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2-May 16:19 UTC
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Platforms to become 'unsupported'.........

 [1/13] from: jfdutcher1958::yahoo at: 13-Jul-2004 4:53


Does anyone know if becoming 'unsupported' is likely to be the sad, sad fate of the BeOS operating system (or 'OpenBeOS', as it is now being developed as open source) ?? John D.

 [2/13] from: petr:krenzelok:trz:cz at: 13-Jul-2004 15:14


John Dutcher napsal(a):
>Does anyone know if becoming 'unsupported' is likely to be the >sad, sad fate of the BeOS operating system (or 'OpenBeOS', as it is > now being developed as open source) ?? > >John D. >
Hello John, IMO you would have to ask Carl directly. But my pov is it is logical to drop such platforms. IMO even Amiga and QNX will be dropped. Rebol is not open-source, so RT has to do porting work themselves. Maybe it would help if someone would prepare platform production environment to RT, but not sure if it would help, although it could speed things up. OTOH porting is not only simple fact of recompile, it is also platform abstraction. Maybe Core could be easier, but View would be more difficult to port anyway. Unless RT is rich enough to employ additional ten programmers, they have to focus to support other projects, as porting to OSx, further enhancing Rebol Technology to stay competitive, build new communication channels to rebol developer's community etc. I know it can be frustrating, but that is the reality. Wouldn't you after all like to see View on your PDA instead? Will BeOS or AmigaOS be present on any such device? IMO not, not so soon, or the userbase will be insignificant anyway ... just my pov. cheers, -pekr-

 [3/13] from: mauro:fontana:speedautomazione:it at: 14-Jul-2004 9:35


> I know it can be frustrating, but that is the reality. Wouldn't you > after all like to see View on your PDA instead? Will BeOS or AmigaOS be > present on any such device? IMO not, not so soon, or the userbase will > be insignificant anyway ...
This is not the good point, however. Dropping "secondary" platforms to concentrate on mainstreams one is not what made rebol "famous". The "more then 42 platforms supported" written somewhere on the site features is something quite astonishing. I can remember that the first rebol/core users were not Win or Mac ones. So it would be quite a bad policy to drop them now. IMHO, if you have to compete with open source projects which are pervasive on other minor platform I think a pervasive porting is necessary. PDA can be good, but I can't really see anything rebol can do for them which improves their usage or boost rebol approval on the user pov. So I think this PDA user base would be even smaller that Amiga or BeOS users. Simply put, I can't see Rebol as a successful idea if it is limited to the mainstream platforms where, it is well known, only mainstream packages/applications coming from mainstream companies are widely used and accepted. It would just be another anonymous tool in the almost never used by anyone ocean of utilities. Just my thoughts, after a no so good night... Mauro

 [4/13] from: g:santilli:tiscalinet:it at: 14-Jul-2004 12:47


Hi Mauro, On Wednesday, July 14, 2004, 9:35:49 AM, you wrote: MF> Dropping "secondary" platforms to concentrate on mainstreams one is not MF> what made rebol "famous". The "more then 42 platforms supported" written MF> somewhere on the site features is something quite astonishing. MF> I can remember that the first rebol/core users were not Win or Mac ones. MF> So it would be quite a bad policy to drop them now. If no one is asking (or buying...) for them, then it's quite obvious that they will want to drop them. I agree that multiplatformness is one of the most important points of REBOL, but they can't just support *everything*, so they need users to help them prioritize. MF> Simply put, I can't see Rebol as a successful idea if it is limited to the MF> mainstream platforms where, it is well known, only mainstream How many Amiga REBOL users are there? Again, I agree that more platforms = better, but if the price to pay is having View at 1.2.1 for three years, then please not. Regards, Gabriele. -- Gabriele Santilli <[g--santilli--tiscalinet--it]> -- REBOL Programmer Amiga Group Italia sez. L'Aquila --- SOON: http://www.rebol.it/

 [5/13] from: petr:krenzelok:trz:cz at: 14-Jul-2004 13:12


Mauro Fontana napsal(a):
>>I know it can be frustrating, but that is the reality. Wouldn't you >>after all like to see View on your PDA instead? Will BeOS or AmigaOS be
<<quoted lines omitted: 20>>
>accepted. It would just be another anonymous tool in the almost never used >by anyone ocean of utilities.
Well, I understand what do you mean, but you completly forgot developers. IMO PDA OSes may be pretty strategic decision to support. Imagine View powered by AGG, plug-ins, VM for pixel manipulation - we would get nice development tool. Well, I hope something can be done about memory usage, but even today's PDAs start to have 128MB at least. It would not be tool for end users, but app produced by such PDAs could be very popular. Rebol is nicely internet aware, so lot's of usefull apps could be produced ... -pekr-

 [6/13] from: alanore:comcast at: 14-Jul-2004 10:51


At 03:47 AM 7/14/2004, you wrote:
>How many Amiga REBOL users are there?
Well I use AmigaForever and AmigaXL and Rebol is on both.Not as fast as a win box but fast enuf to show that it does work

 [7/13] from: g:santilli:tiscalinet:it at: 15-Jul-2004 12:04


Hi Alan, On Wednesday, July 14, 2004, 7:51:37 PM, you wrote:
>>How many Amiga REBOL users are there?
AC> Well I use AmigaForever and AmigaXL and Rebol is on both.Not as fast as a AC> win box but fast enuf to show that it does work I didn't mean that there aren't any, I've used REBOL on the Amiga for so long myself. However, the point is that there are not so many as one would expect. Very few amigans use REBOL, and the amigans are very few already. So as much as I wish RT would continue supporting Amiga, I wouldn't really blame them for dropping it. Regards, Gabriele. -- Gabriele Santilli <[g--santilli--tiscalinet--it]> -- REBOL Programmer Amiga Group Italia sez. L'Aquila --- SOON: http://www.rebol.it/

 [8/13] from: carl:cybercraft at: 16-Jul-2004 9:25


>This is not the good point, however. >Dropping "secondary" platforms to concentrate on mainstreams one is not >what made rebol "famous". The "more then 42 platforms supported" written >somewhere on the site features is something quite astonishing. >I can remember that the first rebol/core users were not Win or Mac ones. >So it would be quite a bad policy to drop them now.
I don't want platforms dropped either, but the reality is that having REBOL run on those 42 platforms didn't make it famous - it wasn't what the world had a great need for. That said, it didn't become famous on Windows either, so there's reasons other than the number of platforms supported that have contributed to its lack of success. Some of those reasons are technical ones, and a major other reason is it's not open-source. I didn't support REBOL going open-source when RT was managing to bring out updates for those 42 platforms all in the same week, but I would now. Whether RT could dream up a business plan that'd make them money by open-sourcing REBOL is a different matter though. -- Carl Read

 [9/13] from: roland:hadinger:arcor at: 16-Jul-2004 6:49


Hi Carl,
> Some of those reasons are technical ones, and a major other reason is it's > not open-source. I didn't support REBOL going open-source when RT was > managing to bring out updates for those 42 platforms all in the same week, > but I would now. Whether RT could dream up a business plan that'd make > them money by open-sourcing REBOL is a different matter though.
A good example of sucessfully going open source is the modeling and rendering software Blender (www.blender3d.org) Originally closed source, but like REBOL/view freely available for noncommercial use, development of Blender happened to be painfully slow back then, as there was just a very small team of developers. Similarly, the acceptance of Blender was not too great, although the software already incorporated many features. However, there was a critical mass of loyal users really supporting the open source development model and it became open source (story on www.infoanarchy.org/story/2002/9/8/231356/2303). Today, Blender is much more polished and development cycles are greatly reduced. There is a difference, though: back then, an open source alternative to Blender did not exist, so there were no 'distractions' to the community. REBOL on the other hand would have at least a few very successful contenders in the open source arena, popularity-wise. But in my opinion REBOL (as a language) is still superior to most of them (e.g. Python, Perl, PHP), so maybe it's not too late to go open source. -- R.

 [10/13] from: mauro:fontana:speedautomazione:it at: 16-Jul-2004 8:52


> There is a difference, though: back then, an open source alternative to > Blender did not exist, so there were no 'distractions' to the community.
<<quoted lines omitted: 3>>
> language) is still superior to most of them (e.g. Python, Perl, PHP), so > maybe it's not too late to go open source.
I would be carefull saying rebol is superior to PHP when the latter has direct embedded support into apache and now can be compiled to be fast. Other than the fact that if you badly need something not still existing you can go and code it yourself for it. For a language that claims its desire is to become the Internet glue a native support into mainstream web servers should be the priority. Mauro

 [11/13] from: carloslorenz:rebolbrasil:nobrenet at: 16-Jul-2004 11:25


Hi folks, REBOL is an excellent product and though lots of people have heard about it around the world only a very small group of programmers use it and of course this is due to the fact that REBOL has a very inflexible license model. People that use REBOL know very well how good and fast it is to program with it rather than with Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby, Lua, etc etc Carl and RT folks know better than anyone else that REBOL is a superior language and maybe that's why they are not so anxious to see it under an GPL license, for instance. Thats's a way of thinking too much attached to the Wintel model of businness but this model has proved not to be so efficient to small companies like RT. Nowadays lots of small companies have learned how to make their money with open source products and I guess REBOL Technologies shoud consider it as a real choice to grow up and spread REBOL to the world. Emergent countries like mine are seriously considering the exclusive use of open source software (http://www.softwarelivre.gov.br/) in all levels of government administration and for sure this is going to be another example to the world on how things can be managed being outside the Wintel world. I know this is not going to happen in the US too soon but in some other places of the world things are going the same direction too (see India and some cities in Europe). So I think - and its just a thought - that RT people could earn much more money giving speechs and oferring trainnings abou REBOL around the world than trying to keep it behind closed doors. Carlos On Fri, 16 Jul 2004 06:49:43 +0200 Roland Hadinger <[roland--hadinger--arcor--de]> wrote:

 [12/13] from: roland:hadinger:arcor at: 16-Jul-2004 18:09


On Friday 16 July 2004 08:52, Mauro Fontana wrote:
> I would be carefull saying rebol is superior to PHP when the latter has > direct embedded support into apache and now can be compiled to be fast. > Other than the fact that if you badly need something not still existing > you can go and code it yourself for it.
No, I said REBOL *as a language* is superior to PHP. I happen to write code in both languages seven days a week, so I should be able to compare. PHP *as a language* sucks planets through garden hoses, and it isn't very likely this will change.
> For a language that claims its desire is to become the Internet glue a > native support into mainstream web servers should be the priority.
Would be nice to have, but REBOL is much more than just "internet glue".
> Mauro
-- R.

 [13/13] from: greggirwin:mindspring at: 16-Jul-2004 10:04


Hi Mauro, MF> I would be carefull saying rebol is superior to PHP when the latter has MF> direct embedded support into apache and now can be compiled to be fast. I think he meant the design of the language itself. As a side note, the compiler costs about the same as Command/SDK, doesn't support all PHP extensions, and was written in Scheme (a language much more like REBOL than PHP :). -- Gregg
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