Apple II Debugger
Titus
I used LISA! I also used Merlin and the S-C Macro Assemblers. Talk
about fun!
Do you remember a debugger for the Apple II named Satan or Lucifer?
I can't remember the name, but would love to get it up and running in
an Apple II+ emulator.
-Titus
johnzulu
68000 assembly.
John
rh...@cs.ucr.edu
johnzulu[at]yahoo.com wrote:
> Where can I get the LISA program? Any clue. Sounds a good way to learn
> 68000 assembly.
>
> John
Actually, it's a 6502 assembler for the Apple II.
Although Apple Computer built a machine called the "Lisa", the LISA
assembler (Lazer's Interactive Symbolic Assembler) predated that
product by several years. Indeed, Apple Computer gave me one of their
Lisa computers for the rights to use the name. At the time, that was
one *cool* machine.
Cheers,
Randy Hyde
rh...@cs.ucr.edu
johnzulu wrote:
> Where can I get the LISA program? Any clue. Sounds a good way to learn
> 68000 assembly.
>
> John
Oh, I forgot in my previous post,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_assembler
http://modena.intergate.ca/personal/gslj/iiefreeware.html#PROG
http://axis.llx.com/~nparker/a2/
http://aceemploymentservices.net/lisa.htm
http://aceemploymentservices.net/lisa_manual__download_page.htm
http://www.dadgum.com/halcyon/BOOK/GOODMAN.HTM
http://www.a2central.com/article.php?story=20060111050732518
Some of these links contain the download for the LISA assembler and the
documentation for it.
Cheers,
Randy Hyde
rh...@cs.ucr.edu
Titus wrote:
> Randall,
>
> I used LISA! I also used Merlin and the S-C Macro Assemblers. Talk
> about fun!
>
> Do you remember a debugger for the Apple II named Satan or Lucifer?
Naw, that was 20 years ago and I barely remember my own products :-)
Cheers,
Randy Hyde
Betov
@b28g2000cwb.googlegroups.com:
:]]]]]
It seems that you have found out a couple of new minions
lately, who agrea with giving you a hand at your well
known propaganda system, Master Pdf.
Congratulations.
:)
Well... too bad that we will never see any report about
what it really was, and about the number of bugs, making
this toy unusable, according to what i have read here and
there. Of course, also, feel free to forget to talk about
what you did NOT write, in this dead toy, as well as the
reasons why it was abandonned as soon as released.
Betov.
Evenbit
johnzulu wrote:
> Where can I get the LISA program? Any clue. Sounds a good way to learn
> 68000 assembly.
>
> John
No.. LISA is for the 6502 line of CPUs, not the 68000 line. I was
looking for a "*.dsk" file myself so I could try it in Appler or
AppleWin, but the link on this page:
http://modena.intergate.ca/personal/gslj/iiefreeware.html#PROG
seems to be broken.
Nathan.
Betov
@75g2000cwc.googlegroups.com:
Courage.
:)
Betov.
johnzulu
John
PS: boy it is late. need sleep.zzzzzzzzzz
rh...@cs.ucr.edu
Betov wrote:
>
> It seems that you have found out a couple of new minions
> lately, who agrea with giving you a hand at your well
> known propaganda system, Master Pdf.
>
> Congratulations.
Whatever.
> Well... too bad that we will never see any report about
> what it really was,
???
What LISA was has been reported around here on several occasions.
And if you'd actually looked at the links rather than shooting off at
the mouth in ignorance (as usual), you'd find the the complete On-Line
Systems documentation is available at one of those links.
> and about the number of bugs, making
> this toy unusable,
Well, regardless of how many bugs it may or may not have had, a large
number of commercial applications (including a lot of games) for the
Apple II were written with the LISA assembler.
> according to what i have read here and
> there.
Really? Links please.
> Of course, also, feel free to forget to talk about
> what you did NOT write, in this dead toy, as well as the
> reasons why it was abandonned as soon as released.
It was first released in 1979 by Programma International. Sierra
On-Line took it over when Programma went out of business (and before
you start blaming LISA for Programma's demise, just keep in mind that
LISA was a *tiny* part of Programma's business). When Sierra dropped it
sometime around 1983, I published and sold it myself for a couple of
years (actually made a living selling LISA and other products and
services). Then, shortly after the Apple II GS came out, I turned it
over to Brian Fitzgerald at HAL Labs who continued to support it and
extend it for another couple of years. Eventually, of course, the
Apple II family was no longer an economically viable platform for
software development, and LISA was released into the public domain by
HAL Labs.
It's wishful thinking on your part to conjure up this "abandoned as
soon as it was released" remark, but the facts, as usual, are 180
degrees out of phase with your twisted view of reality.
The good news is that you can look forward to HLA being abandoned when
the PC platform is no longer encomically viable to support software
development tools (i.e., when programmers move on to a different
platform and there is no longer a need for an x86 assembler).
Cheers,
Randy Hyde
rh...@cs.ucr.edu
The link on this page:
http://axis.llx.com/~nparker/a2/
seem to be good, though it's an shk file (Apple II compression). Not
having really touched my Apple IIGS in many years, I couldn't tell you
how to decompress the file.
Cheers,
Randy Hyde
Betov
@m73g2000cwd.googlegroups.com:
> [...]
I did not ask you for more and more insane propaganda, clown.
Betov.
rh...@cs.ucr.edu
Betov wrote:
> rh...@cs.ucr.edu écrivait news:1154200440.547610.83100
> @m73g2000cwd.googlegroups.com:
>
> > [...]
>
> I did not ask you for more and more insane propaganda, clown.
Ah, but you did.
Any time you make a claim that I've not done something I've claimed to
have done, you're asking me to respond and demonstrate that I've indeed
"been there and done that." When you claim, for example, that I didn't
write the LISA assembler, basically you're asking me to post more
material about the LISA assembler so people can see for themselves.
When you say that no one ever used the assembler, you're asking me to
post links on the internet showing that people did use the assembler.
When you say... You get the idea. If you really don't want me to
refute your claims, then what you need to do is shut up -- that's all
there is to it.
As I've always said Rene, you're the #2 guy promoting my cause. 90% of
the stuff I post here, covering things like the LISA assembler, just
wouldn't appear if you kept your mouth shut. But thanks for all the
past and future support to promote my cause and products. You've been
doing a great job chasing beginners into the HLA corner.
You know? I am totally amazed by your attempts to discredit me. I
realize that you're trying to convince people that I'm a liar and a
"swindler" but I never thought you'd be so stupid as to believe your
propaganda yourself. You'd think, after all these years of getting
swatted down, that you'd have figured out that when I say I've done
something, I've actually done it. Every time you call me a liar and
claim I haven't done something (like writing LISA), it's such a trivial
thing to prove you wrong. I would think you'd get tired of playing the
fool and constantly getting caught in such obvious lies. Do you
honestly think that telling obvious lies is going to convince people of
whatever it is you're trying to convince them of? Do you think that
character assasination on your part is going to discredit me? Boy, you
know little of human nature. The only thing you're doing is making
people *pity* me for having to put up with your crap all the time. And
that just pushes more people into the HLA camp (that is, people who
don't believe what you're saying). People who wouldn't have given HLA
(or any of my other products) any thought are being forced to help
defend it because of your obnoxiousness. But don't let me stop you, as
I say you're my #2 guy.
Cheers,
Randy Hyde
Chris Saunders
I tried the link
http://modena.intergate.ca/personal/gslj/iiefreeware.html#PROG and got
to a page titled "Free Software for the Apple II".
Regards
Chris Saunders
<rh...@cs.ucr.edu> wrote in message
news:1154200588....@m73g2000cwd.googlegroups.com...
Betov
@s13g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:
> Any time you make a claim that I've not done something I've claimed to
> have done, you're asking me to respond and demonstrate that I've indeed
> "been there and done that."
Good luck, clown. Courage.
:)
Betov.
Charles A. Crayne
rh...@cs.ucr.edu wrote:
:It was first released in 1979 by Programma International.
OH, that LISA! I got a complimentary copy of it from Programma, many years
ago, and pack rat that I am, I still have it. However, until now, I never
connected it with you, because your name does not appear in association
with it -- all of the copyright notices being in the name of Programma
International, Inc.
Not that I have any reason to doubt your word, but, unfortunately, neither
can I attest to it.
-- Chuck
rh...@cs.ucr.edu
Charles A. Crayne wrote:
>
> :It was first released in 1979 by Programma International.
>
> OH, that LISA! I got a complimentary copy of it from Programma, many years
> ago, and pack rat that I am, I still have it. However, until now, I never
> connected it with you, because your name does not appear in association
> with it -- all of the copyright notices being in the name of Programma
> International, Inc.
>
> Not that I have any reason to doubt your word, but, unfortunately, neither
> can I attest to it.
Oh well. :-)
I think that if you search for "that LISA" on the web, you'll discover
that my name is certainly attached to it. I'm pretty sure the Programma
documentation mentions my name on the interior, if not on the cover.
After all, I wrote the documentation for it. :-)
Cheers,
Randy Hyde
rh...@cs.ucr.edu
Chris Saunders wrote:
> Just to let you know.
> I tried the link
> http://modena.intergate.ca/personal/gslj/iiefreeware.html#PROG and got
> to a page titled "Free Software for the Apple II".
>
Yeah, but the link to the LISA assembler down the page seems to be
broken.
Cheers,
Randy Hyde
rh...@cs.ucr.edu
Betov wrote:
> rh...@cs.ucr.edu écrivait news:1154205056.150815.157220
> @s13g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:
>
> > Any time you make a claim that I've not done something I've claimed to
> > have done, you're asking me to respond and demonstrate that I've indeed
> > "been there and done that."
>
>
> Good luck,
I guess I've already got that. As you've noticed, the beginners seem to
be flocking to my product rather than your's.
> clown. Courage.
>
Not quite sure why I need courage. Should I be afraid of your little
"jihad"? It hasn't been to effective to date. Should I be afraid that
you'll show me to be a "liar and a swindler" as you've been trying to
do for the past several years? That hasn't worked yet. Courage would
be conquering fear. You are not the least bit fearsome.
Cheers,
Randy Hyde
Charles A. Crayne
rh...@cs.ucr.edu wrote:
:I'm pretty sure the Programma
:documentation mentions my name on the interior, if not on the cover.
:After all, I wrote the documentation for it. :-)
Perhaps so, but it appears that you did not any credit for it.
What I have is a 7x9 inch, leatherette three ring binder with "PROGRAMMA
LISA INTERACTIVE ASSEMBLER" printed on the spine, and the same information
arranged somewhat differently on the cover. The sales agreement says that
it was stock # AP138, and retailed for $59.95. The title page claims to be
for version 2.0, however, the TOC shows a 2.2 addendum, beginning on page
93.
I cannot find your name mentioned anywhere, although the addendum does
mention that an internals pamphlet can be obtained from LAZER SYSTEMS,
upon execution of a non-disclosure agreement, and regrets that "source
listings are not available".
-- Chuck
rh...@cs.ucr.edu
Charles A. Crayne wrote:
>
> Perhaps so, but it appears that you did not any credit for it.
Hmmm, interesting.
I wouldn't be surprised, though. That would be a typical "Mel Norell"
mentality item to claim credit for Programma and ditch the author's
name.
>
> What I have is a 7x9 inch, leatherette three ring binder with "PROGRAMMA
> LISA INTERACTIVE ASSEMBLER" printed on the spine, and the same information
> arranged somewhat differently on the cover.
Alas, I no longer have a copy, so I can't check this out myself (The
earliest manual I have is the LISA v2.6 manual, published by Lazer
Microsystems).
Nevertheless, I don't think there's any question in anyone's mind,
other than Rene's as to who wrote the product. There are just too many
references to me and Brian Fitzgerald (who took over after version 3.2
or so) on the net to refute the authorship.
> The sales agreement says that
> it was stock # AP138, and retailed for $59.95. The title page claims to be
> for version 2.0, however, the TOC shows a 2.2 addendum, beginning on page
> 93.
>
> I cannot find your name mentioned anywhere, although the addendum does
> mention that an internals pamphlet can be obtained from LAZER SYSTEMS,
Yeah, that would have been my company at the time.
> upon execution of a non-disclosure agreement, and regrets that "source
> listings are not available".
Yes. It was, after all, a commercial product. Back then, you could
actually make a decent enough living selling a product like an
assembler. But the sales of LISA were also what convinced me that
attempting to sell an assembler is a waste of time. Of course, when
even *Microsoft* is unable to sell an assembler, you know that
attempting to commercialize such a product for the general PC
marketplace is a waste of time (of course, assemblers for embedded
systems are still a good enough market that people can sell their
wares). Me? I decided to give the software away and make whatever money
is to be made off the books that go along with the assembler. :-).
Cheers,
Randy Hyde
rh...@cs.ucr.edu
Charles A. Crayne wrote:
>
> I cannot find your name mentioned anywhere, although the addendum does
> mention that an internals pamphlet can be obtained from LAZER SYSTEMS,
> upon execution of a non-disclosure agreement, and regrets that "source
> listings are not available".
>
> -- Chuck
BTW, once Brian was done supporting LISA, the source code was placed on
the net for people to look at, here are some references I've found to
it (note, btw, that I never did possess the source code to the final
versions of LISA -- I just wasn't interested in the product during the
later years):
http://www.apple2.org.za/mirrors/apple2.caltech.edu/8bit/dev/lisa/lisa.readme
http://www.apple2.org.za/mirrors/apple2.caltech.edu/8bit/dev/lisa/
Cheers,
Randy Hyde
William J. Leary Jr.
news:1154224951....@b28g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
> http://www.apple2.org.za/mirrors/apple2.caltech.edu/8bit/dev/lisa/
From lisadox.txt at the above URL:
DOCUMENTATION FOR LISA V3.2
===========================
copyright 1983, Randall Hyde
copyright 1983, LazerWare
All Rights Reserved
- Bill
johnzulu
too. PIC and Atmel are providing free assemblers with their product.
Not sure of the rest. From the look of things providing development
tools does not look lucrative anymore. Open source has done good and
bad. Ppl now have to look for other means of making money writing
software. I don't see how companies like metrowerks can make money
when there are alternatives to their product. The venerable GCC. PS2
and other game development software can bring up the figures. But when
it comes to Palm or WinCE I see no market value there. The result of
lack of market kills innovation. At least when the innovation stop,
assembly programmers might regain their value once again!
John
Betov
@i42g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:
> Back then, you could
> actually make a decent enough living selling a product like an
> assembler. But the sales of LISA were also what convinced me that
> attempting to sell an assembler is a waste of time.
:]]]]]
Betov.
Phil Carmody
A Randy by name can be found in:
Lisa Programming Language Pages 1-5.pdf
<<<
LISA
A PROFESSIONAL ASSEMBLY LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT
SYSTEM FOR APPLE COMPUTERS
...
IMPORTANT COPYRIGHT INFORMATION
No portion of Lisa, its documentation or accompanying diskette may
be reproduced in any form without the express written permission of
the publishers, "On-Line Systems", and the author, "Randy Hyde".
>>>
Which was 1 click away from one of the links posted a few days back.
I forget which one, but it should be obvious.
Phil
--
The man who is always worrying about whether or not his soul would be
damned generally has a soul that isn't worth a damn.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809-1894), American physician and writer
rh...@cs.ucr.edu
johnzulu wrote:
> The current market for assemblers in the embedded world is not hot
> too. PIC and Atmel are providing free assemblers with their product.
Well, I must admit that I've not looked at embedded assemblers in about
three years, but back then outfits like 2900 AD were still getting $500
for their assembler (and $1500 for a C compiler). Largely because they
had a much better feature set.
> Not sure of the rest. From the look of things providing development
> tools does not look lucrative anymore.
Particularly on the desktop. For example, Borland is getting out of the
software development tools business. Definitely a casualty of open
source. I'm sure fools like Rene will tout this as a good thing, but I
doubt that the OSS crowd would ever create something like Delphi on
their own. The OSS model is great for copying existing ideas, but
radical brainstorming to produce something like VB or Delphi just
doesn't work well in the OSS model.
> Open source has done good and
> bad. Ppl now have to look for other means of making money writing
> software. I don't see how companies like metrowerks can make money
Especially as they're basically gone at this point :-)
> when there are alternatives to their product. The venerable GCC.
GCC doesn't scale down to small microprocessors well. That's why
outfits can still get $1,500 for a C compiler for an 8051.
> PS2
> and other game development software can bring up the figures. But when
> it comes to Palm or WinCE I see no market value there. The result of
> lack of market kills innovation.
I agree 100%. As I said earlier, we'd never see something like VB or
Delphi created by the OSS crowd. People work on the OSS stuff mainly
for reasons of ego and the risk of developing something radical like
Delphi is too great (and the development cycle too long) for most egos.
> At least when the innovation stop,
> assembly programmers might regain their value once again!
I doubt it. More likely what we'll see is the proliferation of
languages like Perl or Python that are small enough projects for a
single person to write (initially anyway).
Cheers,
Randy Hyde
rh...@cs.ucr.edu
How many assemblers have *you* sold?
You can't even *give* your stuff away for free. At least people have
been willing to *pay* for my stuff. That speaks volumes, dude.
Cheers,
Randy Hyde
Betov
@b28g2000cwb.googlegroups.com:
> How many assemblers have *you* sold?
> You can't even *give* your stuff away for free. At least people have
> been willing to *pay* for my stuff. That speaks volumes, dude.
Agrea, clown: There are indeed so many idiot who seem
to really believe that you are an Assembly Programmer,
that i have to address you my congratulations for your
competency in matter of Propaganda.
By the way, did you notice that, dispiting your insane
noises, there was nobody around for taking the risk of
saying that he had used Your Lisa toy... and that old
timers seem to not even have heard of it?
One another question of interrest would be to ask about
how many of the victims who have _payed_ for reading
your bullshits, would have really read them down to the
end, and, eventually, if they would have learned some
real Assembly concepts, whereas they could have get
innoumerous real informative materials for free, all
over the Net for zero bucks.
Well... anyway, _yes_, it "speaks volumes"... as says
Master Pdf riding a bicycle:
"Hey! M'a! Look! I am an Teacher!"
"Hey! M'a! Look! I am published!"
"Hey! M'a! Look!... without the hands!"
"Hey! M'a! Look!... without the teeth!"
:)
Betov.
Phil Carmody
> johnzulu wrote:
> > The current market for assemblers in the embedded world is not hot
> > too. PIC and Atmel are providing free assemblers with their product.
>
> Well, I must admit that I've not looked at embedded assemblers in about
> three years, but back then outfits like 2900 AD were still getting $500
> for their assembler (and $1500 for a C compiler). Largely because they
> had a much better feature set.
For most of Freescale's small processors, the CodeWarrior (now
part of Freescale) C compiler and assembler (in fact the full
development suite) can be free. One only needs to pay if the
image one is generating is to exceed a certain size. (32K IIRC,
but don't quote me on that.)
And for most of their larger processors, there's what is
effectively a freely downloadable linux distribution,
which of course comes with gcc etc.
Phil, speaking as an individual, not as a Freescale employee.
Dragontamer
rh...@cs.ucr.edu wrote:
> johnzulu wrote:
> > Not sure of the rest. From the look of things providing development
> > tools does not look lucrative anymore.
>
> Particularly on the desktop. For example, Borland is getting out of the
> software development tools business. Definitely a casualty of open
> source. I'm sure fools like Rene will tout this as a good thing, but I
> doubt that the OSS crowd would ever create something like Delphi on
> their own. The OSS model is great for copying existing ideas, but
> radical brainstorming to produce something like VB or Delphi just
> doesn't work well in the OSS model.
I'd have to disagree with you on this one. OSS do have innovative
ideas.
The Abiword project for example, is beginning to work on AbiCollab,
which would be a plugin that allows users across the web to edit the
same document in realtime.
http://www.abisource.com/~uwog/abiword/abicollab.htm
As for something like VB or Delphi... I dunno much on Delphi, but
GNUstep seems to be making strides in the direction of VB, somewhat
copying Cocoa and NextSTEP... but still goes along in that direction.
http://www.gnustep.org/experience/DevelopmentDemonstration.html
(I especially like how textboxes are connected to code by
click-and-drag)
Debian's apt system is great, as is FreeBSD's port system. Truely
innovative to just do "aptitude upgrade", and all the programs
are upgraded together, to resolve dependancies and so forth.
(supposedly FreeBSD's port system is better... but I haven't used
it yet)
Fasm's "Virtual" keyword is another innovative little feature developed
on an OSS product.
There is certainly innovation in OSS products. Do you not think your
HLA is somewhat innovative? :-p
But anyway, there are ways to keep OSS and still make a business model.
Cedega, which is based on WINE, sells builds their product for a
monthly
subscription, while the code remains free on their CVS server. So
its not necessarily mutually exclusive.
--Dragontamer
rh...@cs.ucr.edu
Dragontamer wrote:
>
> I'd have to disagree with you on this one. OSS do have innovative
> ideas.
>
> The Abiword project for example, is beginning to work on AbiCollab,
> which would be a plugin that allows users across the web to edit the
> same document in realtime.
Can you honestly claim that this idea hasn't been floating around for a
long time and that commercial apps haven't tried this? What I'm
calling "innovation" here are brain-storm ideas resulting in concepts
that have never before been done.
>
> http://www.abisource.com/~uwog/abiword/abicollab.htm
>
> As for something like VB or Delphi... I dunno much on Delphi, but
> GNUstep seems to be making strides in the direction of VB, somewhat
> copying Cocoa and NextSTEP... but still goes along in that direction.
But that's exactly the point I'm making -- the OSS crowd are *copying*
stuff rather than invented brand-new, never-before-thought-of, kind of
stuff.
Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying there aren't *any* new ideas in
OSS. There are lots of small things that are innovative and come out of
OSS, but the really big stuff, that requires a concerted effort to
develop, generally comes from commercial development.
> Debian's apt system is great, as is FreeBSD's port system. Truely
> innovative to just do "aptitude upgrade", and all the programs
> are upgraded together, to resolve dependancies and so forth.
> (supposedly FreeBSD's port system is better... but I haven't used
> it yet)
Having spent considerable time installing FreeBSD over and over again,
I'm not real impressed by FreeBSD's "ports" that forces me to swap CDs
a couple of dozen times because it installs things in the order *it*
wants to, rather than their order on the CDROMs. Forgive me for not
being impressed.
>
> Fasm's "Virtual" keyword is another innovative little feature developed
> on an OSS product.
First of all, I'm not entirely sure it's as innovative as you think. I
dimly recall a feature like this in IBM's mainframe assemblers. But the
point is irrelevant. I'm not talking about new features in a
traditional product. I'm talking about completely new ways of solving
problems. Delphi, for example, isn't just Pascal with a few new
features. It truly represents a new programming paradigm over previous
languages (well, except for VB, of course).
>
> There is certainly innovation in OSS products. Do you not think your
> HLA is somewhat innovative? :-p
Not like Delphi. HLA is more of a collection of existing good ideas all
put into one package. Most of the "innovations" in the product are like
"virtual" in FASM. Small ideas that are cool in conjunction with the
other features, but aren't much of a standalone innovation. About the
only thing in HLA I know of that I've never before seen are the
context-free macro facilities. The parts of HLA that make it good for
education were well-established ideas that predated HLA -- using
HLL-like control structures (MASM & TASM), having a decent and
substatial library (The C stdlib, the UCR stdlib for 80x86 assembly
programmers), supporting reasonable data types (MASM & TASM), and
having a good compile-time language (IBM's HLAsm and MASM/TASM). HLA
is not a radical shift in the way you would do assembly language
programming. It's just a culmination of good ideas all packaged
together.
>
> But anyway, there are ways to keep OSS and still make a business model.
> Cedega, which is based on WINE, sells builds their product for a
> monthly
> subscription, while the code remains free on their CVS server. So
> its not necessarily mutually exclusive.
Well, we were actually talking about how OSS is killing commercial
companies that have invested tons of money in software R&D. The problem
with the OSS model is that OSS developers work on what they *feel* like
working on. There is no incentive, like a paycheck, to get them to work
on stuff that wouldn't be their first choice and to keep them working
on a (large) project when it ceases to be interesting. Even companies
like IBM, which has invested a *ton* of money in OSS, probably wrote it
all off as a marketing expense rather than a development expense.
Cheers,
Randy Hyde
rh...@cs.ucr.edu
Phil Carmody wrote:
>
> A Randy by name can be found in:
>
> Lisa Programming Language Pages 1-5.pdf
>
> be reproduced in any form without the express written permission of
> the publishers, "On-Line Systems", and the author, "Randy Hyde".
Well, that would be the On-Line Systems version of the product (they
picked it up after Programma went under). I don't doubt that Programma
didn't list me as the author. I seem to recall they liked the idea of
everything thinking they'd made it themselves (like their Apple PIE
editor). Then again, it could have just been an oversight.
It doesn't really matter, though. Except in Rene's mind, I don't think
that there is any question at this point who the author of that product
was.
Cheers,
Randy Hyde
rh...@cs.ucr.edu
Betov wrote:
>
> > How many assemblers have *you* sold?
> > You can't even *give* your stuff away for free. At least people have
> > been willing to *pay* for my stuff. That speaks volumes, dude.
>
> Agrea, clown: There are indeed so many idiot who seem
> to really believe that you are an Assembly Programmer,
> that i have to address you my congratulations for your
> competency in matter of Propaganda.
And as Julienne says, you have a lot to learn in that department. Once
again, many thanks for all the people you've pushed my way by your
abusive nature.
>
> By the way, did you notice that, dispiting your insane
> noises, there was nobody around for taking the risk of
> saying that he had used Your Lisa toy... and that old
> timers seem to not even have heard of it?
No, I didn't notice that at all. I did notice someone around here who
said that they *had* used the product, though. And it certainly wasn't
the first time someone has acknowledged using LISA in this newsgroup.
And as for your "old-timers", of whom do you speak? You do realize that
that product was out before many of the long-time posters around here
were even *born*? And, of course, a few of the "old-timers" around
here were nailing houses together at the time LISA was out and had no
clue about the impending PC revolution. :-)
>
> One another question of interrest would be to ask about
> how many of the victims who have _payed_ for reading
> your bullshits, would have really read them down to the
> end, and, eventually, if they would have learned some
> real Assembly concepts, whereas they could have get
> innoumerous real informative materials for free, all
> over the Net for zero bucks.
I'm sorry, that sentence doesn't parse. You might try calming down a
bit and rewriting it. If you're saying that people are upset because
they bought AoA and then discovered it could be had on-line, well, I've
never met too many people like that. I do, however, know of many people
who started reading it on-line and then decided they'd rather have a
hard copy and went out and bought it. Now I must admit that I'm as
surprised as you by this. When No Starch Press first approached me
about publishing AoA, I flat out told them that I didn't believe the
book would sell well because it was available for free on-line. The
publisher assured me that he could sell the book and he was quite
right. Indeed, having it available free on line has probably helped
sales more than hurt them.
>
> Well... anyway, _yes_, it "speaks volumes"... as says
> Master Pdf riding a bicycle:
>
> "Hey! M'a! Look! I am an Teacher!"
And your point?
Who have *you* taught, btw?
>
> "Hey! M'a! Look! I am published!"
And your point?
And what have you gotten published, might I ask?
>
> "Hey! M'a! Look!... without the hands!"
>
> "Hey! M'a! Look!... without the teeth!"
Sour grapes don't suit you well, Rene. Grow up. Get past your
jealousies. Do something productive with your life rather than whining
about the successes other people have.
Cheers,
Randy Hyde
Dragontamer
rh...@cs.ucr.edu wrote:
> Dragontamer wrote:
> >
> > I'd have to disagree with you on this one. OSS do have innovative
> > ideas.
> >
> > The Abiword project for example, is beginning to work on AbiCollab,
> > which would be a plugin that allows users across the web to edit the
> > same document in realtime.
>
> Can you honestly claim that this idea hasn't been floating around for a
> long time and that commercial apps haven't tried this? What I'm
> calling "innovation" here are brain-storm ideas resulting in concepts
> that have never before been done.
Abiword is run by volonteers, they don't got a paycheck. I find it
hard to believe that they would make something before Microsoft
unless they had a head start on the "innovation".
If Microsoft thought it up, they would have put it into MS Word
before Abiword probably existed. But to my knowledge, there
are no other word processors that exist that have even attempted
this idea.
> > http://www.abisource.com/~uwog/abiword/abicollab.htm
> >
> > As for something like VB or Delphi... I dunno much on Delphi, but
> > GNUstep seems to be making strides in the direction of VB, somewhat
> > copying Cocoa and NextSTEP... but still goes along in that direction.
>
> But that's exactly the point I'm making -- the OSS crowd are *copying*
> stuff rather than invented brand-new, never-before-thought-of, kind of
> stuff.
>
> Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying there aren't *any* new ideas in
> OSS. There are lots of small things that are innovative and come out of
> OSS, but the really big stuff, that requires a concerted effort to
> develop, generally comes from commercial development.
I answer this later... I answer posts backwards, starting from the
bottom up. Sorry. :-p
> > Debian's apt system is great, as is FreeBSD's port system. Truely
> > innovative to just do "aptitude upgrade", and all the programs
> > are upgraded together, to resolve dependancies and so forth.
> > (supposedly FreeBSD's port system is better... but I haven't used
> > it yet)
>
> Having spent considerable time installing FreeBSD over and over again,
> I'm not real impressed by FreeBSD's "ports" that forces me to swap CDs
> a couple of dozen times because it installs things in the order *it*
> wants to, rather than their order on the CDROMs. Forgive me for not
> being impressed.
Try it when you have a net installation. Auto Downloads == great
stuff.
> > Fasm's "Virtual" keyword is another innovative little feature developed
> > on an OSS product.
>
> First of all, I'm not entirely sure it's as innovative as you think. I
> dimly recall a feature like this in IBM's mainframe assemblers. But the
> point is irrelevant. I'm not talking about new features in a
> traditional product. I'm talking about completely new ways of solving
> problems. Delphi, for example, isn't just Pascal with a few new
> features. It truly represents a new programming paradigm over previous
> languages (well, except for VB, of course).
You mean, like Perl (OSS Artistic License)? A totally new programming
paradigm that focuses on text and utility using "natural language
constructs" ?
Or TeX which lead the way into digital typesetting? Yes, Knuth
is a ****ing genious, but that doesn't change the fact that TeX is Open
Source, and that his innovation is thus, technically, OSS. Knuth wasn't
paid at all to make TeX.
And the way TeX was written, using WEB programming language, was
truely innovative. Literate programming, integrating typesetting and
compiling, while... erm, IMO, stupid, is an innovative idea, and OSS.
(The TeX source code is wonderful to read though :-p Haven't
read a lot of it, but its still cool to read :-) Literate programming
to the MAX)
> > There is certainly innovation in OSS products. Do you not think your
> > HLA is somewhat innovative? :-p
>
> Not like Delphi. HLA is more of a collection of existing good ideas all
> put into one package. Most of the "innovations" in the product are like
> "virtual" in FASM. Small ideas that are cool in conjunction with the
> other features, but aren't much of a standalone innovation. About the
> only thing in HLA I know of that I've never before seen are the
> context-free macro facilities. The parts of HLA that make it good for
> education were well-established ideas that predated HLA -- using
> HLL-like control structures (MASM & TASM), having a decent and
> substatial library (The C stdlib, the UCR stdlib for 80x86 assembly
> programmers), supporting reasonable data types (MASM & TASM), and
> having a good compile-time language (IBM's HLAsm and MASM/TASM). HLA
> is not a radical shift in the way you would do assembly language
> programming. It's just a culmination of good ideas all packaged
> together.
As was Sliced Bread.
The inventor of sliced bread did not invent bread, nor slicing. But the
packaged result was truely innovative </ibm commercial>
Point is: the majority of good ideas are just packages of old and other
ideas, possibly outside the field. (Genetic Algorithms == AI + Biology
for example)
Now, I haven't used Delphi myself, but if it is half as good as its
reputation (and pricetag :-/ ) then I guess its gotta be great.
> > But anyway, there are ways to keep OSS and still make a business model.
> > Cedega, which is based on WINE, sells builds their product for a
> > monthly
> > subscription, while the code remains free on their CVS server. So
> > its not necessarily mutually exclusive.
>
> Well, we were actually talking about how OSS is killing commercial
> companies that have invested tons of money in software R&D. The problem
> with the OSS model is that OSS developers work on what they *feel* like
> working on. There is no incentive, like a paycheck, to get them to work
> on stuff that wouldn't be their first choice and to keep them working
> on a (large) project when it ceases to be interesting. Even companies
> like IBM, which has invested a *ton* of money in OSS, probably wrote it
> all off as a marketing expense rather than a development expense.
Hmm. I just don't think ego is the main insentive to OSS development.
Okay, HLA: its incentive is to teach students assembly language. (or
at least, I assume thats your insentive) Else, to help support
AoA32, which really goes back to goal # 1.
TeX: The incentive was to make TAOCP look better, better than any
other digital typesetter of that era.
Perl: A tool designed to process large amounts of I/O data quickly.
Python: A prototyping language between Shell and C.
AbiWord: Company moved on and dumped project into OSS :-p (happens
a lot)
Apache: To organize the httpd patches into a single distribution.
BitTorrent: Innovation to the whole structure of the P2P
network.
--Dragontamer
Betov
news:1154319268.2...@i3g2000cwc.googlegroups.com:
>
> rh...@cs.ucr.edu wrote:
>> Dragontamer wrote: [...]
Trying to convince a Right Extreeme and a religious dement,
of the vertues of the Open Source Mouvement?
Good luck.
:]]]]]
Betov.
rand...@earthlink.net
>
> Abiword is run by volonteers, they don't got a paycheck. I find it
> hard to believe that they would make something before Microsoft
> unless they had a head start on the "innovation".
I'm sorry, I don't remember claiming that all innovation comes out of
Microsoft. (innovation==Microsoft, now that's kind of funny).
>
> If Microsoft thought it up, they would have put it into MS Word
> before Abiword probably existed. But to my knowledge, there
> are no other word processors that exist that have even attempted
> this idea.
The only reason Microsoft hasn't done this is because Apple didn't do
it first :-)
(okay, running away rapidly.)
Seriously, though, Microsoft has done their share of innovations, but
most people *don't* hold up Microsoft as the paragon of innovation.
> >
> > Having spent considerable time installing FreeBSD over and over again,
> > I'm not real impressed by FreeBSD's "ports" that forces me to swap CDs
> > a couple of dozen times because it installs things in the order *it*
> > wants to, rather than their order on the CDROMs. Forgive me for not
> > being impressed.
>
> Try it when you have a net installation. Auto Downloads == great
> stuff.
Yes, I've done that. How is this "innovative"? I've been doing this
with Apple, Microsoft, and Linux OSes for quite some time. Perhaps
FreeBSD is a little slicker in some respects (I don't know), but this
is hardly an "innovative" concept. At the very best, it's an extension
of an existing idea.
> You mean, like Perl (OSS Artistic License)? A totally new programming
> paradigm that focuses on text and utility using "natural language
> constructs" ?
Take a look at SNOBOL4 sometime (a programming language from the 1960s.
Then take a look at ICON. (1970s).
And being forced to use PERL on ocassion at work, I hardly feel that it
uses "natural language constructs". PERL is like the BASIC language of
the 2000s -- every time they need something they just clutter up the
language with yet another keyword using inconsistent syntax.
>
> Or TeX which lead the way into digital typesetting? Yes, Knuth
> is a ****ing genious, but that doesn't change the fact that TeX is Open
> Source, and that his innovation is thus, technically, OSS. Knuth wasn't
> paid at all to make TeX.
Actually, Knuth *was* paid to produce TeX. You might recall that he is
a University professor (at Stanford) and professors are paid to do
research. Granted, he wasn't *forced* to do this job by work, but it's
not like he wasn't getting paid to do the work. And TeX wasn't Knuth's
real innovation -- MetaFont was. After all, Tex is just an expansion of
the nroff idea that predated it. And finally, the creation of TeX
predated the OSS movement by many years. It was a single-person
project, by a person who was being paid for his time spent on the
project. That's not the OSS model.
>
> And the way TeX was written, using WEB programming language, was
> truely innovative.
Uh...
TeX was written in Pascal.
TeX predated the WEB programming language by many years.
> Literate programming,
Again, research coming out of Universities by people who were *paid* to
do this research. Not the OSS model at all.
> integrating typesetting and
Sorry, dude, I was around then. Knuth wasn't the first one to do this.
The graphic arts field was doing this already. And, of course, there
was the troff program that did typesetting from a computer that predate
all of this (developed at Bell Labs, I might point out). Knuth did
some cool things, like MetaFont. But again, this is not an example of
an OSS triumph. It is a result of university grants (typically from
commercial concerns) and student fees paying professors and grad
students to do the research and work.
> compiling, while... erm, IMO, stupid, is an innovative idea, and OSS.
The OSS model didn't even exist back then.
> As was Sliced Bread.
But was it really?
Was their really a single person who came up with idea? Or was it just
an obvious idea that lots of bakers developed independently? I.e., do
you have the *name* of the guy who invented sliced bread. Can you show
it was an unobvious idea that did not exist in any form prior to that
point?
>
> The inventor of sliced bread did not invent bread, nor slicing. But the
> packaged result was truely innovative </ibm commercial>
Was it "The inventor" or was it a obvious idea that several people
invented independently?
>
> Point is: the majority of good ideas are just packages of old and other
>
> ideas, possibly outside the field. (Genetic Algorithms == AI + Biology
> for example)
With one kicker -- a *non-obvious* combination.
I.e., *can you patent it*? (assuming the patent system worked the way
it's supposed to).
>
> Hmm. I just don't think ego is the main insentive to OSS development.
Anytime someone suggests that they don't want to release something as
Public Domain because they want their name attached to it, or that they
don't want other people taking credit for their work, that's your first
clue that ego is involved. Ego *drives* OSS development. Make no
mistake about that.
>
> Perl: A tool designed to process large amounts of I/O data quickly.
Yeah, that's why it's interpreted :-)
>
> BitTorrent: Innovation to the whole structure of the P2P
> network.
BitTorrent is certainly an example of an innovative product, for sure.
Cheers,
Randy Hyde
f0dder
>> And the way TeX was written, using WEB programming language, was
>> truely innovative.
>
> Uh...
> TeX was written in Pascal.
> TeX predated the WEB programming language by many years.
Hm, how is WEB related to TeX then? When building TeX from source on a linux
box a bunch of years ago, I seem to remember that part of the process was
running some "web2c" program?
TeX is a pretty nifty idea, but IMHO it's too arcane to be really useful.
Becomes more human with things like LaTeX, but still - unless you're using
some pre-packaged template, there's *some* amount of manual setup you need
to do.
It's also a bunch of bother to change fonts and such (no, not changing fonts
in the traditional Office style, but setting up a TeX equivalent of a CSS
style). It would be nice if there was something as intuitive as XML/CSS that
could give as pretty output as TeX...
>> Perl: A tool designed to process large amounts of I/O data quickly.
>
> Yeah, that's why it's interpreted :-)
To be fair, the perl runtime is compiled C, not interpreted perl :) - and
the regexes are "compiled" as well... speed does seem fair enough for what
it does. And while I'm not too fond of it's hackyness, it certainly is a
useful tool for getting jobs done fast.
>> BitTorrent: Innovation to the whole structure of the P2P
>> network.
> BitTorrent is certainly an example of an innovative product, for sure.
Innovative, ho humm. Perhaps my sense of time is schewed, but weren't there
a bunch of p2p apps available before bittorrent showed up?
rh...@cs.ucr.edu
f0dder wrote:
> rand...@earthlink.net wrote:
>
> >> And the way TeX was written, using WEB programming language, was
> >> truely innovative.
> >
> > Uh...
> > TeX was written in Pascal.
> > TeX predated the WEB programming language by many years.
>
> Hm, how is WEB related to TeX then? When building TeX from source on a linux
> box a bunch of years ago, I seem to remember that part of the process was
> running some "web2c" program?
That came much later.
>
> TeX is a pretty nifty idea, but IMHO it's too arcane to be really useful.
> Becomes more human with things like LaTeX, but still - unless you're using
> some pre-packaged template, there's *some* amount of manual setup you need
> to do.
The sad part is that WYSIWYG editing happened with the Lisa and the
Macintosh just a short time period after TeX appeared so other than on
systems that didn't support bit-mapped graphics and fonts (e.g., *nix
systems), the need for TeX evaporated overnight. That's also why TeX
became popular in academia and on *nix systems -- because that's all
they had for quite some time.
>
> It's also a bunch of bother to change fonts and such (no, not changing fonts
> in the traditional Office style, but setting up a TeX equivalent of a CSS
> style). It would be nice if there was something as intuitive as XML/CSS that
> could give as pretty output as TeX...
SGML?
I'm not sure it's intuitive, but it's certainly got the power (e.g.,
Framemaker was able to store files in this format).
> > BitTorrent is certainly an example of an innovative product, for sure.
>
> Innovative, ho humm. Perhaps my sense of time is schewed, but weren't there
> a bunch of p2p apps available before bittorrent showed up?
Yeah, but the "massive # of peers to me while I upload to others" was a
pretty cool idea.
Cheers,
Randy Hyde
rand...@earthlink.net
f0dder wrote:
> rand...@earthlink.net wrote:
>
> >> And the way TeX was written, using WEB programming language, was
> >> truely innovative.
> >
> > Uh...
> > TeX was written in Pascal.
> > TeX predated the WEB programming language by many years.
>
> Hm, how is WEB related to TeX then? When building TeX from source on a linux
> box a bunch of years ago, I seem to remember that part of the process was
> running some "web2c" program?
This part happened much later.
>
> TeX is a pretty nifty idea, but IMHO it's too arcane to be really useful.
> Becomes more human with things like LaTeX, but still - unless you're using
> some pre-packaged template, there's *some* amount of manual setup you need
> to do.
The big problem with TeX is that the Apple Lisa and the Mac came out
shortly after TeX became usable. All of a sudden there really wasn't
much of a need for TeX. Sure, the academic community picked it up
(meaning die-hard *nix fans used it a lot), but for the average person,
something like Adobe Framemaker Quark or any of a dozen other WYSIWYG
page publishing systems was a much nicer choice.
>
> It's also a bunch of bother to change fonts and such (no, not changing fonts
> in the traditional Office style, but setting up a TeX equivalent of a CSS
> style). It would be nice if there was something as intuitive as XML/CSS that
> could give as pretty output as TeX...
SGML?
.
>
> Innovative, ho humm. Perhaps my sense of time is schewed, but weren't there
> a bunch of p2p apps available before bittorrent showed up?
The innovation wasn't so much in the p2p stuff, but in the way it
improved bandwidth in a cooperative manner. I.e., the massive p2p
part.
Cheers,
Randy Hyde
Phil Carmody
> > And the way TeX was written, using WEB programming language, was
> > truely innovative.
>
> Uh...
> TeX was written in Pascal.
TeX was written in SAIL.
Phil
rh...@cs.ucr.edu
Phil Carmody wrote:
> "rand...@earthlink.net" <rand...@earthlink.net> writes:
> > > And the way TeX was written, using WEB programming language, was
> > > truely innovative.
> >
> > Uh...
> > TeX was written in Pascal.
>
> TeX was written in SAIL.
Well, so says the Wikipedia (and we know how reliable that is). OTOH,
if it was first written in SAIL, then it was converted to Pascal fairly
quickly. Because I remember compiling Knuth's Pascal code (very
carefully written in ISO Pascal to be portable just about everywhere)
at UCR in the very early 1980s. It was actually some classy Pascal
code.
Cheers,
Randy Hyde
rh...@cs.ucr.edu
Phil Carmody wrote:
> "rand...@earthlink.net" <rand...@earthlink.net> writes:
> > > And the way TeX was written, using WEB programming language, was
> > > truely innovative.
> >
> > Uh...
> > TeX was written in Pascal.
>
> TeX was written in SAIL.
>
> Phil
Yep. I stand corrected. It was originally written in SAIL and then
rewritten in Pascal for portability reasons (e.g.,
http://www.tug.org/TUGboat/Articles/tb02-1/tb02fuchszab.pdf). Same
reason for the proliferation of versions later on.
Cheers,
Randy Hyde
Dragontamer
rand...@earthlink.net wrote:
> Dragontamer wrote:
> >
> > Abiword is run by volonteers, they don't got a paycheck. I find it
> > hard to believe that they would make something before Microsoft
> > unless they had a head start on the "innovation".
>
> I'm sorry, I don't remember claiming that all innovation comes out of
> Microsoft. (innovation==Microsoft, now that's kind of funny).
Toche. Though, it seems like more and more smaller companies are
going OSS, selling services as opposed to the product specifically.
> >
> > If Microsoft thought it up, they would have put it into MS Word
> > before Abiword probably existed. But to my knowledge, there
> > are no other word processors that exist that have even attempted
> > this idea.
>
> The only reason Microsoft hasn't done this is because Apple didn't do
> it first :-)
> (okay, running away rapidly.)
>
> Seriously, though, Microsoft has done their share of innovations, but
> most people *don't* hold up Microsoft as the paragon of innovation.
Meh. C# and .NET seemed pretty innovated to me. The pieces
of it of course; were quite
> > > Having spent considerable time installing FreeBSD over and over again,
> > > I'm not real impressed by FreeBSD's "ports" that forces me to swap CDs
> > > a couple of dozen times because it installs things in the order *it*
> > > wants to, rather than their order on the CDROMs. Forgive me for not
> > > being impressed.
> >
> > Try it when you have a net installation. Auto Downloads == great
> > stuff.
>
> Yes, I've done that. How is this "innovative"? I've been doing this
> with Apple, Microsoft, and Linux OSes for quite some time. Perhaps
> FreeBSD is a little slicker in some respects (I don't know), but this
> is hardly an "innovative" concept. At the very best, it's an extension
> of an existing idea.
Hmm. I gotta look up the history of Ports, but they seem to be
the first one on the list (Before Linux at least. Debian was the first
one IIRC on the Linux platform that introduced automatic download +
dependancy resolution. The MS vs Mac vs BSD innovation
competition thing... seems to have no history to check who invented
what first)
> > You mean, like Perl (OSS Artistic License)? A totally new programming
> > paradigm that focuses on text and utility using "natural language
> > constructs" ?
>
> Take a look at SNOBOL4 sometime (a programming language from the 1960s.
> Then take a look at ICON. (1970s).
>
> And being forced to use PERL on ocassion at work, I hardly feel that it
> uses "natural language constructs". PERL is like the BASIC language of
> the 2000s -- every time they need something they just clutter up the
> language with yet another keyword using inconsistent syntax.
Meh. Given its popularity, it seems like people like something about
Perl. There must have been something that "clicked" with perl
that wasn't there with SNOBOL4. But I'll look at it later.
[snip]
> the nroff idea that predated it. And finally, the creation of TeX
> predated the OSS movement by many years. It was a single-person
> project, by a person who was being paid for his time spent on the
> project. That's not the OSS model.
Woah woah woah.
It was under my impression that people get paid in the OSS model.
Not just donations mind you; but actual wages. The XEmacs project
for example; had programmers working on updating Emacs full time.
Now... if you are talking about Freeware, and not OSS, then yeah.
The only thing freeware can do is copy other ideas.
But in OSS, you have people getting paid to say, expand
and improve the WINE project so that MS Word works on Linux.
Yes: you've got "many eyes" to keep an eye out for the project.
And if you think about it, the entire TeX system evolved into something
greater. Most OSS projects start off as a single-person or a small
team doing the vast majority of the work.
But then when the tool is used and people start liking it, you
get additions to it later.
Linux may be developed like a Bazaar, but so far, it seems
like you need a pretty big Cathedral before anything gets
done anyway. Bazaar OSS projects tend to be the very popular
very sucessful projects. (Apache, Linux, so on, so forth).
But a good amount of OSS projects are still done by paid
programmers; or at least, a small dedicated group of
people.
> > Literate programming,
>
> Again, research coming out of Universities by people who were *paid* to
> do this research. Not the OSS model at all.
I think we have different definitions of OSS model. My thoughts
of OSS is simply any business model that ends up creating
software that is released in a OSS license
> > integrating typesetting and
>
> Sorry, dude, I was around then. Knuth wasn't the first one to do this.
> The graphic arts field was doing this already.
I think there is a double standard going on here.
Delphi and VB were not the first programming languages either.
What exactly do you see in them thats innovative? Maybe that
will settle the argument a little.
> And, of course, there
> was the troff program that did typesetting from a computer that predate
> all of this (developed at Bell Labs, I might point out). Knuth did
> some cool things, like MetaFont. But again, this is not an example of
> an OSS triumph. It is a result of university grants (typically from
> commercial concerns) and student fees paying professors and grad
> students to do the research and work.
Its not like Delphi was the first programming language either.
But TeX has glue, automatic kerning, hyphenation, etc. etc.
> > compiling, while... erm, IMO, stupid, is an innovative idea, and OSS.
>
> The OSS model didn't even exist back then.
Some would argue that everything at that age was OSS.
But I'm not of that era, and am only saying what others say.
> > As was Sliced Bread.
>
> But was it really?
> Was their really a single person who came up with idea? Or was it just
> an obvious idea that lots of bakers developed independently? I.e., do
> you have the *name* of the guy who invented sliced bread. Can you show
> it was an unobvious idea that did not exist in any form prior to that
> point?
Joke has been taken too far. Aborting...
> > Hmm. I just don't think ego is the main insentive to OSS development.
>
> Anytime someone suggests that they don't want to release something as
> Public Domain because they want their name attached to it, or that they
> don't want other people taking credit for their work, that's your first
> clue that ego is involved. Ego *drives* OSS development. Make no
> mistake about that.
In that case: it is Ego that drives game developers to put their names
in the credits and/or title of the game.
Just because ego is one incentive, does not mean it is the only
incentive, or even the most important incentive. Example: XEmacs
was developed to update modernize Emacs, and to be repackaged
into a compiler/IDE package. In this OSS model, they sold XEmacs
as part of an integrated package and made money off of it.
> > BitTorrent: Innovation to the whole structure of the P2P
> > network.
> BitTorrent is certainly an example of an innovative product, for sure.
W00t. We agree.
--Dragontamer
Charles A. Crayne
"Dragontamer" <prti...@gmail.com> wrote:
:Some would argue that everything at that age was OSS.
When I went to work for IBM in 1967, all of IBM's system software was both
open source, and free of charge. It was only some years later, after
other companies started making IBM clones and telling their customers to
get free software from IBM, that IBM was forced to start charging
separately for software.
-- Chuck
Phil Carmody
> Phil Carmody wrote:
> > "rand...@earthlink.net" <rand...@earthlink.net> writes:
> > > > And the way TeX was written, using WEB programming language, was
> > > > truely innovative.
> > >
> > > Uh...
> > > TeX was written in Pascal.
> >
> > TeX was written in SAIL.
>
> Well, so says the Wikipedia (and we know how reliable that is).
Good call. Anything I see in Wonkypedia I always verify elsewhere.
However, my source for such things was fortunately not Wackypedia,
but good old fashined 'foldoc':
http://foldoc.org/foldoc.cgi?query=TeX&action=Search
> OTOH,
> if it was first written in SAIL, then it was converted to Pascal fairly
> quickly. Because I remember compiling Knuth's Pascal code (very
> carefully written in ISO Pascal to be portable just about everywhere)
> at UCR in the very early 1980s. It was actually some classy Pascal
> code.
I trust your memory far more than I actually trust Pascal compiler
vendors to be able to actually conform to an ISO standard!
f0dder
> f0dder wrote:
>> TeX is a pretty nifty idea, but IMHO it's too arcane to be really
>> useful. Becomes more human with things like LaTeX, but still -
>> unless you're using some pre-packaged template, there's *some*
>> amount of manual setup you need to do.
>
> The sad part is that WYSIWYG editing happened with the Lisa and the
> Macintosh just a short time period after TeX appeared so other than on
> systems that didn't support bit-mapped graphics and fonts (e.g., *nix
> systems), the need for TeX evaporated overnight. That's also why TeX
> became popular in academia and on *nix systems -- because that's all
> they had for quite some time.
I'm in two minds about WYSIWYG editing... too often, I think it gets in the
way. And especially with Word, many users spend too much time tweaking fonts
etc. rather than producing content. The really bad thing is that most people
I've worked with haven't figured out how to use typographic styles... when
working on a 20-page document where people have contributed individual
files, it's too much annoying post-processing putting the pieces together.
On the other hand, it sucks being 100% at the mercy of the typesetting
program. I find using images in TeX is quite bichy, and it's not exactly
friendly when it comes to non-vector images.
The ideal for me would probably be something with an "edit mode" and a
"layout mode", and with *forced* use of typographic styles (ie., NO way to
"just tweak the font style/size on this piece of text". I've tried LyX, but
it didn't quite fit... still too TeX-centric. Not to mention it's not all
that comfortable to use on a windows system, because the various unix tools
weren't integrated that tightly.
>> It's also a bunch of bother to change fonts and such (no, not
>> changing fonts in the traditional Office style, but setting up a TeX
>> equivalent of a CSS style). It would be nice if there was something
>> as intuitive as XML/CSS that could give as pretty output as TeX...
>
> SGML?
> I'm not sure it's intuitive, but it's certainly got the power (e.g.,
> Framemaker was able to store files in this format).
I'm not very familiar with all the various HTML-like languages, so I
wouldn't know. But I find HTML/XML pretty comfortable (as "languages" -
browser-related issues suck) to work with. I guess one choice would be
"pre-parsing" ;) XML/SGML/HTML/whatever to .tex and then relying on the TeX
engine to pretty it up.
>>> BitTorrent is certainly an example of an innovative product, for
>>> sure.
>>
>> Innovative, ho humm. Perhaps my sense of time is schewed, but
>> weren't there a bunch of p2p apps available before bittorrent showed
>> up?
>
> Yeah, but the "massive # of peers to me while I upload to others" was
> a pretty cool idea.
I still think other approaches were more innovative, like some of the
networks that are entirely decentralized. I guess the popularity of
BitTorrent is partly that it's NOT decentralized... it requires a tracker,
specified in the .torrent file, and this makes it perfect for piracy reasons
("private" trackers, ratio counting, etc.)
Dragontamer
f0dder wrote:
> rh...@cs.ucr.edu wrote:
> > f0dder wrote:
> >> It's also a bunch of bother to change fonts and such (no, not
> >> changing fonts in the traditional Office style, but setting up a TeX
> >> equivalent of a CSS style). It would be nice if there was something
> >> as intuitive as XML/CSS that could give as pretty output as TeX...
> >
> > SGML?
> > I'm not sure it's intuitive, but it's certainly got the power (e.g.,
> > Framemaker was able to store files in this format).
>
> I'm not very familiar with all the various HTML-like languages, so I
> wouldn't know. But I find HTML/XML pretty comfortable (as "languages" -
> browser-related issues suck) to work with. I guess one choice would be
> "pre-parsing" ;) XML/SGML/HTML/whatever to .tex and then relying on the TeX
> engine to pretty it up.
Tis how Jade/Docbook does it. But then the issues arise as fonts in TeX
are
totally different beasts than fonts in whatever editor you used to
make DocBook.
--Dragontamer
rh...@cs.ucr.edu
f0dder wrote:
>
> I'm in two minds about WYSIWYG editing... too often, I think it gets in the
> way. And especially with Word, many users spend too much time tweaking fonts
> etc. rather than producing content.
Well, it's not like TeX reduces the time producing content. Maybe they
don't tweak fonts as much (because it's not as easy to do), but they do
spend a lot of time proofing for TeX errors in their documents because
they couldn't see what they were writing the first time around.
> The really bad thing is that most people
> I've worked with haven't figured out how to use typographic styles...
Give them a copy of "The Mac is not a Typewriter". Still a classic
after all these years.
> when
> working on a 20-page document where people have contributed individual
> files, it's too much annoying post-processing putting the pieces together.
One word: Framemaker.
>
> On the other hand, it sucks being 100% at the mercy of the typesetting
> program. I find using images in TeX is quite bichy, and it's not exactly
> friendly when it comes to non-vector images.
When I got my first Apple Lisa, I immediately said goodbye to troff,
nroff, and TeX. And I haven't looked back.
>
> The ideal for me would probably be something with an "edit mode" and a
> "layout mode", and with *forced* use of typographic styles (ie., NO way to
> "just tweak the font style/size on this piece of text". I've tried LyX, but
> it didn't quite fit... still too TeX-centric. Not to mention it's not all
> that comfortable to use on a windows system, because the various unix tools
> weren't integrated that tightly.
One word: Framemaker.
Too bad Adobe doesn't still support it for the Mac, just Windows and
Unix these days.
Cheers,
Randy Hyde
rh...@cs.ucr.edu
Dragontamer wrote:
.
>
> Meh. C# and .NET seemed pretty innovated to me. The pieces
> of it of course; were quite
Of course, most people will argue that C# was created to counter the
Java threat. While there were probably some tiny innovations in the C#
language (I can't say, I don't know that much about C#), I think it's
fair to say that the Java/VC++->C# transition was nowhere near as
radical as the Pascal->Delphi transition.
Of course, Microsoft *has* innovated in programming languages. VB is a
prime example.
>
> Meh. Given its popularity, it seems like people like something about
> Perl. There must have been something that "clicked" with perl
> that wasn't there with SNOBOL4. But I'll look at it later.
Yes. It was the modern BASIC language.
BASIC was somewhat popular, too. That didn't particularly make it a
good language from a language design point of view. And it wasn't
exactly innovative, either.
>
> [snip]
> > the nroff idea that predated it. And finally, the creation of TeX
> > predated the OSS movement by many years. It was a single-person
> > project, by a person who was being paid for his time spent on the
> > project. That's not the OSS model.
>
> Woah woah woah.
>
> It was under my impression that people get paid in the OSS model.
> Not just donations mind you; but actual wages. The XEmacs project
> for example; had programmers working on updating Emacs full time.
That's the exception, not the rule. The basic OSS model is people
contributing their time.
>
> Now... if you are talking about Freeware, and not OSS, then yeah.
> The only thing freeware can do is copy other ideas.
???
That certainly isn't true. Anyone with an idea can implement that idea
and give it away. There could even be *some* innovation taking place
here. And as freeware tends to me more of the "single individual
pursuing an idea of their own" there's a greater chance of "radical
innovation" then when you have a distributed team all trying to agree
on what should be done.
>
> But in OSS, you have people getting paid to say, expand
> and improve the WINE project so that MS Word works on Linux.
Expand and improve isn't exactly "innovation".
There is no question that once a piece of free (OSS other otherwise)
software becomes popular enough, some organizations (e.g., IBM) are
willing to pony up money to help support the product. But by then, the
chance for innovation is long since past.
And I wouldn't hold up WINE as an example of "radical innovation". :-)
>
> But then when the tool is used and people start liking it, you
> get additions to it later.
This is all true and well and good. But I don't see how that's
supporting your claim that OSS produces all these great innovations.
>
> Linux may be developed like a Bazaar, but so far, it seems
> like you need a pretty big Cathedral before anything gets
> done anyway. Bazaar OSS projects tend to be the very popular
> very sucessful projects. (Apache, Linux, so on, so forth).
The whole "Cathedral vs. Bazaar" thing has gone down the toilet with
respect to Linux. The bottom line is that *small projects* (as Linux
was, in the early days) can be developed in a decentralized,
"programming in the small", manner. But once the project gets large, as
Linux is today, those techniques start to fail. The promise of the
bazaar was that you would get quick updates to bugs and new features
would be added rapidly. Gee, look how long it's taking to get *minor*
revisions out of Linux these days. Definitely a cathedral, not a
bazaar. And Linus (for good reasons) rules over the Linux development
and totally controls the "mainstream" release. Hardly the
decentralized model that Eric Raymond was preaching about.
>
> But a good amount of OSS projects are still done by paid
> programmers; or at least, a small dedicated group of
> people.
Most OSS projects are done by individuals. A product has to prove
itself before many people are interested in jumping on board and
helping out. But that is completely orthogonal to innovation.
> I think we have different definitions of OSS model. My thoughts
> of OSS is simply any business model that ends up creating
> software that is released in a OSS license
Yes, we have different ideas.
>
> > > integrating typesetting and
> >
> > Sorry, dude, I was around then. Knuth wasn't the first one to do this.
> > The graphic arts field was doing this already.
>
> I think there is a double standard going on here.
Why?
>
> Delphi and VB were not the first programming languages either.
> What exactly do you see in them thats innovative? Maybe that
> will settle the argument a little.
The innovation isn't that they were programming languages, but the way
they integrated the visual element into the language. One could argue
that some of these ideas came from smalltalk and the smalltalk project
at Xerox PARC, but the bottom line is that Delphi and VB represented a
radical change in the way GUI apps were written.
TeX was an evolutionary change over systems like troff that came before
it.
>
> But TeX has glue, automatic kerning, hyphenation, etc. etc.
And many of these features were in troff.
>
> > > compiling, while... erm, IMO, stupid, is an innovative idea, and OSS.
> >
> > The OSS model didn't even exist back then.
>
> Some would argue that everything at that age was OSS.
Not what we think of as OSS development today (e.g., Eric Raymond's
C&B)
>
> In that case: it is Ego that drives game developers to put their names
> in the credits and/or title of the game.
Certainly.
>
> Just because ego is one incentive, does not mean it is the only
> incentive, or even the most important incentive. Example: XEmacs
> was developed to update modernize Emacs, and to be repackaged
> into a compiler/IDE package. In this OSS model, they sold XEmacs
> as part of an integrated package and made money off of it.
And, as you claim elsewhere, they were paid to develop it. Once someone
is getting paid, the dynamics change completely.
Cheers,
Randy Hyde
Dragontamer
rh...@cs.ucr.edu wrote:
> Dragontamer wrote:
> .
> >
> > Meh. C# and .NET seemed pretty innovated to me. The pieces
> > of it of course; were quite
>
> Of course, most people will argue that C# was created to counter the
> Java threat. While there were probably some tiny innovations in the C#
> language (I can't say, I don't know that much about C#), I think it's
> fair to say that the Java/VC++->C# transition was nowhere near as
> radical as the Pascal->Delphi transition.
>
> Of course, Microsoft *has* innovated in programming languages. VB is a
> prime example.
Actually, Microsoft bought VB from some other guy who innovated it.
But thats no different from hiring a guy to innovate and then
waiting for the deliver, really (except the much lower risk and other
unimportant business things :-p )
[snip]
> > > the nroff idea that predated it. And finally, the creation of TeX
> > > predated the OSS movement by many years. It was a single-person
> > > project, by a person who was being paid for his time spent on the
> > > project. That's not the OSS model.
> >
> > Woah woah woah.
> >
> > It was under my impression that people get paid in the OSS model.
> > Not just donations mind you; but actual wages. The XEmacs project
> > for example; had programmers working on updating Emacs full time.
>
> That's the exception, not the rule. The basic OSS model is people
> contributing their time.
Most OSS models that _work_ and not just make vaporware involve
money.
> > Now... if you are talking about Freeware, and not OSS, then yeah.
> > The only thing freeware can do is copy other ideas.
>
> ???
> That certainly isn't true. Anyone with an idea can implement that idea
> and give it away. There could even be *some* innovation taking place
> here. And as freeware tends to me more of the "single individual
> pursuing an idea of their own" there's a greater chance of "radical
> innovation" then when you have a distributed team all trying to agree
> on what should be done.
Hmm... It seems like you've got a very very different view of what
OSS is than I do. I'm beginning to think this all comes down to what
you think OSS development is.
> > But in OSS, you have people getting paid to say, expand
> > and improve the WINE project so that MS Word works on Linux.
>
> Expand and improve isn't exactly "innovation".
But it requires innovation to expand and improve a product.
If you didn't invent anything or do something new, then you
really didn't improve it at all. Let alone expand the product.
> There is no question that once a piece of free (OSS other otherwise)
> software becomes popular enough, some organizations (e.g., IBM) are
> willing to pony up money to help support the product. But by then, the
> chance for innovation is long since past.
Wait, so you think Freeware projects have a chance for innovation...
While paid OSS projects may not?
Hmm....
> And I wouldn't hold up WINE as an example of "radical innovation". :-)
Yeah. But I'm just pointing out that people can make OSS and still
get paid.
> > But then when the tool is used and people start liking it, you
> > get additions to it later.
>
> This is all true and well and good. But I don't see how that's
> supporting your claim that OSS produces all these great innovations.
There aren't "all these great" innovations, because innovations
by default are rare :-p
I'm just saying that there is nothing to stop an OSS project from
innovation.
> > Linux may be developed like a Bazaar, but so far, it seems
> > like you need a pretty big Cathedral before anything gets
> > done anyway. Bazaar OSS projects tend to be the very popular
> > very sucessful projects. (Apache, Linux, so on, so forth).
>
> The whole "Cathedral vs. Bazaar" thing has gone down the toilet with
> respect to Linux. The bottom line is that *small projects* (as Linux
> was, in the early days) can be developed in a decentralized,
> "programming in the small", manner. But once the project gets large, as
> Linux is today, those techniques start to fail. The promise of the
> bazaar was that you would get quick updates to bugs and new features
> would be added rapidly. Gee, look how long it's taking to get *minor*
> revisions out of Linux these days. Definitely a cathedral, not a
> bazaar. And Linus (for good reasons) rules over the Linux development
> and totally controls the "mainstream" release. Hardly the
> decentralized model that Eric Raymond was preaching about.
I thought the point of the Bazaar was that you can find many many
unofficial patches for your product; and the main guy who is
making it just ties it all together.
Cathedral is that everything is planned from the beginning. The Bazaar
simply points out that Linus (and his team) is not the only guy that
comes up or implements the ideas.
Anyone can add their idea to Linux, and many have.
> > But a good amount of OSS projects are still done by paid
> > programmers; or at least, a small dedicated group of
> > people.
>
> Most OSS projects are done by individuals. A product has to prove
> itself before many people are interested in jumping on board and
> helping out. But that is completely orthogonal to innovation.
Course most. Most projects period are done by individuals,
and are propriatary.
That doesn't mean that the _good_ ones or the ones
that succeed are done by individuals. You may get the one
or two that do, but not really.
> > I think we have different definitions of OSS model. My thoughts
> > of OSS is simply any business model that ends up creating
> > software that is released in a OSS license
>
> Yes, we have different ideas.
Hmm. Maybe you can start by telling me your definition of OSS ??
> > > > integrating typesetting and
> > >
> > > Sorry, dude, I was around then. Knuth wasn't the first one to do this.
> > > The graphic arts field was doing this already.
> >
> > I think there is a double standard going on here.
>
> Why?
>
> >
> > Delphi and VB were not the first programming languages either.
> > What exactly do you see in them thats innovative? Maybe that
> > will settle the argument a little.
>
> The innovation isn't that they were programming languages, but the way
> they integrated the visual element into the language. One could argue
> that some of these ideas came from smalltalk and the smalltalk project
> at Xerox PARC, but the bottom line is that Delphi and VB represented a
> radical change in the way GUI apps were written.
>
> TeX was an evolutionary change over systems like troff that came before
> it.
ObjC + OpenStep/NextStep lead the way for that. According to
http://delphi.about.com/cs/azindex/a/dhistory.htm
Delphi was first released in 1995 (correct me if I'm wrong).
NextStep had GUI programming tools
in 1989. Not an open source innovation; but when viewed like
this, Delphi was simply an evolutionary step from NextStep.
And I'm sure we can see the evolutionary step that lead to
NextStep if we look into it. But I'm not too keen on that history.
> > > > compiling, while... erm, IMO, stupid, is an innovative idea, and OSS.
> > >
> > > The OSS model didn't even exist back then.
> >
> > Some would argue that everything at that age was OSS.
>
> Not what we think of as OSS development today (e.g., Eric Raymond's
> C&B)
Nah; thats what Eric Raymond thinks is OSS development today.
I really don't see why "academic OSS" is any different.
> > In that case: it is Ego that drives game developers to put their names
> > in the credits and/or title of the game.
>
> Certainly.
>
> >
> > Just because ego is one incentive, does not mean it is the only
> > incentive, or even the most important incentive. Example: XEmacs
> > was developed to update modernize Emacs, and to be repackaged
> > into a compiler/IDE package. In this OSS model, they sold XEmacs
> > as part of an integrated package and made money off of it.
>
> And, as you claim elsewhere, they were paid to develop it. Once someone
> is getting paid, the dynamics change completely.
But they were paid to make OSS software. Thats the point.
That by its vary nature shows that OSS people can get paid, and
when paid, OSS can innovate.
--Dragontamer
rh...@cs.ucr.edu
Dragontamer wrote:
>
> Actually, Microsoft bought VB from some other guy who innovated it.
First I'd heard that, but okay. Given Microsoft's history with BASIC,
this is not something I would have expected.
> >
> > That's the exception, not the rule. The basic OSS model is people
> > contributing their time.
>
> Most OSS models that _work_ and not just make vaporware involve
> money.
At some point or another, perhaps. But remember, Linux, GCC, Emacs,
stuff like that, was written for the love of the thing, not because of
money.
>
> Hmm... It seems like you've got a very very different view of what
> OSS is than I do. I'm beginning to think this all comes down to what
> you think OSS development is.
The bazaar side of the C&B.
> > Expand and improve isn't exactly "innovation".
>
> But it requires innovation to expand and improve a product.
I'm talking about the type of quantum leap represented by products like
Delphi and VB. That's what started this sub-thread, remember? Borland
leaving the tools business and some of us bemoaning another victim of
OSS. There have been very few tools that were as innovative as Delphi
and VB. These were not small or incremental improvements over Turbo
Pascal and QuickBASIC.
In some respects, one could say that Turbo Pascal was a radical
innovation over the command-line tools before it, but there were some
limited IDE systems at the time (e.g., FORTH) and, of course, the
smalltalk research.
>
> If you didn't invent anything or do something new, then you
> really didn't improve it at all. Let alone expand the product.
Oh, I'd argue that maintenance (e.g., fixing defects) improves the
product. But incremental improvements are rarely "innovative" except to
marketing departments.
>
> Wait, so you think Freeware projects have a chance for innovation...
I think that indivduals, working in isolation, have a much greater
chance of creating innovative than the Bazaar model the OSS embraces.
>
> While paid OSS projects may not?
"Paid" changes the dynamics. At that point people aren't doing it for
love or ego. That's a *big* deal.
> I'm just saying that there is nothing to stop an OSS project from
> innovation.
The nature of the "Bazaar" model is what gets in the way of innovation.
The more people you put onto a team, the more conservative they'll
become. Innovation usually requires risk taking that just isn't
possible when you're trying to please a lot of different people.
> > The whole "Cathedral vs. Bazaar" thing has gone down the toilet with
> > respect to Linux. The bottom line is that *small projects* (as Linux
> > was, in the early days) can be developed in a decentralized,
> > "programming in the small", manner. But once the project gets large, as
> > Linux is today, those techniques start to fail. The promise of the
> > bazaar was that you would get quick updates to bugs and new features
> > would be added rapidly. Gee, look how long it's taking to get *minor*
> > revisions out of Linux these days. Definitely a cathedral, not a
> > bazaar. And Linus (for good reasons) rules over the Linux development
> > and totally controls the "mainstream" release. Hardly the
> > decentralized model that Eric Raymond was preaching about.
>
> I thought the point of the Bazaar was that you can find many many
> unofficial patches for your product; and the main guy who is
> making it just ties it all together.
Perhaps you should read Raymond's book.
And read "A Second Look at the Cathedral and Bazaar", too.
http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue4_12/bezroukov/
>
> Cathedral is that everything is planned from the beginning. The Bazaar
> simply points out that Linus (and his team) is not the only guy that
> comes up or implements the ideas.
Actually, Bazaar means quite a bit more than that.
> > TeX was an evolutionary change over systems like troff that came before
> > it.
>
> ObjC + OpenStep/NextStep lead the way for that. According to
> http://delphi.about.com/cs/azindex/a/dhistory.htm
> Delphi was first released in 1995 (correct me if I'm wrong).
> NextStep had GUI programming tools
> in 1989. Not an open source innovation; but when viewed like
> this, Delphi was simply an evolutionary step from NextStep.
I've programmed NextStep. It didn't have the live data tools present in
Delphi. That was the true innovation.
>
> And I'm sure we can see the evolutionary step that lead to
> NextStep if we look into it. But I'm not too keen on that history.
Sure, smalltalk.
Cheers,
Randy Hyde
ArarghMai...@not.at.arargh.com
>
>Dragontamer wrote:
>>
>> Actually, Microsoft bought VB from some other guy who innovated it.
>
>First I'd heard that, but okay. Given Microsoft's history with BASIC,
>this is not something I would have expected.
I found this in VB1 -- the gooey version:
Portions of this product were developed
for Microsoft by Cooper Software, Inc.
--
ArarghMail608 at [drop the 'http://www.' from ->] http://www.arargh.com
BCET Basic Compiler Page: http://www.arargh.com/basic/index.html
To reply by email, remove the garbage from the reply address.
ArarghMai...@not.at.arargh.com
>
>Dragontamer wrote:
>>
>> Actually, Microsoft bought VB from some other guy who innovated it.
>
>First I'd heard that, but okay. Given Microsoft's history with BASIC,
>this is not something I would have expected.
First that I had heard of it also, However:
http://www.cooper.com/alan/father_of_vb.html
ArarghMai...@not.at.arargh.com
ArarghMai...@NOT.AT.Arargh.com wrote:
>On 1 Aug 2006 18:21:05 -0700, rh...@cs.ucr.edu wrote:
>>
>>Dragontamer wrote:
>>>
>>> Actually, Microsoft bought VB from some other guy who innovated it.
>>
>>First I'd heard that, but okay. Given Microsoft's history with BASIC,
>>this is not something I would have expected.
>
>First that I had heard of it also, However:
>
>http://www.cooper.com/alan/father_of_vb.html
Actually, thinking about it, I wouldn't be real surprised if it turned
out that MS bought a DOS Basic compiler somewhere between QB3 and QB4,
based upon the internal changes between the two. Either that, or
completely rewrote it nearly from scratch. (If you run strings on
both, it shows what I mean) Another reason, the sources for the C
compiler runtime have been available since at least C6 (the earliest
that I have), but I was never able to obtain the sources for the Basic
runtime (QB4 or PDS). And, I did ask.
rh...@cs.ucr.edu
ArarghMai...@NOT.AT.Arargh.com wrote:
>
> First that I had heard of it also, However:
>
> http://www.cooper.com/alan/father_of_vb.html
Cool, yet more proof that serious innovation usually occurs at the
hands of an individual rather than a large team.
Cheers,
Randy Hyde
Jim Carlock
> First that I had heard of it also, However:
> http://www.cooper.com/alan/father_of_vb.html
Thanks for that link. He presented the following link. Did you
get up to the Bill Gates mug while reading the stuff there?
http://www.mugshots.org/misc/bill-gates.html
He's a goofy looking kid in the picture there.
Alot of the other links at the Cooper site seem to no longer
exist.
--
Jim Carlock
Post replies to the group.
Dragontamer
rh...@cs.ucr.edu wrote:
> Dragontamer wrote:
> > Hmm... It seems like you've got a very very different view of what
> > OSS is than I do. I'm beginning to think this all comes down to what
> > you think OSS development is.
>
> The bazaar side of the C&B.
That explains a lot.
Yeah, I agree. Bazaar tends to be more of a copy-machine
than an innovator. Innovation comes when a product starts as
a Cathedral.
I see no reason for an OSS project to be a Cathedral, or to
start as a Cathedral, etc. etc. I think that most, if not all, OSS
projects, have to start as a Cathedral for it to get anywhere.
Simple reason: If you want it done right, you gotta do it
yourself.
> > Wait, so you think Freeware projects have a chance for innovation...
>
> I think that indivduals, working in isolation, have a much greater
> chance of creating innovative than the Bazaar model the OSS embraces.
That Eric Raymond embraces :-p
> > While paid OSS projects may not?
>
> "Paid" changes the dynamics. At that point people aren't doing it for
> love or ego. That's a *big* deal.
BTW: Gnu software is sold for quite a lot of money.
https://agia.fsf.org/order/
Just pointing it out. Course; it is also given away for free online :-p
> > > The whole "Cathedral vs. Bazaar" thing has gone down the toilet with
> > > respect to Linux. The bottom line is that *small projects* (as Linux
> > > was, in the early days) can be developed in a decentralized,
> > > "programming in the small", manner. But once the project gets large, as
> > > Linux is today, those techniques start to fail. The promise of the
> > > bazaar was that you would get quick updates to bugs and new features
> > > would be added rapidly. Gee, look how long it's taking to get *minor*
> > > revisions out of Linux these days. Definitely a cathedral, not a
> > > bazaar. And Linus (for good reasons) rules over the Linux development
> > > and totally controls the "mainstream" release. Hardly the
> > > decentralized model that Eric Raymond was preaching about.
> >
> > I thought the point of the Bazaar was that you can find many many
> > unofficial patches for your product; and the main guy who is
> > making it just ties it all together.
>
> Perhaps you should read Raymond's book.
> And read "A Second Look at the Cathedral and Bazaar", too.
> http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue4_12/bezroukov/
Yeah, I'll re-read it. I only skimmed it the first time through. I'll
keep that link as well.
--Dragontamer