World: r3wp

Henrik; I have to disagree again.  I had a friend that saved up for 
years to buy a really nice BMW motorcycle.  He was so excited.  Then 
come delivery day he was told he had to wait.  For two months he 
was told "maybe tomorrow".  Then when it was delivered and I helped 
him load it on my truck, I could see in his eyes that he just didn't 
care anymore.  He road that bike like it was something to be tolerated, 
not enjoyed.

Amiga Inc. will never do such a thing any more. I'm not exactly sure 
what its current purpose is, but it has one and it's not technology 
development

Motorcycles are not software.

It was the disappointment of "maybe tomorrow" for too many days. 
 It just sucked all the joy out of the experience for him...something 
that he never got back.

People come back in droves all the time. Look at Apple how they lost 
themselves in the 90's and now are back again, more popular than 
ever. A Danish IT company here was widely criticized for extremely 
poor customer support and lost a lot of customers. They turned around 
and people came back.

Look at Linux. Maybe you won't install Ubuntu as your main desktop 
this time around, but maybe in a year. It's lurking in the background 
and you'll make the jump to it when you want to.

I'm not sure if the REBOL community has contracted, but I suspect 
so. When I joined five years ago, there was a lot of activity, but 
it has mostly gone downhill since then

There' s no publicity any more, no books for example. And it's a 
different world now: open source languages have taken over

it doesn't matter in the long run.

That's my point: REBOL is in grave danger of not mattering in the 
long run

it never really mattered in the first place, so what's to lose?

I can't find myself in such a defaitistic outlook. REBOL is a great, 
fundamental advancement in technology that would be awful to loose. 
Like that BMW

the only time I would really worry, would be if Carl just stopped 
developing R3. that would be a terrible thing, but that would be 
the only risk of losing it. it won't get cut by a clueless executive 
or if there is no money (because there appearently is).

Henrik;  What?  Never mattered?  BooHiss  :)  It's one of the greatest 
things to hit the computing field...like ever.  Popularity be damned. 
 It still matters.  Like the other great discoveries.  Forth, SNOBOL, 
Lisp.  GNU/Linux.

matters to us in here, of course, but is not even a blip on the radar 
anywhere, never was. perhaps in that, we have the greatest strength. 
like the stealth bomber going to war. :-)

Right. And GNU/Linux doesn't even belong in that list. RT does not 
exist in a vacuum, and Carl is not an island. His funding is coming 
from somewhere, and he has a responsibility over it, and a dependency

now if REBOL was developed by Commodore, it would have been truly 
lost in a patent/license/bankrupcy issue.

and that would have been really sad. :-)

True, things can always be worse. Should that be our expectation 
in life?

my point is that I think products developed by small companies are 
harder to destroy through incompetence than products developed by 
big ones and are covered in patents and boneheaded executives.

I added Linux as an after thought...something that matters but doesn't 
really have the mainstream in tow  ...yet.  Like most worthwhile 
things, the mainstream doesn't really seem to have a clue but carries 
an immense momentum, for good or ill ... usually ill but everyone 
goes home paid ... paid just enough to need to stay in the mainstream 
and quietly desire something better.  :)

OK. :-) I made that note because I just built one :-)

We will release Syllable Server this weekend, and you can quote me 
on that ;-)

5

Go Kaj Go!  :)

I'm just leaning back. It's done :-)

I also think what RT has done is very divisive.

This is a small community ... and to break it into two with the haves 
and have nots is very bad.

We could tolerate a few weeks ... but 6 months??  That's really pushing 
it.

the have nots feel like second class citizens and move on ...

I'm saying sometime early 2008. Carl isn't. It may be sooner. It 
depends on what he wants to release.

for those of us who develop apps using the sdk .. I'm not expecting 
anything until end of 2008

Now that's depressing... Ithink that Pekr's solution makes a lot 
of  sense: Use R2-Core's feature set as a first beta goal so that 
people can start using R3 for new projects without having to recode 
later. I do not know how practical or possible that would be interms 
of development though.

note about asking me to join: it's not my decision who joins and 
who does not. so you are free to ask but i need to get the ok to 
add more people. as i said, i was for just releasing to the people 
here no matter what the status. you can either fix the feature list, 
or fix the date, you can't fix both. my assumption was that for r3, 
we had fixed the date, and not the feature list (except for a couple 
things we were ok to move the date for). don't blame me if it wasn't 
released in august.

petr, if it's Core only as you say, what would be different from 
the current status of R3? just bug fixes? so why should people here 
wait for xmas for? i really don't understand. if we want release 
early, forget features, just release what you have and make it clear 
that there is no support. if you want a final product you can use 
in production, just wait until all bugs are fixed and everything 
is settled on, which could be three months or three years depending 
on what the community asks for and which bugs they find.

Gabriele - no, no bug fixes only - R3 alpha has one and only scheme 
- http - where is pop, ftp, smtp?

So, from the practical core like usability, it is missing some very 
important things. So my suggestion was - finish schemes, update/improve 
dll, describe embeddability and porting, if time permits, add own 
console and rebservices (not necessarily)

And R3/Core 3.1 - add rebcode as a base. Ppl already found its uses. 
IMO it was already usefull and it is a pity it was later excluded 
from the Core ...

Gabriele - what you propose is still the same song - no product development 
strategy. Read also Greggs comments - noone knows what should do 
what, when some feature comes etc.

But - if I should choose between the project staying closed, or release 
in current state, then let's release and not frustrate ppl further. 
I was trying to offer some intermediate solution, a little bit better 
organised effort ...

I think your instincts are right Pekr

If a release happens to this group, people will have to understand 
that it's a work in progress and commenting on design decisions and 
general behavior after limited use is not recommended. Spend time 
in the docbase and on the bug tracker to see if an issue has been 
discussed. Current VID3 bugs are not in the tracker, due to its incomplete 
state, so there are probably 50 of those lurking.


If you find a bug that causes a crash, i.e. WinXP's bug report window 
and it isn't in the tracker, then it should of course be placed there.

Petr's proposal sounds very good to me. Except that RebCode is probably 
a luxury at this moment

Reading the R3 alpha changelog, it is clear that Core and View are 
developed together now. While I know that this leads to a balanced, 
integrated product, it is an enormous blocker to release anything. 
This is redoing a decade of existing work. There is a point that 
you must decide that the Core/View integration issues are worked 
out far enough to focus on the first development release, and that 
must naturally be Core

petr, what would having pop or imap change? (btw, ftp... that's a 
mess of a protocol. find someone wanting to write that one :P) i 
really don't understand the point. pop and imap are "trivial". VID 
is the focus. i can't wast time on pop now. that can be done later 
on. i must spend my time on what's important - VID. having an R2-like 
R3 is just crazy. R2 is already here.

Well, there's not much point in repeating myself

Yes, at some time the decision has to be done, but I don't think 
we're talking about a developers release now. A developers release 
won't happen in the timeframe you are wishing for. So what we're 
talking is trash release (or pre-developer - by pure conincidence 
some things might work ...) so there's no need to add anything to 
this release just to give it the look of a developer release.

It looks like from what Gabriele is saying, it's at a state where 
one can write their own protocols such as pop, and imap

Gabriele - I really don't understand your aproach. I don't believe 
you are able to finish VID sooner than in few months of work. You 
seem not to be able to understand fundamental reason behind what 
I say. I dare to say, that developers should not be allowed to talk 
how to aproach product strategies, sorry ;-)

I have to be really critical here, but guys, that is becoming really 
childish.

You act like anyone is able to write imap or pop protocols themselves. 
And yes, ftp might be the mess, so we are not going to have one, 
right?