> In February 1998 Erlang was banned for new product development within Ericsson—the main reason for the ban was that Ericsson wanted to be a consumer of sodware technologies rather than a producer.
From Bjarne Däcker's thesis (2000, p. 37):
> In February 1998, Erlang was banned within Ericsson Radio AB (ERA) for new product projects aimed for external customers because: > > “The selection of an implementation language implies a more long-term commitment than selection of processors and OS, due to the longer life cycle of implemented products. Use of a proprietary language, implies a continued effort to maintain and further develop the support and the development environment. It further implies that we cannot easily benefit from, and find synergy with, the evolution following the large scale deployment of globally used languages.” [Ri98]