[REBOL] Re: Opening a new blog about Rebol?
From: ale870:gm:ail at: 17-Nov-2007 18:25
Hello Petr,
first of all: thank you for your exhaustive answer. Just a question (since
I'm not involved in R3 testing or development, and I cannot follow AltMe
discussions, so...) are you a developer, or a Rebol Technologies
responsible? I ask this because it seems you talk like a Rebol Tech company
member (this is not an abuse, but just an information that I wished to get).
But - some ppl preach to open-source as a holy grail. I have one friend,
> who uses REBOL but constantly blames it for not being open sourced. He
> uses also Python. So I asked him, if he EVER even looked into Python
> sources. The answer was what I expected - even if some problem would
> arise, he would NOT be able to fix it himself, having sources or not.
> That is some false feeling of "security".
>
This is a common "mistake" that several people do. I fully agree with you.
In fact, even if I made my first application when I was 12, and now I'm 37,
and I know more than 15 programming languages, I never imagine to use open
source apps to modify their source code (I haven't enough free time nor
enough resources... aka people involved). But when I decide to use an open
source app, I know that, probably, a big community will grow around that
piece of software, and even if a company would terminate its development, or
some people go in the "wrong way" (from my point of view) I know that I will
not remain completely tied!
In my job, for the company where I work, we use ex-Borland Delphi (now
CodeGear), I use M$ products, I use ex-Macromedia products (now Adobe). In
every case, I had to follow economical decisions taken from the big
companies and not "right" decisions for the software self (I'm sorry for my
bad english, maybe some concepts are not quite clear).
I think Rebol company sometimes forgets that, even if they created a great
product, thay have to "fight" in the market, against Java, python, perl,
ruby, php, etc... Some of them are free, other ones are even open source.
Rebol could be a killer application if new VID (in R3) will be really
powerful.
Java on server-side is great (my opinion), even to create BIG applications.
Instead Java and JavaFx have serious problems in client-side (due to the big
size of the runtime, the big amount of memory used, the big delay during
startup, etc...).
On the contrary of other clients (flash, java on the web, etc...) rebol can
directly access to local resources (very important if I use it in my company
to realize internal company applications, for all the europe).
Furthermore, for the people like me that follow rebol, there is lack of
information about R3 development (I stopped to develop Laccio because I
don't know anything about new R3, I don't continue to make tutorials on VID
R2 because I don't know anything about R3 VID, etc....). I think other
people are in the same situation.
More: since Rebol is not a free product, some people could think: why I need
to spend time to create apps and resources for free if rebol self is not
free? Why should I have to help Rebol? Just to let them gain more money?!
Believe me, some people think that.
I think Rebol must be closed in order to avoid forks, but you need to find a
good license to involve the people to try and use it. (example: free for
non-commercial use, like many other products do!).
Alessandro - just sit, blog, and watch the show :-)
I watching the show.... but I still see a lot of fog! And I cannot see
clearly a lot of things! So, please, try to help me (and other people like
me) to eliminate the fog and better see the show!!! :-) :-) :-)
Thank you Petr!
On Nov 16, 2007 8:35 AM, Petr Krenzelok <petr.krenzelok-seznam.cz> wrote:
> Hello Alessandro,
>
> I would like to have few comments to your remarks:
>
> Alessandro Manotti napsal(a):
> > Yes Henrik, I agree with you.
> > Some popular languages have A LOT OF sites dedicated, but everyday many
> > others are created.
> > I think the only problem regarding Rebol popularity is:
> > 1) it is not open source
> >
>
> Open source holy grail. Well, that is old topic, and we came thru
> various phases. My current conclusion is, that open sourcing whole REBOL
> would NOT automatically mean any rise in its popularity. I think that
> each new thing has its momentum. And REBOL momentum is gone. It was one
> somewhere in 2001 - 2003. Orca, REBOL clone is good example - it is open
> sourced, it is Core clone, yet it did not gain any special attraction.
>
> But - some ppl preach to open-source as a holy grail. I have one friend,
> who uses REBOL but constantly blames it for not being open sourced. He
> uses also Python. So I asked him, if he EVER even looked into Python
> sources. The answer was what I expected - even if some problem would
> arise, he would NOT be able to fix it himself, having sources or not.
> That is some false feeling of "security".
>
> But I understand where it does come from. When RT turned into IOS
> (solution) company, we waited for some fixes for years to come, and
> noone but RT could fix them. The situation with R3 is going to be
> completly different, and that is what we should start to market about
> REBOL, as R3 is close, and R2 is nearly a history ....
>
> > 2) Rebol Technologis (the company) does not make enough publicity, and
> does
> > not support the people that try to spread the Rebol-word.
> >
>
> Yes, that was true. Sometimes we could not hear or "push" them to do
> some action for months. But - RT is open to ideas nowadays. You remember
> the material, where they are looking for a marketing guy, full time job?
> Remember - that person must know, who "pekr" is :-)
>
> Currently there is a "secret" group on AltME channel, whose purpose is
> to redefine websites. We had nearly one week of chats, to define
> strategy, where does REBOL want to go, etc. Slow process, but we will
> get there. And Carl is there of course, and marketing is one of his main
> tasks for overall R3 release. So don't worry, this time, we will try to
> make it better than with R2. We also agreed on (amongst many other
> things) one point - let's not hype R3 features, unless we can deliver
> describe product capabilities "as-is".
>
> OTOH there is a community. This thread is called "Opening a new blog",
> and I say - go for it, absolutly! There are already some guys doing good
> public work. First guys responsible for rebol.org - it is not easily
> visible, but many features there. Then Brian Tiffin encouraging
> everybody to rock! :-) And finally Henrik - reading his blog you feel
> much better about things coming. Of course I would not like to forget
> about collective effort of rebolweek ... So - go for your blog.
>
> > I asked to a friend of mine to try to use (learn) rebol. She told me
> (she is
> > a very good programmer) that she does not want to use rebol because...
> >
> > 1) on server-side there are MANY programming languages, and they are all
> > free (and open source), like PHP, Pyhton, Perl, Java, ASP, c#, visual
> > basic#, ruby, etc... So... why paying to use Rebol (since in server
> side,
> > for example, DB is a must, and one cannot use DB (odbc, oracle, etc,...)
> if
> > one does not buy command version.
> >
>
> Well, I am not here to argue, but she surely would put JAVA on that list
> even one year ago, even when JAVA was not open source. C# is counterpart
> for .NET, private technology. Those who seek solutions, would find one -
> odbc socket server, which enables core to talk to any ODBC database. But
> I get her point, no need to explain it further. I just would wait, and
> tried to talk to her later, maybe showing her elegant few liner rebol
> code solution, with free R3 database access :-)
>
> > 2) client side: it could be great, but GUI is not yet at highest level
> (it
> > is not the "best of breed").
> >
>
> It is not, but it will be. View will rock! I can guarantee you, that
> apart from Flash/Flex and maybe Silverlight a bit, NONE of other
> languages has anything close to View. Most of them link to external
> toolkits - SDL, Qt, Tk, GTK+, etc. The thing is, even REBOL could
> integrate to those, the work just was not done. But once again - we will
> concentrate upon our advantage - View and its browser plug-in. You
> should know, that one of three Ruby's main bounties few years ago was
> "REBOL/View clone" ... guys tried it, but were disappointed because of
> its "speed" :-) Besides that, RebGUI is pretty much decent toolkit, much
> better than what VID2 provides us with recently.
>
> Besides that - all of those above toolkits push their old sh*tty aproach
> on you - objects, objects, etc., down to user level. But - VID user is
> not supposed to be a good programmer. So - I hope that with VID3 we
> continue being mostly declarative in user level. JAVA guys were also
> fed-up with all that stuff, so they brought us JavaFX, and one must
> laugh, how it is similar to VID definition - so - so much for cool
> overobjected methods of nowadays.
>
> > I think rebol really needs a lot publicity since it is really a great
> > language, but I think Rebol Technologies should have to "help" the
> people
> > (aka "promote rebol") to use it, with a license that best fits the
> current
> > market, considerring that their competitors are Python, PHP, M$, Ruby,
> Java
> > & JavaFX, etc...
> >
> >
>
> I should now explain strategy a bit. We have two targets here:
>
> - current world, full of other technologies. It will be a tough call, to
> get into the group of python, ruby, php, perl league. But there are some
> guys interested in further linkage of REBOL to .NET etc technologies. It
> will be long way to go, but infrastructure of R3 should allow this
> (plug-ins)
>
> - more important target is to concentrate upon what REBOL is good etc -
> distributes lightweight computing, using rebol services. Along with
> Flash/Flex there might not be other lightweight technology to fill the
> market. And once ppl see few nice demos in browser plug-in, see their
> nice declarative (readable) source code, those might come. There is
> always new generation, which looks for their first language, and we
> might attract them. We will probably not easily win you friend
> programmer, as you can't teach old do new things easily. Such ppl will
> always compare it to aproach they are used to ...
>
> Alessandro - just sit, blog, and watch the show :-)
>
> Cheers,
> -pekr-
> > However, I already saw your blog in the past weeks, and it seems very
> > interesting. Now that I know who are you, I will put a link in my
> italian
> > blog to your blog.
> >
> > If we link to eachother, we
> > can also help eachother. I would be happy to do that.
> >
> > Great! I'm always available to any kind of collaboration!
> >
> >
> >
> > On Nov 10, 2007 12:49 PM, Henrik Mikael Kristensen <henrik-webz.dk>
> wrote:
> >
> >
> >> On 07/11/2007, at 17.42, Alessandro Manotti wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>> Hello,
> >>>
> >>> I need a suggestion / opinion by you.
> >>> Currently I have a blog (in italian language) to publish some Rebol
> >>> news,
> >>> but more focused on tutorials, tips & tricks, How-to, etc...
> >>> I think it is interesting. For example I'm using our discusssion to
> >>> extract
> >>> useful information and publish them in the blog, like the trick
> >>> about code
> >>> optimization. In this way all italian people can gain more
> >>> knowledge about
> >>> this beautiful language. It is not very "famous" in Italy :-(
> >>>
> >>> I wanted to open a similar blog in english language, by simply
> >>> translating
> >>> my articles from italian to english. But since there are several
> >>> other blogs
> >>> in english, I don't know if it could be a good idea or not.
> >>> I wish your opinion.
> >>>
> >>> More: do you think that a blog in english language containing
> >>> tutorial is
> >>> ok, or for rebol could be better using other tools (wikipedia, true
> >>> internet
> >>> site, forum, etc...).
> >>>
> >>> I haven't much time, but in order to fill articles in my italian
> >>> blog (
> >>> http://sguish.wordpress.com) I publish solutions, hints, etc...
> >>> that I find
> >>> in my real life, or solutions to some problems that other poeple ask.
> >>> So I use it like a block note, to put solutions found to some specific
> >>> problems (and sometimes I create full tutorials).
> >>>
> >>> Can I have your opinion? Do you think another site could be useful
> >>> or not
> >>> for Rebol?
> >>>
> >> I think it's a great idea. I have a REBOL blog myself at http://
> >> www.hmkdesign.dk/rebol/ but would like to see more "life" in the blog
> >> area. A blog shows personal interest in the language and I started
> >> mine to inform more people about the language and to give tricks and
> >> tips on things that took me a long time to figure out. I don't think
> >> there can be too many REBOL blogs. :-) If we link to eachother, we
> >> can also help eachother. I would be happy to do that.
> >>
> >> --
> >> Regards,
> >> Henrik Mikael Kristensen
> >>
> >>
> >> --
> >> To unsubscribe from the list, just send an email to
> >> lists at rebol.com with unsubscribe as the subject.
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >
> >
> >
>
> --
> To unsubscribe from the list, just send an email to
> lists at rebol.com with unsubscribe as the subject.
>
--
//Alessandro
http://sguish.wordpress.com
http://laccio.wordpress.com
