World: r4wp

Someone has to say it's worth it to them to pay for some pieces.

Sun paid for Java, IBM paid for Eclipse. They thought they would 
benefit somehow.

And users have to care about what these new tools bring to the table.

Bit of both in my view. Money to support full time development. And 
the knowlegde to know how to is also sparse. A little bit extra on 
info and tutorial like stuff could maybe get some more people started. 
Google's summer of code like the HAIKU project is putting to use 
is beyond reach for the small base of devs for instance.

We are on the other hand lucky to have the enthousiastic giants we 
have now. It is enough to let the projects live on, but not in the 
way blooming as we feel should be the case. 

Yet the progress even in the last weeks is a great accomplishment, 
cannot be said enough..

(that was my answer for Maartens question from 3:23:44 PM

Some heads must be seriously be put together to talk about financing 
the community effort.

One of my views is a way of providing a webhosting service based 
on REBOL/Red and additional open source technology.

If we had a monetary amount needed, would it be possible to write 
up a Kickstarter campaign to fund R3 development?

shure, as long as you have a precise end-result with milestones, 
 time estimates, and realistic goals.

but would it actually end up working?

My gut feeling is that it would be tough. You need good rewards to 
entice people, and our community is small.

We need more momentum. Meaning a small usable base to start serious 
advocating the pro's with and possibilities of generating a little 
money. Attracting young programmers/students willing to contribute, 
one advantage for students is that not everything is carved in stone 
yet. (Only what we want to achieve and the toolset is chosen)

So you could start with a small Kickstarter campaign just to get 
some momentum going, and then maybe follow it up with a larger one 
once momentum is up.

Still tough. Who is going to pledge that doesn't already?

If we can pitch something about it that would appeal to the general 
public (easy-to-develop apps for Android that also run on embedded 
systems and full computers), then maybe we'll get some new interest. 
 Especially for popular Kickstarter search terms like Android, Raspberry 
Pi, Arduino, etc.

General public
 meaning the general geek public.

It's the IF and MAYBE that I'm concerned about. :-\ Again, without 
rewards, who will pledge?

some ideas for real life apps needed? I have some. Non-geeks need 
apps too.

No tools to make these apps atm

;)

@Graham: GitX; found another alternative very promising, even did 
a fetch(!) from the master branch I wanted but could find nowhere: 
sourcetree 
http://www.sourcetreeapp.com/

Maarten, some thoughts about all this. IMO R3 or what it's than called 
is not the end product. It's an enabeling technology to make good 
products in a very short time.

So, what's interesting about it is, that one gets access to a complete 
vertical technology stack. The black-box dependencies (those that 
you can't influence) are mostly zero. Of course you don't have a 
big community, eco-system etc. around. But I'm coming more and more 
to the point that I don't need a big eco-system, I need the right 
eco-system. I don't want to use big frameworks, zillions of libs 
etc. This all makes product development a hell.

A mean and lean technology stack, that is maintainable, can be adjusted 
to some special needs with the fundamental things available is everything 
you need.

What I would do if I could afford is, is to re-implement R3 using 
the D language. This should result in a more simple code base (Carl's 
code base is in a very good shape, so don't take me wrong), and using 
this we would close the most fundamental missing parts in R3. There 
are around 5-8 topics that need to be addressed. Andreas and I just 
had a short chat about this this week.

R3 gives us the chance to use one technology on a broad range of 
systems. I don't say the same code, but the same technology.

There are several levels of work that can be scaled up. The base 
layer stuff, that's the C & D level.

Than we have fundamental frameworks and libs like R3-GUI etc. this 
is a mix of Rebol code and enhancements on the C/D level.

Than we have the product level, that's what's visible and keeps the 
fire burning. Spitting out cool applications in a fast rate is key. 
I see several markets to address: B2B tools, mostly more effort to 
develop but long lasting and big money. Consumer or Internet market 
applications. More low cost but high volume stuff.

And mobile things. Whatever app is missing today I don't know. I 
can imainge some cool B2B mobile apps, that really help.

Regarding the crowd funding idea, yes, it's appealing. The promise 
would be: You get a complete vertical technology stack to fund your 
next company or app on.

That's it. Take the assambly we did and use it to be 20 times more 
productive than anyone else.

Does anyone know how to reach Brian Tiffing nowadays?  the email 
given here isn't valid anymore!

have you tried SO ?

I haven't seen Brian Tiffin on SO for quite some time.

The head of OpenCOBOL shouldn't be hard to find

Robert, agreed. Though I'm starting to lean more to Go for native 
(C-like).It seems low-level at first, but that's an illusion.

But... rebuilding R3, when we have Red coming... does that make sense?

Maarten - well, some ppl might ask just the reverse - why to continue 
with Red, if/when R3 got open-sourced? R3 is closer to completion, 
Saphirion invested time/money into it. Difficult to suggest one or 
the other side, to shut down the project. I am curious, what chat 
with Carl during the devcon will reveal ....

Some ppl need some solution now, whereas Red seems being really far 
from completion, and that's simply another aspect ....

When I have talked to Carl about Red, he is very interested in it, 
but wishes he had more time to delve into it.  He has great respect 
for Doc and his abilities.

When I first talked with Carl at length about Rebol in 1997, his 
reason for creating Rebol was because he had learned and used so 
many languages, but they all fell short of his definition of a "perfect" 
language.  He liked Lisp and Smalltalk, but there were issues with 
them as well.  Rebol was his attempt at filling in the holes and 
creating a multi-purpose language that made simple things simple 
to do, while still allowing complex things to be possible.  (I'm 
going back in my memory 16 years here, so I hope Carl forgives me 
if I left something out.)

Because of the above, I can't imagine he wouldn't want to see any 
Rebol-like language to succeed as long as they held true to his vision 
of creating a language that made simple things simple to do, while 
allowing complex things to be possible - with efficiency and cleanness 
of design.

I simply believe, that during the Devcon, it will be the right time 
to exchange some ideas and explanations. Looking forward to the outcome 
of the meeting :-)

there are hundreds of C derived languages, its not that big a deal 
for REBOL to have only a handfull active derivatives.  really, its 
a good thing.

The beauty of freedom from C on all platforms cross-platform, relative 
speed => Red

The flexibility of REBOL to the maximum, remember Red will be a Reduced 
REBOL dialect => R3

Remember Red will be a Reduced REBOL dialect

 That is not true anymore since a while (almost since last summer).

Good to hear this Doc, hadn't realized that, thought there remained 
issues limiting full REBOL like flexibility. New name for Red needed?

The interpreter has lifted all limitations, at least in potential

Red still has {Red]uced resource requirements compared to REBOL

You could also interpret it as an evaluation/REDUCE of REBOL's potential