Mistakes I Have Made!
Everybody,
Regards recent antagonisms on this list regarding some posts
I made, having had a few days to calmly reflect I would like to
apologize to the my felleow REBOL friends here on this list
and the RT folks, Jeff in particular.
OSCAR: Opposing Sentiments Create Antagonised REBOL's
I made a few mistakes, I don't think I was being a pushy "religious"
person and I don't apologise for the views I expressed, but I apologize
here to Jeff, Holger & Cecil for becoming embroiled in a mini flame war.
I don't want such things in REBOL, quite the opposite in fact, that is why
I made my previous apology about religious flame wars. I'm sure like
everyone else you've looked aghast or laughed at the sillyness of such
things in the past, and how counter-productive they are, yet someone
condemns your views or criticises your integrity and down comes the
red-mist!
It's the first time I've personally ever been involved in such an incident
but I will try to learn from it, and count to ten next time.
I also want to apologise for the "Pravda" comment, looking back I can
easily see how that might be taken out of context. I was not trying to
portray REBOL Technologies as an "EVIL EMPIRE" and myself as
Luke Skywalker. That is just silly! Everyone knows that Microsoft is the
Evil Empire (Or is it now AOL?).
Rather the comment about Pravda was trying to question whether divergent
or dissident views are acceptable on this list or should we keep quiet
if we don't agree with the official RT view on a subject.
Sure I believe that in some ways RT policy and strategies, hinder rather
than help REBOL make the progress I believe it is capable of.
Now if you want to get religious and medieval then I suppose that view
on this list might be considered "Heresy".
The question is what to do with Heretics? Burn them? Exile them?
Castigate them and mock them?
And that is another mistake I made.
The last thing I wanted to do was Polarize people or my opinions.
Iam not a open source free software zealot. At work and at home
I use Windoze & AOL, because it is convenient for me.
I have used Linux & thought it was cool and a good operating system
but it is too "Unix" for my liking. I really like the new MAC OS-X look
and feel but stuck with an Intel X86 architecture because it gives me
more choice.
Anyway I'm rambling, so let me get back to what I was trying to say.
Yes I do prefer open source software because that gives me greater
freedoms to use and learn from it what I can. It also means that a
technology is not totally reliant on a company. I'm sure the Amigans
on this list, at least, will appreciate the significance of that.
But, and this is very important, I believe in symbiosis, co-operation,
co-existence and tolerance. I do not support the schism between
free software and commercial software. There are things that free
software and collaberative projects do well and things they do badly.
There are also things that commercial developers and companies
do well and also do not do so well or focus less upon, for many reasons,
financial & competitive factors included.
They do not and should not preclude each other, that is a dangerous
idea. That Iam right and you are wrong, and vice versa.
I want REBOL to be an inclusive tribe with a strong community,
we do have a great community, and it can be even better, so again
I apologize if I've alienated anyone or felt like I've polarized anyone.
One of the reasons behind the OSCAR project and a lot of the points
that I made in my posts was that I would like to further strengthen
the REBOL sense of community, by providing a forum where the
community can collaberate and work to providing our own solutions
to areas that for whatever reason. RT can't or haven't addressed.
As I said yesterday, the PERL community have pushed that language
in all sorts of directions that Larry Wall and the core team could never
have imagined at the start.
RT are a business, they have to be financially viable to continue to exist.
I really do want them to succeed and prosper. They rightfully are focusing
their REBOL efforts at the enteprise markets where the most money
is to be made.
A strong REBOL Technologies Inc. is very important. It gives REBOL
credibility in the Fortune 500 and Enterprise arena, which believe me
is very important to the success of any technology.
They provide a clear and obvious focal point for development and support
of REBOL something that languages like PERL and Python in many
ways suffer from.
However we the REBOL community have a part to play to, we can provide
our own solutions, many of you already are. REBOL.org was the natural
focus for such activities but for whatever reason that seems to be stuck
in limbo land just now, hopefully Maarten Koopmans new EREBOL site
can become the focal point for the REBOL community. You know the
REBOL list is very active, I've never understood why the chat room at
REBOL.org was never used much, if at all.
I for one would really like to speak to a lot of you fellow list members in
real time, anybody else up for this? Now this would make us a real community.
I've tried not to talk about OSCAR here, but just a couple of points I'd like
to make. I will promote and protect OSCAR whenever I can because I
believe that it is important and that by doing all I can to ensure it becomes
a reality, then we will all benefit from that. However I also want to stress
again OSCAR is intended to be complementary to REBOL and not a competitive
replacement or divergent from REBOL.
In many ways I see a parallel to Forth twenty odd years ago.
First Forth was Chuck Moore's baby, then it was the child of Forth Inc.
Then FIG the Forth Users Interest group re-implemented their own
Forth and Forth spread like wildfire, Carl Sassenrath knows this,
he helped build a Forth System at one time.
However there is an old saying which we at OSCAR would do well to
heed.
"If you've seen one Forth then you've seen one Forth!"
Yes we have experimental REBOL's and I dare say in future there
might be experimental OSCAR's, but remember no matter how much
REBOL grows up and leaves home, it is still Carl's baby.
REBOL is the standard, OSCAR wants to be REBOL, hence
OSCAR: Open Source Code Also REBOL.
However at present it is still in it's infancy and to show I've got
a light hearted side.
OSCAR: Only Stupid "Charlies" Attempting REBOL.
PS To prove I want REBOL to succeed and make money, Iam
trying to build a REBOL/Power Tools collection which takes
inspiration from the O'Reilly UNIX Power Tools classic book.
These scripts and functions could form the basis of a REBOL
cookbook, after all we all know that REBOL is great for so many
tasks on all systems not just Unix. REBOLPress could publish
this book and make money for RT this way, I've already suggested
this to BO @ REBOL this morning. This is another of my ideas
to build a community project. Anyone want to help donate scripts
and functions? Anyone want to write the book?.
I'm finished now, I'm sorry for this being another one of my sermons,
and again I apologize. it's just that iam really passionate about
REBOL and it's possibilities, but if you want me to shut up
then I will.
cheers my fellow REBOL friends,
Mark Dickson
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