OpenEuphoria

RE: Moving on...

• Posted by Matt Lewis <matthewwalkerlewis at yahoo.com> Aug 14, 2003
• 534 views

> From: eugtk at yahoo.com [mailto:eugtk at yahoo.com]

> In order for a Eu developer to actually contribute the
> things which are now needed, he or she must be very
> familiar with - not just Euphoria - but some pretty
> advanced  concepts (databases, network protocols, the
> C language, etc). 
>
> More familiar, in fact, than the average user of 
> other languages, who can usually just cut & paste 
> to get something running.  The Eu developer has to 
> have a pretty good grasp of a lot of inner workings
> before even beginning to port those things to Eu.
>
> Eu has to offer something more than whatever language
> that programmer now uses, if we expect that programmer
> to be motivated to reinvent yet another wheel.

Yes, although perversely, this is part of why I've enjoyed using Euphoria:
it's forced me to learn a lot of new stuff to write some of the libraries
that I wrote.  Not that I recommend this for everyone, and I agree that it
really holds back a lot of development in Euphoria.  In some areas I think
that the libraries are beginning to mature (Win32Lib, EuGTK, EuCOM, ODBC to
varying degrees) to the cut & paste level.

Internet programming is one of my weaknesses, but it seems to me that a lot
of internet development in Eu is based on 3rd party DLLs that wrap windows
TCP/IP functionality.  From a purist perspective, it would be better if
these could be pure Eu so that a user really could cut and paste with Eu
code.

> All of these languages offer more than Eu, except in
> the areas of speed and readability, and are far more
> popular:
> 
> Python - <snip>
> Guido isn't starving.
> 
> Perl - <snip>
> Larry isn't starving.
> 
> Ruby - <snip>
> Matz isn't starving.
> 

<snip>

> 3. Rob wouldn't likely starve if he made Eu open
> source.

I've never really followed or paid any attention to any of these (languages
or authors).  Here are a few questions that the business major in me would
ask:

* What is the business model that keeps them from starving?  Books?
Donations?

* Is their primary means of support the language and its spinoffs?

* How did they get there?

* Is there a feasible way for Rob to get there from here?  How long before
open sourced Eu would show him a profit?  What sort of investment might be
required?

>From a practical standpoint, these are the [first] questions Rob has to
answer before he throws away a proven model that makes him a decent amount
of money (by his own account).  I think we can all agree that Rob isn't
terribly interested in taking these steps by himself, but if a coherent
business plan were presented to him...

Matt Lewis