Carl Sassenrath: Time for Big Changes

Carl Sassenrath: Time for Big Changes. They're planning a REBOL 3.0. He promises to blog about it.

Around 2000 or so I was really excited about REBOL. My excitement didn't last too long, and REBOL never took off.

I always wished REBOL would be open-sourced. The interpreter seemed so small and efficient (not to mention extremely portable), and I wanted the source to be available. It would have helped its adoption, at least. They'd said they'd consider releasing the source when REBOL was more mature... too bad it doesn't sound like they're considering making REBOL 3.0 an open-source release (though they do mention that pieces of it can be open source).

Update (3/23): This post shows up in a rebol.net chat log. Looks like MySQL threw up temporarily when one of them tried to access my site.

Re: the chat log: is open source about cost or about freedom? Mostly freedom -- I'm not a zealot who thinks all software should be open-source, but for many reasons I want the infrastructure I depend on to be open.

It is also about cost, however. Let's say a technology is a little bit better for some purpose and it can help me do my job a little faster or make it more pleasant. All else being equal I'd choose it over the competition. But if I want to sell my software written in that language, or use features not available in the free version, I'll have to buy licenses. So it's a question of opportunity cost. Is it better enough than some other technology to make up for the difference in cost? And you have to ask the question: Do I want to create a codebase in a technology I don't ultimately control? The lack of control should also be considered a cost associated with closed-source infrastructure.

Permalink | 4 Comments | Tags: REBOL | id 8021

22:32 (utc-6)
edited: 2006-03-23 17:32 (utc-6)