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[REBOL] Re: (No subject)MIME-Version: 1.0

From: carl:cybercraft at: 8-Jul-2002 21:54

On 08-Jul-02, [riusa--email--it] wrote:
>> I only see one problem here: how would the player be different >> from /View? >> >> Regards, >> Gabriele. > Good question! Some answers could be: player has not a true console > (I cannot directly type commands). Rebol interactive console is a > powerful instrument to create/debug programs. I could have a Rebol > version where I can create text-based software, but I cannot > directly use it to interact with Rebol (typeing Rebol command, or > writing Rebol scripts in console). Another feature that could be > eliminated is executing Rebol commands using Rebol command-line > (when you exec Rebol from your preferred shell). > Think for a moment to the difference from a Explorer browser and a > full featured HTML editor like Dreamweaver: Explorer can exec the > HTML/Javascript code, but it doesn't give you any instrument to > create HTML code. If you buy Dreamwever (or a similar product, like > Hotdog, etc...) you have a good instrument to create HTML & co. > Rebol could work with the same target: Rebol player is the smallest > instrument to play Rebol scripts (maybe, it could be even smaller > than now): no console (console is available only to play text-based > programs, not to let the programmer directly type code), no > interactive help (> ? print); and Rebol "for developers" could be a > package which contains a full-featured Rebol program, a good Rebol > editor (syntax highlight, interactive help, direct execution, > etc...), a full console help, a good debugger. > What do you think about it?
Going by posts in the past, RT are trying to avoid the situation where a large company can use many copies of REBOL without having to pay for them, hence the "not free for commercial use" licencing. If there was a free "player" and a commercial developer version, how do you prevent a large company buying just one developer version while using the player version throughout the company for running the software created with the developer version? In other words, if RT didn't want that to happen they'd need a "free only for non-comercial use" licence on the player version, and we'd be back to where we started. So I don't think there's a technical solution to this licencing problem. RT wants their share from everyone using REBOL for commercial gain, (and fair enough), but it's a hard sell. As someone said to me with regards to REBOL licencing, when they buy a hammer they don't expect to have to give the hammer-seller a percentage of everything they sell that they make with the hammer. With REBOL though, REBOL needs to be included with what you sell, hence it's different to a hammer. Not that I don't think a free-player commercial-developer-kit split isn't a good way forward for REBOL. It'd be an excellent way to make it popular, but whether RT would do as well out of that approach as out of their current approach is a different matter. REBOL does need a certain level of popularity though else there won't be enough people who know how to program it to go around. -- Carl Read