RE: Moving on...
Just some general replies ...
Open Source doesn't mean socially inept hackers coding after midnight
in a dark room. As you say Open Source is being embrassed by some of
the worlds largest companies and this is really a great advertisment
for the Open Source philosophy.
I agree Open Source isn't for everybody ... the idea behind my post
was that Euphoria (being developed the way it is) can't compete with
other languages. The only way for Euphoria to take the next big
step forward is to become open source.
Obviously if Euphoria's income is being used to "feed the family" so
to speak no one could (or should) try to make RDS make it open source.
If Euphoria's income isn't doing that, then I'm saying there are some
really strong arguements to make Euphoria open source.
Looking through all of the Eu contributions I'd say that few are
useful, even less are at any level of completeness and most are
not updated anymore as the original authors have moved on. There are
a few really good libs/tools/utilities ... but really ... not that
many.
Ray Smith
http://rays-web.com
Peter Willems wrote:
Ray Smith wrote:
>
> Peter Willems wrote:
>
> > Actually, what I had in mind is that a community website with
> > dedicated forums, wiki, etc, might
> [snip]
> > I would even recommend raising such documentation and a specific
> > doc-generator as a must for the projects that are hosted on such
> > a community website 
> [snip]
> > But if the project is hosted on a community website then the
> > developer can easy request feedback or ask if anyone else want
> > to participate or even take over the project. This is common
> > practice in other developer communities.
>
> An "EU Community" has very little hope of developing past the current
> mailing list.
> People who decide to do major contributions to projects and then give
> it all away will almost always decide to do it on 100% open source
> projects.
So where are all those files in the archive coming from then.
There are loads of libraries available but they are just not
finished enough. Tmo THAT is purely the result of lack of
response from users towards the developers, something that could
be enhanced greatly by a better organized community.
> Why would anyone put huge amounts of effort into helping develop Eu
> furthur (i.e. by writing doco, libraries, apps, etc) when the core is
> closed and is only being "very slowly" developed and 100% controlled
> by 1 person???
Maybe because it's a great programming language 
> ok a few people contribute (I was one of them) but compared to other
> languages very few.
That has more to do with the "visibility" of the language.
> Closed source products (i.e. Euphoria, Microsoft products etc) are
> made by people who want to make money.
People need to eat, need to earn money to do so and some make
money by developing software. There's nothing wrong with that.
> Open Source products (i.e. Perl, Python, Ruby) are made by people who
> want to make great products.
Those people also have other means of making money, or else they
die of starvation. It is also clear that a lot of projects where
made open-source because the original owner didn't have the time
left to work on it because they found out they also had to make
a living (take a look at the Xbasic story).
I won't say that Open Source is not a viable business model, but
only for companies that make their money by selling support
packages. If you are not a support-company but instead a
development-company, you obviously need to make your money with
*development*, so you need to sell software instead of giving it
away.
> That's why these open source languages can now compete with the best
> closed source languages that the biggest companies (with huge
> amounts) of money develop.
Let's be honest here, there is currently not one Open Source
development platform that is either fully deployable for large
business platforms or has been developed without big businesses
funding or leading it's development.
When I'm talking about a development platform I mean it in the
exact sense of the words. For serious deployment you need more
then *just* the language. You need databases, GUIs, report
generators, etc. There are currently only a few languages that
are completely supported in these areas and those are ALL developed
with the help and funding of big businesses:
- Java is developed by SUN, including their Netbeans IDE
- The Eclipse Java platform is developed by IBM
There are currently no other Open Source languages that have this
level of supporting development platforms, the only other ones
available are all commercial tools like the Borland languages and
the stuff from MS.
> When someone says ... look here is my product and I want to make it
> open source they are saying help me make this a "great" product.
> Very strong communities have developed around open source products
> because there is a desire to "improve" software for the good of the
> people. It sounds crazy but it's true!
It's not crazy, it's idealism. It has nothing to do with feeding
your familly and that is something that people need to do also....
... It sounds crazy but it's true!
> Some may argue that open source projects are controlled by 1 person
> (or small numbers of people). This is true, but if this person (or
> people) don't progress as users expect then the project forks and a
> new leader takes control and improves the product.
Yep, and the original owner has no problems as he wasn't making
his income from that project in the first place.
> (Most open source projects these days have senior committies who vote
> on changes which seems like a very good solution)
Yep, and in some cases these committies are even on someone's
payroll.
Most people seem to forget that Open Source is becomming more
popular because big companies have found a way to make money
with it. Before that it was just for fun. The Linux story tells
it all.
> The only thing that will make Euphoria more popular is for it to
> become open source. I respect Rob's choose not to do this, but the
> end result is, Euphoria is lossing ground to other languages at a
> very fast rate with no chance of catching up.
I don't think Euphoria is loosing ground, just that it isn't
gaining ground fast enough.
> It is actually interesting to read this list from time to time and
> hear people talking about "how to improve" Euphoria.
Yep
> Talented people, I mean really talented people (I'm by no means
> including myself!!!) just aren't going to jump into the Euphoria
> community and write high class libs utils doco etc. It's just not
> going to happen.
So, again, where are all these libraries coming from then ?
> All of these poeple are over using Perl, Python and
> Ruby etc having a great time.
I think the Eu users also have a great time with their language
of choice. Oh, and I've never even heard a seasoned Perl coder
calling coding in Perl "fun". It's a very capable language, but
fun has nothing to do with it
> Open Source is like a light that
> flicks on in your head, when it turns on you just can't imagine why
> you didn't understand it before, or why others can't see what you see!
Open Source is a great thing, but it is not the ultimate business
model.
> If Euphoria is doing everything you want to it do now, then great,
> if you'd like it to other things and you yourself aren't able to, or
> not willing to do it, then don't hold your breath!
Agreed, but that goes for a lot of other languages also.
Hans Peter Willems
Ray Smith
http://rays-web.com
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