[REBOL] Re: The future of Rebol - achieving critical mass
From: jeff:rebol at: 21-May-2001 8:52
Howdy, Geoff:
> > The basics (/Core and /View) ARE free.
>
> Agreed, but unless you have access to external libraries
> and persistent data they are of limited use.
Sure. I wouldn't characterize them as of "limited use",
though. There's an infinity of uses but Core and View have
less capability than their PRO counterparts (The basic uses
are a lower order of infinity than the Pro uses). Hopefully
you'll enjoy the basic View and Core (and put them to great
use as many have) but you'll be unsatisfied by their
comparative limitations to Pro. This feeling of disatisfaction
will cause you to produce your credit card and purchase the
Pro versions for their low low fee! :-)
> It's only my opinion, but I would have thought that the
> future of the company is in high-end applications like
> /Express, not in selling the basic functionality that other
> languages offer for free.
I think in the longer run, higher end components like Express
will play a role, but REBOL Tech.'s expertise is in building
REBOL.
The functionality that's nicely bundled in half a meg of REBOL
is available for free out there in other languages, if you're
willing to cobble it all together yourself. You have the time
as a programmer that it takes for you to cobble together all
functionality found in REBOL when you need it (each time you
need it) and the time it takes to make it reusable and then
tailor it to your specific needs. If the amount of money
you would have charged for this amount of time spent on a
programming task ever approaches the cost of REBOL/Pro then,
at the very least, you could be making better use of your
time! :-)
I like the simplicity of the REBOL/Pro business model: Make
something valuable and people will buy it.
