Arno Uhlmelmahei wrote:
>
> Laurent Daudelin wrote:
>
> > The NewtonLink project is open source. It means that if you use any of
> > this code, you need to provide your own application free. Unless the
> > code would be really easy to port, I doubt anybody will ever take on the
> > task. Specially since it seems from my observations that NewtonLink uses
> > a serial connection only to the Newton. Since there is no longer a
> > serial port on all shipping Macs, for close to 2 years now, that would
> > mean that the programmer doing the port would have to re-write all the
> > connection stuff, all of this for free.
> >
> > BTW, I did send an email last week to the guy in charge of the source
> > repository and I still have to hear back from him! I guess that free
> > projects force you to find other lucrative activities to pay the bills,
> > so that you have less time supporting those free projects...
>
> Can you say 'dead platform'? How many commercial newton
> developers are left, besides the few that are trying to
> milk the last few dollars out of their work? Remember Ben
> Gottleib of Standalone Software? It seemed like he disappeared
> thirty seconds after the newton was discontinued. In my
> opinion your point is not well taken at all.
> By the way, a fellow named Linus Torvalds writes free software
> and has no trouble making quite a nice living. I'm sure the authors
> of many other absolutely lovely open source apps are also living
> quite well. 'You're the author of the Gimp? Come work for us, name
> your price' is a scenario that is played out every day in the Open
> Source community.
Unfortunately, I haven't heard about any Newton "open-source"
third-party developer being invited to work somewhere after the Newton
was canned.
Do you know any?
BTW, besides Torvalds, how many other open source developer got a real
nice job after putting up some nifty code? 1000? 100? 50? 10?
Besides, I don't get your point. Isn't Open Source a labor of love? Why
some loving guy would suddenly disappear after the Newton is canceled?
Money or market share is certainly not at stake, so what's the deal?
You would think that if they abandoned (that's not what I'm saying, see
the "if") the platform, they would make the code more freely available,
even if still under the open source license, I mean, it seems that
they're in conflict with the essence of the license themselves. They
*don't* provide access to the code ;-)
OK, I'm bitching a bit, but I shouldn't, at least not on those guys, I
will leave them more time to reply, to be fair and honest.
But I still think that this license is kinda "moot" for the Newton. They
are even fewer developers, and to salvage some good code and add to it,
you have to do it for free. Even though I like the Newton, I'm not going
to work for free anytime soon, sorry.
-Laurent.
=====================================================================
Laurent Daudelin Developer, Adaptive Infrastructure, CIS
Fannie Mae Washington, DC, USA
Phone: 703-833-4266 mailto:Laurent_Daudelin@fanniemae.com
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