[REBOL] Re: Beta Expiration
From: dlhawley:home at: 23-Jan-2001 10:14
Previously, you (Chris) wrote:
> David Hawley wrote:
>
> > What is the point of having expiration built into the code? I can see
>
> To date the only RT technologies you can distribute are the /core
> binary and /command runtimes? /view is a beta product which is not
> ready for commercial deployment. License restrictions are fine if
> your users stick to licenses, but few businesses have remained in
> business by trusting their users on such things. Building in an
> expiration prevents all but the hardcore hackers from deploying
> a product comercially. As with a lot of software development
> companies, RT needs to maintain an image. If you read the blurb on
> the RT site you'll realise it's not aimed at developers, or even
> end users for that matter. It's aimed at managers, pen-pushers and
> admin people who pay more attention to how many buzzwords there are
> in a sentance than the specifications of the product. This image
> is not served by allowing people to ship products which rely on
> a stable but incomplete product like /view. What happens if
> someone develops a product which seems to work fine but, when
> shipped, encounters problems with /view? How is that going to
> affect the customer? At best it'll make them less open to Rebol,
> at worst it could generate a lot of negative publicity that
> puts off potential customers and discourages investors.
No real company is going to ship a product which requires monthly
or quarterly update of a license whether (although REBOL would make
fairly transparent to do so). There's not much difference between
embedding the license into the code and having a seperate file -
although I'm coming from the QNX point fo view where the OS does this
for you.
Still my gripe is unanswered. The QNX4 and RTP experimental versions
of core expired on 12/27/2000. I've been trying to develop a product
which requires serial port support, but I haven't been able to do
anything since then because the license is expired and I don't like to
turn back th clock on my computer. If the exp license was a file, then
I'd think that it would be pretty easy for you guys to keep that going
even though you're stuck on parts of core for some platform with higher
priority than QNX. As I noted to support, I can work around things like
serial port opens that always set baud rate to 0 pretty easily, but
I'm dead in the water without a license.
Your site may be aimed at managers, but developers are the ones using
the language and if you turn them off it won't matter what the
managers want.
> There are sound business reasons for expiration dates in beta
> software. IMO the big "problem" is that RT are so careful in
> releasing fairly well programmed betas that people forget that
> they are testing incomplete, possibly buggy code rather than the
> finished product.
I agree that it makes a lot of sense to expire beta code, but only
if you can keep up with the built in time frame.
--
David L. Hawley D.L. Hawley and Associates 1.503.274.2242
Software Engineer [David--L--Hawley--computer--org]
