UK Lab Responsible for VNC To Close

NexUK writes "Guardian Online has an article about the imminent closure of the UK based AT&T lab , the place that brought us VNC, the popular desktop remote control system. The article talks about a nice "Toys" budget where the employees could buy gadgets without prior authorization." AT&T Strikes again, I'm surprised they haven't bought PARC and closed it down too.

TightVNC is Good Version

TightVNC [tightvnc.com] adds variable JPG compression and is optimized for slow connections.

So what happens to VNC?

I think that's my biggest question. Luckily I've got a couple UNIX tarballs around, but that's just archival. Is development going to continue?

Irony?

When management shuts them down, will they do it in person or will they just pull up a remote terminal and shut them off that way?

Plans to Continue

Are there any groups out there who are going to take up the vnc project and expand it any? Or is it basically a dead project that will remain as is due the fact it's been out for a while?

VNC is GPL though.

So it should be relatively easy to get the source and start a new project, right?

Guess it could be worse...

They could have been spun off to Lucent [yahoo.com].

Where's the next PARC [xerox.com], Bell Labs [bell-labs.com], IBM [ibm.com]?

I know all of these still exist in name at least, but they sure seem to be mere shadows of what they used to be...

And, no, I don't think it's MSFT [microsoft.com]

Balam

Tragic? Maybe.

Nothing terribly revolutionary has come out of the UK Research group recently... at least nothing publicly announced. The bulk of useful VNC development in recent years has been done by 3rd parties working with the open VNC sources.

While it's possible they could have come up with another killer product given their obvious talents, the dissolution of the group probably isn't that tragic for our industry.

Other's have already listed URLs pointing to 3rd party VNC products (both freeware and otherwise) so I won't repeat them here but it's definitely worth your while to seek some of them out and support their work.

Re:Tragic? Maybe.

> Nothing terribly revolutionary has come out of the UK Research group recently...

Things that have come out of AT&T Labs Cambridge recently:

The Active Bat system, which can locate in 3D better than any other deployed system. They are using Bat transmitters as mice in the air, on 50 inch plasma screens. Now that's a cool interface.

A broadband phone, rolled out across the entire staff, which lets then see train timetables, share a doodling screen during phone calls, have active directories so that they can call the nearest phone to someone (c.f. Bat above)

At least visit their website [att.com] before you start trolling. You might even learn something.

This stinks

I used to drive past this place every day on my way to work. I often used to wonder what a magical place it must have been to work in. I always hoped I'd get the chance to work there myself someday. Bang goes that idea. Strangely enough I can see the new Microsoft Research Centre from my flat. I guess that would be a cool place to work too, if it weren't for the owners. Cambridge has long been known for its hotbed of innovation. I'm sad to see us lose a bit of that.

Holy shit. . . .

I am still out of breath, my word, this is. . . . horrible. What the hell is AT&T thinking? Just the other day I was thinking to myself how nice it is that there is such a company still around that is willing to support pure research and development, but now. . . . holy shit.

VNC will live on, but what new ideas might have come this lab? What technology, what science, will now never be invented, or at the very least horribly delayed? This is awful, how could any company get pissy over intellectual property rights when there is so much more at stake? For crying out loud, shutting down not only one of the premier research labs in the world, but a (I think?) profitable one at that!

Re:Holy shit. . . .

What they think is that they are going out of business in the not-to-distant future.

The Gartner group claims that within 5 years AT&T will be purchased by another corporation and will cease to exist as a serpate corporate entity. The time frame might be optimistic, 5 years seems a bit soon, but the conclustion is indisputable. AT&T just began a 5-1 stock reverse split. First time in its history and the first for a DOW component. That's something that soon-to-be-delisted dot-coms do. Not DOW components.

How the mightly hast fallen.

I'm not sure if those outside the United States realize that MA-Bell is on her deathbed. In fact, amoungst the possible purchasers of the AT&T franchise are any number of the baby-bells such as Verizon or PacBell.

Thus the closing of the lab is just a
sign of AT&T's time. Telco in general is cratering within the United States. The internet is crushing the old to make way for the new.

I have to tell you that, honestly, AT&T had it coming for some time. I am sorry that many good people are getting squashed but the corporation as a while has done much to harm customers and prevent the movement towards the Internet in recent years.

In any event, so goes AT&T and so goes the lab.

Sorry guys.

What?

>> AT&T Strikes again, I'm surprised they haven't bought PARC and closed it down too.

Or at least buy Microsoft Research Labs and close it down.

This totally blows...

Another example of corporate idiocy! What these guys could have accomplished left to their own devices will now never be known. VNC is great, I use it for hours a day, and I don't know what I would do without it! AT&T should get their head out of their a$$ and fund this lab _more_, not ditch it altogether.

The problem

I bet that a lot of these labs aren't "profitable." The average user, now, has little use for such devices. Most of my friends kind of wow over the x-window system, and that I can use my own computer remotely, or ssh for that matter.

So what happens? Well, 20 years from now, everyone will have keyboards over rf to their tv's with their computer interfaces on them. Today it's useful to me, so I have to rig it myself. None of them will want it for 20 years, because they don't have a "reason."

No surprises here

Take a look at what Telco stocks have been doing over the last year or so. They're looking under couch cushions in the employee lounge for spare change!

what about omniORB?!?!?!?!?!?

Anyone know what'll happen to omniORB, the good C++ CORBA ORB produced outta bell labs?!

VNC development should continue

I bet the ATT lab FTP servers are going to be slammed for quite some time as source is being leeched by every sysadmin in the world.

I myself use VNC extensively for my network. Combined with SSH2 it makes a decent little VPN (plus it works in a browser window!)

OT, has anyone here gotten VNC to run in the Windows CE / PocketPC OS? I like the idea of controlling servers from my wireless PDA at home.

Thanks for using the GPL for VNC

Thanks to the folks who decided to use the GPL for VNC.

They deserve a lot of credit for ensuring that their software would continue to be freely available to the world.

Does this have to do with...

... the fact that it's illegal to use VNC with WindowsXP now? :)

source: WindowsXP License Agreement

This is what breeds true innovation...

In Hopper's lab there was a rule that anyone could buy anything on his own authority so long as it cost less than £1,000. If you wanted something more expensive, you had to get another signature, but that was usually a breeze.

It was known colloquially as the 'toys budget' and it was, no doubt, sometimes used for frivolous purchases. But in the main it was not. And it meant that the lab's researchers always had the latest gizmos - and the freedom to take them apart and see how they worked.

My first thoughts were how on earth could management implement and afford a policy like this. But in the end, I thought true innovation requires liberal policies such as these.

The dotCOM era was full of excess, perhaps too much so, but this is proof that there are still companies out there striving to be the best.

Lame header

"UK Lab Responsible for VNC To Close" is lame.
A better header would be "AT&T Kills Lab that Created VNC".

The "UK Lab" is responsible for VNC, not for its closure. AT&T is responsible for closing the lab.

What a shame...

AT&T research facilities are wonderful, magical places that shouldn't be allowed to shut down or see their demise. These things should be heavily subsidized by the government. Bell Labs (now Lucent) is going down the shitter, and AT&T is closing the research labs that they still own. AT&T's research facilities (Bell in particular) are the people that brought us things like Unix, the laser, and the transister, not to mention countless other things. It's a real shame that they are closing down these facilities--like the article says, research facilities are delicate organisms, and they can't be reassembled after you've broken them up.

There's been more to them than VNC...

We do not just owe them the VNS stuff, but also things like omnyORB, one of the free CORBA implementations available. And moreover, have you ever looked at such fine projects as PEN or CLAN over at their site? Less of practical use for the meek of us, but really interesting and insightful. A shame they will get shut down...

VNC ./'ed already

I've never used VNC, but was planning to use it in a current project-- thought I'd download it and start experimenting with it next week sometime. When I saw this, I went to the site and downloaded all the files I'd need. When I first got there, the downloads were quick, but just in the time it took me to download 4-8 files, the response time slowed quite a bit.

Toys Budgets Anyone?

Does anyone else have a toy budget - surely the /. crew do?

We have a CD budget at work - idea being that we all listen to CDs all the time and if anyone takes on in it gets assimilated into the office collection so we ended up buying replacements all the time.

By having a 'CD a week' thing anyone can order up a new CD on the Amazon account whenever they like. Beats being able to take money out of petty cash for milk!

Costs what - 50 x £20 a year and keeps us happier than a bunch of pigs in poop!

Ungrateful Users

One reason that companies are reluctant to provide ongoing public services is that when they discontinue them, instead of getting kudos for all they contributed, they get negative reaction for pulling support.

I have a mirror of VNC up

The Linux and Windows Source and binaries plus docs

http://free.house.cx/~adam/vnc

Buying out and closing down PARC

I don't think there'a ny need for AT&T to buy out and close down PARC - Xerox seems to be doing a good enough job of that. They've been trying to sell it to venture capitalists for a while, with a notable lack of success. I don't think that PARC will last another 12 months, which is very sad.

Xerox also has (had?) a research lab in Cambridge, colloquially known as EuroPARC. I visited there a few times and saw some quite neat stuff.

Olivetti was the creator. and its not dead anyway.

ATT only bought them and changed the source to reflect ownership. they *created* nothing.. barely even a bug fix since the buyout..

Thats why groupls like tightVNC ( gpl ) or TridiaVNC ( commercial ) came about.. and will continue it far into the future..

Its not going anywhere.. do some homework people.

Still sad, though anyone could see it coming...

Thank you AT&T

thanks for letting them create and Release VNC as a GPL'd item.

it was a great ride... and thanks for the freebies.

Will the next "Bell Labs" be named SourceForge?

If anyone stops and looks around to see where innovation is happening they will surely see the Open Source community cranking! I bet if you look real close you'll see all the top names spying on the Open Source comm. and trying to "out patent" them:)

Anyone remember Interchange?

An AOL type network (Great GUI, lots of content and downloads).
AT&T bought it just before it was released and killed it a
few months later. I was a beta tester; I had such high
hopes for Interchange.

Other projects underway at the lab

I was curious what the lab was working on and found a variety of multimedia materials on their anonymous FTP site here:

ftp://ftp.uk.research.att.com/pub/videos/qsif-200/ [att.com]

What I've seen so far is interesting though not earth-shattering. Take a look.

-David

Current VNC D/L Sites

I, being the paranoid vnc junkie that I am, just cruised over to the ATT - VNC website, to get copies for each OS, and found the downloads are gone beyond the forms.

Hopefully someone out there has them all for download at their website. Anyone know any sites?

Being GPL, I imagine that there are several. I need to feel assured that the source is untouched as well.

Thanks be to any who finds this info.

And screw "The Man" for making another horribly morbid decision.

Budget?

I wonder if every lab has that kind of budget to buy odds and ends just to take apart and see how they work? I think there should be more labs like this in more places around the world.

XORL.org

Anyone wanting to offer lucrative contracts to AT&T people after the closedown can find more information at www.xorl.org :-)

A Quandary.

Small businesses fuel the (U.S) economy to a greater extent than large. Small businesses do best with laissez-faire management and motivated workers. As they grow, managers replace founders and innovators. Inertia sets in. By the time the company is "big" and/or (dog forbid) publicly traded "innovation" is a slogan and business plan as well as a practice. Then, some managerial genius notices that the time-to-market cycle of brilliant, innovative technology doesn't line up the the metronome-on-speed quarterly-financial-reporting cycle that American investors know in their heart of hearts is cocked up, but can't seem to leave behind (yes, you, little Maisie-in-the-home-getting-a-dividend-check) and presto - the genius manager gets promoted for shuttering that nasty, inefficient lab. This is not capitalism, or market forces - it is a the triumph of myopic beancounters over producers, and it does suck. This I know - I am an accountant, and I have seen the beast with my own eyes. The only comfort I find is that those who "do" can "do" faster than the Trogs in Suits can screw up. The lab is dead - long live the lab.

so what happens to active badges?

Blimey! This lab is just out the back of my house and I walk past it every day en route to the engineering department. In fact the director, Andy Hopper [att.com] taught a few lectures last year on distributed computing during which he spoke extensively about the Active Badge system they have there. The setup is pretty sweet: they have a bunch of IR tranceivers in every room in the lab, and also in the LCE [cam.ac.uk] in the engineering department. Each of the lab rats wears a small badge with an IR transmitter in it which emits a pulse containing a badge ID every so often. The receivers catch these and relay the information to a central server. This server runs a daemon which provides information on where everyone is to any program that requests it. More info on active badges here [att.com] and its successor, the active bat system here [att.com]. Location of staff members using the system here [att.com]

Incidentally hopper is a pretty interesting character too. Having worked on the Cambridge ring which was for a while superior to ethernet, he then became involved with the Acorn computers that every Brit of my generation knew and loved at school. He established the then olivetti lab in the mid 80's and is involved with 2 of the three big startups in Cambridge, ARM and Virata. Oh, he also flies planes, is worth a packet and lectures in scruffy jeans.

VNC future

The VNC development community is healthy, despite nearly no activity from the authors at the Cambridge Labs for some time.

I'm working on RFB 4.x which is attempting to fix the authentication and security issues, whilst adding clipboard, drag and drop, multiple desktops, file transfers, encryption, channels, etc

http://www.evilsecurity.com/vnc/

TightVNC is the preferred VNC now - don't think that with one lab closure the world is coming to and end.

http://www.tightvnc.com

There's even a commercial version of VNC out there, TridiaVNC as well as literally tens of clients and servers for all sorts of platforms.

VNC is far from dead.

What the heck???

Maan...I was going to observe the boycott this week too, but now this stupid post by Chris is going to force me to talk.

Why is everybody like "AT&T killed the lab!" oh no! Look, AT&T bought the lab, and when they didn't have enough money to keep it running, they closed it. It's produced some wonderful stuff, but this is the way capitalism works. And Chris, *come* *on*. "uhh, I'm surprised AT&T hasn't bought out PARC and closed it down..." What kind of a comment is that? AT&T has had a good history of funding R&D, and now they're in some financial trouble. Cut them a break.

And the post towards the bottom of the page that says AT&T is tanking and the Internet age is getting rid of the Telco, that's ridiculous. AT&T is a big Internet player. Yeah they're a long distance company, but they also provide a lot of Internet connectivity. AT&T is in some financial trouble, but they're by no means out of it. They've taken some hits from the dot com crash and the 9/11 slump, but they'll be back.

This whole idea on Slashdot that AT&T was a big bad evil company and still is, is hilarious. They brought you Unix for crying out loud!

Noooo!

I was looking ahead to the Broadband Phone [att.com] too! They even had a wireless version running. Sigh.

VNC Future

1. Closing AT&T Labs UK would not change much in the VNC status. The "official" VNC was unsupported for years, and currently it lacks important features available in the derived products. Today, there is no much sense to use the official VNC distribution at all. For example, TightVNC [tightvnc.com] is much more advanced in many aspects.
2. The development on the VNC code base was never stopped. Many people issued various ports and additions, and currently there is at least two major projects maintaining VNC-derived code bases: TightVNC [tightvnc.com] and TridiaVNC [tridiavnc.com]. TightVNC is free, TridiaVNC includes both free and commercial versions.
3. Being the maintainer of TightVNC, I can say that the code base is in the state of active development, the latest version was released on March 24, 2002, and the next version is to be released in May. And I have no plans to stop the development.
4. The TightVNC project is open to contributors, so I don't see a reason to create another branch from the "official" VNC sources.

The future of VNC

Sad but true, the AT&T lab in Cambridge is closing.

Now for the good news - VNC lives on!

First, the current version of VNC will continue to be available at the original web address, which will soon be re-hosted at Cambridge University where AT&T continues to sponsor research.

Second, the creators of VNC are planning a venture to independently support and develop VNC as an ongoing open source project. You haven't heard much from us recently because we've been busy with other projects such as the Broadband Phone [att.com], but now that we have the opportunity :) we're back on the case.

Watch the VNC website, the mailing list, or slashdot for an announcement "real soon"

The VNC Team

Re:fp?

It can't die. It may not be as well-supported, but there are several other projects working on the "platform" (notably TightVnc [tightvnc.org]. I hope it isn't in some kind of freakish licensing where they go out of business in a fire sale, get bought by NA (remotely possible) or Symantec(pcanywhere) and locked away forever.

Re:surprise! ethics costs something!

Are you naive to assume that Apple and Sun are more ethical than MS? Next you'll be telling me that IBM is your friend... that Larry Ellison isn't an egomaniac willing to do whatever it takes to make a sale and that the business of business is to support employees (it's not -- it's to make a buck for the shareholders and if the employees get supported in the effort that's ok too).