want people to listen to you, first" part...) :-)
I had to choose, and knew little technically about either. But Stepstone wanted royalties for developing a clone of ObjectiveC. I contacted AT&T's lawyer (William Ryan) who said I didn't need a license to develop a clone of C++. I asked if I could call it "C++" and he said sure. He laughed, and thanked me, saying I was the only one who ever bothered to ask.
So C++ it was, and Zortech C++ came out in 1988 (the first native C++ compiler for DOS, and arguably at all. g++ was out, but as a beta.)
The action for programming at the time was on DOS, and C++ pretty much exploded with the availability of an inexpensive, fast, native compiler for DOS. The comp.lang.c++ traffic grew by leaps and bounds, and comp.lang.objectivec faded away.