On Tue, Dec 15, 2009 at 6:40 AM, Mark P <pierh...@gmail.com> wrote: >> This strikes me as a potentially disastrous idea; look at how much >> mindshare going the proprietary route has cost Rebol, for instance. > > I don't know anything about Rebol except for some quick > googling that I've just done on them. But the impression > I get is that what they've done is substantially different > from the Plan B that I've proposed.
I don't know much about Rebol either, but from everything I've seen it seems like an excellent language, with one of the best runtimes of any scripting language I've seen. If it were open source, I'd have been very enthusiastic about it; as it is, I can't bring myself to devote my time and energy to a closed language. And it's not just me - if adoption were based on language capabilities and usefulness, Rebol looks like it should have far greater mindshare than it does. Promising to open the source after a window is definitely a better plan, but still risky - you'll probably just have the community cluster around the old version, which means the new version will suffer a lack of testing, libraries, etc. > If Plan B were implemented in a reasonable way, with > licence fees not unreasonable and with open source > guarantees not too far away, then surely the goodwill > would remain - especially if it were essential for the survival > of the project. And if goodwill remains, and guarantees > remain, surely mind-share would remain??? I'm not sure how far goodwill would carry it through. Speaking purely for myself, I love clojure, and will definitely contribute to the current funding drive. But if Rich had gone with your plan B and given me the impression that I'd be a second-class citizen unless I paid for a commercial license, I'd probably have left without a backward glance. And not because I'd begrudge Rich the money, or consider clojure not worth paying for, but simply because that would change the dynamic of the language and community in a way that would not make me feel excited about contributing time and energy to it any more. martin -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Clojure" group. To post to this group, send email to clojure@googlegroups.com Note that posts from new members are moderated - please be patient with your first post. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to clojure+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/clojure?hl=en
