Foreword:
Here's a private email I sent in response to Ryans comments
about my post to this list.
Ryan, I hope you don't mind me making this public,
Mark
******************* original e-mail********************
I agree with the points you made regards my post to the
Rebol user list.
However one minor point that I take issue with is that an
open source Rebol would somehow open up REBOL
to software competitors.
I don't think this is a valid point, Microsoft & other software
companies have the finance & the resources to implement
a lookalike of ANY software product. They can hire the
brains to do so or just buy out the said company.
Rebol at the high end is a Lisp/Scheme like interpreted language
built I believe on a Two Stack Forth like engine.
These are mature technologies and have been implemented
in various dialects & languages over the years.
There is nothing in the underlying technology that Microsoft
or any other capable language programmer could not
re-implement if they so wished, the fact that they haven't done so
either means they do not see REBOL as significant (a gross
under-estimate in my opinion ) or they have big sunk costs
& investment in existing technologies like Java, C++, Visual Basic,
Delphi etc.
REBOL's magnificence in my opinion comes from it's simplicity
& correctness of design. It is a human centric programming language
& a very powerful one at that.
However I believe that to protect our users interests from predatory
competitors like Microsoft an Open Source REBOL / OSCAR
released under the Gnu Public License - copyleft, would prevent
any malevolent force taking REBOL away from us at some future date.
I also think Carl & the Gang need as much help & support as they can get.
They will make their money from selling high end corporate
& professional REBOL products. Rebol/core is free and is stated
to always be available for free. So if it's already free then why not
totally free in the open source sense.
ANSI C "printf" and Pascal "Writeln" are compiled commands which
work almost identically to the REBOL 'prin & 'print words both of
which are Rebol natives! and almost certainly based on something
similar to either of the above C or Pascal code.
The Rebol community I feel would learn a great deal about REBOL
by re-implementing it in C or Pascal or Scheme etc, Brian, Gabriele
Elan etc from the list all have deep language & computing knowledge
& experience in various languages as well as having worked on
language implementations so the skills are there.
It is your choice as to whether to participate or not.
I hope you will reconsider & hope you will remember
I don't want to fragment REBOL or hurt Carl or the REBOL team
in anyway, I support & will continue to support REBOL.
I believe in Carl's design skills & technologies, he is a proven
master. I & others merely aspire to emulate such wizardry &
gain a deeper understanding in the process, improve our
skills etc.
Regards programming in C - I agree - Yuck!!!!
I would much rather write OSCAR in REBOL but until
and or if Carl ever writes a compiler for REBOL, then unfortunately
there is no choice but to get your hands dirty in a more
cumbersome language like C or Modula/Pascal etc.
We're on the same side.
Fellow Rebol friend,
Mark Dickson
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