>"The late Steve Jobs', NeXT, licensed the Objective-C language for it's new operating system, NEXTSTEP. NeXT eventually acquired Objective-C from Stepstone."
Does anyone what NeXT paid to acquire the Objective-C license?
Part of the acquisition was that NeXT would license Objective-C back to Stepstone for their own products, so it was more than an outright purchase anyway.
If it was device with the runtime, I imagine we'd have seen a rewritten "modern" runtime a few years earlier than we did.
I don't necessarily agree that the result would have been a rewritten runtime, just because the NeXT runtime (and compiler based on gcc) already was their own code so the licence must have been for "IP" in broader terms. Remembering that Apple were very heavily into Java around the time of the NeXT integration (https://www.sicpers.info/2020/07/so-whats-the-plan-part-1-wh...), I imagine that they would have gone more heavily in Java's direction.