[erlang-questions] Question about erlang history at Ericsson

[Robert Virding]

2009/1/12 Ed Korsberg <ed.korsberg@REDACTED>

> I am new to this Erlang forum so please excuse any 'newbe' errors on my
> part.
> I recently learned of the power of Erlang while attending a conference and
> while I find the technology
> of the Erlang language interesting, I am really curious how Ericsson
> engineering and management had the
> courage to produce a real revenue generating product on a radical
> previously unproven design.
>
> Many companies have internal engineering resources to create innovative
> research projects but it is
> rare for these research projects to make the transition to shipping
> products complete with all the quality
> control and field support required.
>
> I would be curious to learn how Ericsson managed this transition from an
> internal R&D development to
> a real shipping product.


The references you got from Thomas and Tuncer are good and give some insight
into the development of Erlang and the problems the lab had when doing it.

BUT, one basic thing you must realise and is that the development of Erlang
was pure skunk-works and we in the lab decided more or less on our on accord
to do it. We were very lucky to get in contact with a group who were both
willing and able to try new technology for their development. It has never
really been sanctioned by management and only really been officially allowed
to be used when other more prefered alternatives have failed. Even then
there were many requests to phase it out and use other technologies.

Another thing to realise is that Ericsson, like most other large companies,
is not a homogenous entity and while we only ever had very limited
management support there were groups inside Ericsson who had the need of,
and saw the benefits, of using Erlang in their products. And who were
willing to fight to use it. Basically we were continually fighting to keep
Erlang alive, spread it and try to support groups who were using it.

Rather depressing perhaps but, I think, quite common for new technology in
larger companies.

Of course the really big happening for the spread of Erlang out of Ericsson
was being able to release it as public source. There were many in Ericsson
who saw the benefits of not using restricted in-house developed
technologies, but unfortunately for us the official solution to this was to
use external products instead. It did, however, make it easier to get
permission to release it as open source.

Robert
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